Transcripts For CSPAN3 Addressing Difficult Aspects Of U.S. History 20240713

You. [applause] cspanhistory. A panel of scholars and Museum Officials discuss approaches for addressing difficult aspects of u. S. History. They share ideas for how to remember and learn from topics such as lynching or the holocaust, or about the cultures and experiences of groups such as native americans and the disabled. The event took place in washington, d. C. And Syracuse Universitys greenberg house and Lender Center for social justice hosted the discussion. Good evening. Syracusehancellor of university and i think everyone for attending tonights roundtable discussion. I am pleased youre able to join us for this important conversation. First, i want to start with the most important acknowledgment. That itssome things important that somebody says. And there are some things that its important that everybody says. I want to ignore the shoshone people, on whose ancestrals Ancestral Lands Syracuse University now stands. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Syracuse University trustee paul greenberg, who is joining us this evening. Paul established the greenberg Speakers Series to highlight programs and initiatives that are at the core of our universitys mission. Hand it is right here at home in washington, d. C. , where syracuse has a powerful presence with nearly 15,000 alumni. I would also like to thank Marvin Lender and his wife elaine who are here tonight. He is the chairman of ultimate street management, even more the man behind the highly famous linders bagel he would say the family behind the highly famous and successful lenders bagel. That theeful codirectors of the center are with us tonight, professor kenda amllips, and and i grateful to them and to lenders for making this event possible as well. This year we are celebrating Syracuse Universitys 150th anniversary year. Us, acrossone has the campus and across the world, reflecting on times when our university has been at his best, and times when we have been humbled. Context we have assembled this amazing panel of prominence museum and memorial scholars, critical and advocates for tonights topic difficult memories. Our goal to night is we have a timely conversation that promotes dialogue about how we may productively and respectfully engage with our shared past and learn from it. With us tonight study difficult aspects of history and Current Society from the standpoint of people whose identities are often ignored, or who have been in potential he targeted for violence or in an array of circumstances. On the of Syracuse University, i think our wonderful panel for participating in this dialog and i think our audience for being with us for this important discussion tonight. Thank you so much. [applause] good evening. And welcome again to the greenberg speaker series, in partnership with the Lender Center for social justice. I also want to thank the Greenberg Family and house for bringing us all together. Member in the school of education at Syracuse University as well as one of the codirectors of the Lender Center for social justice along with my colleague, why will introduce in a moment. I want to begin by acknowledging and expressing deep appreciation for helene and Marvin Lender. Their commitment to social justice that has created this. We were launched last fall with our inaugural symposium where we brought together alumni and Community Members to engage with us in a necessary and important dialogue about what it means to do good in the world and how we aserstand what we mean social justice. The ongoing work of our center, recognizing social justice is not a singular focus, nor is it a thing that one does. Aspire to foster proactive, innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to justice, equity, and inclusion through various activities and programming. Central to our work is the support of faculty and student teamsships that will lead with a faculty fellow to explore social justice issues, develop innovative approaches, this year we recently announced our first inaugural faculty gibson of the gandhi an assistant professor of african literature and studies in the college of arts and sciences. Shell be leading a team of lender student fellows on a project focusing on the social justice project, a digital humanities study. Professor gibsons project is aimed at utilizing social media platforms as a way of uncovering social justice trends. We also recently selected our first cohort of lender student fellows, which you want to Pay Attention because we will be announcing those fellows pretty soon. Please follow us on social media my visit our website so that you can learn more about the fellowship program, and also the activities of the center. Our goal is to support Innovative Research and engagement on issues related to social justice and to help collaborative and to host collaborative interdisciplinary conversation centering justice, equity and inclusion, like the one will have in moments with our panelist heard i would like to invite my colleagues, kendall phillips, professor of can occasion and rhetorical studies in the college of visual and performing arts. Codirector of the Lender Center for social justice to introduce our panel. Thank you. [applause] dr. Phillips now i dont need to introduce myself. Thanks to pauly greenberg and the lender family and the amazing staff here at the National Press pub just made our symposium on difficult memory fabulous and great and i appreciate the labor of folks who made this room operable and nice and we appreciate that. [applause] ralph ellison, in his 1959 essay on the jazz age begins with the quote, that which we do is what we are. That which we remember is more often than not, that which we would like to have been or that which we hope to be. Thus, our memory and identity are often at odds. Our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists i think this sentiment lies at the heart of what we call the study of public memory. Not much concerned with the Public Record of history that our idea of the past. Our images of it. Our stories. Our mind units. Underlying this story is a civil notion that the way we remember andpast frames are present, within our conception of the future. Syracuse university has long been at this forefront of studying public memories. Over the past 20 years this effort has been organized around what we call the public memory project, which has produced several books, conferences, speakers, Community Engagement anjects and collaborated International Consortia with universities around the world including University College of london, york st. John university, the university of copenhagen and Massey University in new zealand. This evening symposium is part of this longstanding work. Tonight we have a focus on the relationship between public memory and social justice. How can we remember justly . How should we engage with memories of past injustices . And how can we honor differences in our accounts of the past . Our panelists are leading scholars, activists and partition errors from across the country. With vast each of them and practitioners from across the country. We have asked each to make a brief statement on how we should deal with difficult memories. And then watching a conversation unfold among our panelists and we will try to have time at the end to let our audience joined with questions and comments. Speaker andduce a ask them to introduce the opening speaker and we begin with dr. A. D. Carson, a professor of hiphop in the global south in the mcintyre department of music at the university of virginia hes an awardwinning scholar, educator and performance artist tools a phd in rhetoric munication and information design from clemson university. He has produced numerous essays, posts and mixtapes including his mick dissertation which eight which was a 34 track rap album entitled owning my masters, the radix of rhymes and revolutions. The rhetoric of rhymes and revolutions. [applause] thanks, kendall. I appreciate you having me here. This kind of dope. A ledger and on alleged i was an egg or when they did it, kind of like the script it said shoes your own adventure but sure that i would die or be imprisoned. They called it the american dream. It was a scare of a scene and my character was synonymous with terrible things. Have you thinking that i was doomed on the page, that i was written on and scribbled out like, who is writing the sentences they had given out . Because this is hard for me to say, like if work is nonstop then went to see the play, right . I want to talk to the author and give whoever that is some suggestions i could offer. Stuff youre saying is justice and dont apply to me when they beat and hurt and cuff us. It is playing on the stage and really disgusting. What do you do with memories that are not quite memory that projections or expectations that fit a factual pattern of actual events, that have and might continue to occur, even if the historical narrative never gets around to docking them accurately . Documenting them accurately . Memoriesch difficult but the almost impossible reality built on top of them. How do we find our way to a we do not know we have forgotten or are forgetting . Or what we know to be undergoing a process of active reimagining, intentional forgetting, in the moment, to attempt to somehow tree articulate terror as tribe is little or no interest in attending to change terror as triumph, with little or no interest in attending to change or how the story gets cold a string its told. When people asked what i do i tell them im a rapper. I teach and write a number of forms but theres something about claiming my work in the way i crafted an intended to be engaged in a moment and we are asking questions about how we remember, what we remember in the ways we contend with what we find it occult in the remembering. Find difficult in the remembering. I call colleagues who call me the same, say to me or to others on my behalf, they see no significant difference between what i do and what a poet or any other kind of artist who works with words does. I almost always appreciate the attempt. But there is a significant difference. Engaged ingage or be some kind of academic or artistic sleightofhand that makes rappers and rap music legible through squeezing artists and our art, whatever our shape, through the square peg hole they call poetry. And that is not a comment on poetry, violence done in its name. How does duty to provide cover for what keeps getting omitted from this discussion. For the ways a rearticulate who and what it is it describes. Not because rap is not the portrait hiphop, or wraps are not poetic, because poetry does not do important work,. But because at least part of the important work for me is to ask what we lose, what we are intentionally forgetting, in those rare articulations. For me to be called one thing and then another while no one really wishes to hear what i call myself. For what makes some of us invisible. For what rappers and wraps say and do that calling us poets and our work poems, blunts. At 20olice fired 55 shots year willie mccoys car and that vallejo, california, talk about parking lot on ferry night, 2019, while he was asleep and it, everything i read about his death described a rapper killed by police. Deathg i read about his used poetry to describe him. The same goes for 38 rolled eric reason, killed in the same town this past sunday, by an offduty Police Officer and a valero gas station parking lot. The headline, offduty richmond officer shoots and kills rapper in vallejo. I cannot help but suspect the word rapper is doing a peculiar kind of work in the descriptions of the deaths of willie mccoy and eric reason and so many other read letting rappers who will never be described by poetry or as poets. As people now so generously do on my behalf too, i assume, justify my life and my art and my work as where they, as bible, as much as others my work as , matteringvaluable as much as others. To explain why i am in the room and how i got there. Maybe theres something viable and interrogating these descriptions and on his behalf they are employed and how they might help us remember or forget. I do not think this is just about genre and embodiment and the power of descriptors we use when discarding ourselves and others. It is also about the content contained in the form. The life lived and lost. Forgotten, overlooked, retold in different terms. And it is a challenge to us to maybe listen a little more intensely. Everything you believe you stand for, that a , imtores in his hands saying what im writing is sickness. What im writing is vision. What i am writing is healing. What im writing as a flashes of across the ceiling, to believe that when you move it is the true you. Bootie dance from whose hands expand reality, puppet tearing from when you hear it you do it naturally and actually. I am the reason even you are breathing. E yo [applause] thank you, professor carstens. Is judithanelists chipman, an international distilled rights advocate, the 20172018 Senior Ford Foundation fellow. An internationally leader in social justice she successfully sued than york board of education in the 1970s and became the systems First Teacher and wheelchair. She served in the obama admins duration as the First Special advisor for international u. S. Disbelief rights in the u. S. Part of state. Thank you. First i want to thank sears Qs University syracuse andersity and the lenders to greenberg. Not just for the event tonight, but probably many of you are not aware that Syracuse University, and the early 1970s, again to do work on the issues of disability. They began to take into some of the deeper issues around institutionalization that disabled people were experiencing and beginning to break open some of the myths around disabled people and what in particular people with intellectual and develop mental abilities were able to do. That work has really carried forward to today. I visit many universities and one thing i have found really refreshing about syracuse is and you work across silos try to work across silos and i ofnk that is an area disability critically important. Whom i talking about . I had polio in 1949. People in the United States no longer require polio. Disability is a very broad topic. It covers from birth to seniors. Covers visible and invisible disabilities. It covers people who are blind deaf, or death hard of hearing or have epilepsy or multiple sclerosis or hundreds of other labels. We also have in common is that we cut across all categories in society so we have disabled people from the africanamerican community, the asian community, on and on. The lgbtqnity trinity, rich, poor, everywhere. What we also have in common is stigma around disability, fear of acquiring disabilities, and as a result of that, marginalization of disabled individuals. And while the cdc says there are 56 million disabled people in the United States, one in four people in the world bank and the World Health Organization says that there are at least 15 of the World Population who have disabilities, 80 of whom live in developing countries, 70 of ,hom children are not in school we still do not see the outrage in our communities from any other community about the status of disabled people. So when i think about difficult memories, i live it every day. In preparing my thoughts for today, i was brought to the event last night, where we gathered for dinner. There was a step into the restaurant. There was a ramp on the side. The ramp led to two double doors. That could not be opened. And there was no electric door and no buzzer. Whether or not i would say summing about that, it was summing i had to think about. I did Say Something about it. Today i was lobbing on the hill for the day. The amount of additional steps that people had to walk, because the capital, while having been modified, still is nowhere near the degree of accessibility. Why do i mention that . I mention it because we have many laws in the United States, many of those laws have really made a dramatic improvements. The reality of the situation is, as i have said. Ana disabled person, as activist, as a loudmouth person, as one who speaks what i think and works with hundreds of thousands of disabled people in many ways, the reality is we are still have a difficult memories every day of our lives. Everyone of us in some way or another, when we are dealing with issues of discrimination, a restraint of defining it as just commit nation. Quent a wearing about defining it as discrimination. Wearing about what it will mean for us to disclose something has adversely affected us, especially if we have an invisible disability. Many people with invisible disabilities absolutely do not disclose on the job not disclose in their communities, for fear will happen. A number so those people are in this room. Because when we are talking about 20 of the population are 22 of the population in the United States, some of you are here. So what we are really needing to do that are doing on a daily basis is looking at ways that began collaborating together and sharing our experiences from our different backgrounds, and recognizing we, under an umbrella umbrella is determination. It is not just those scrim and nation the umbrella is discrimination. It really needs to be all people in the United States and internationally who are facing different forms of discrimination. We need to have unity in our believe that discrimination against anyone is discrimination against all of us. In order to be able to address discrimination, we need to be able to understand what it is and how it impacts us, as minor or major as it is. For families trying to get their children in school and are hiding what their children need because they fear if they talk about what they need that their children will not get into school, for adults who are looking for jobs and are fearful of disclosing and accommodation they need, for an individual who is interested in being in a relationship with someone else where they have a disability and they are afraid of disclosing their disability, those are some of that myriad issues. But when i think about memories, for me it is the daily experience. And it is not just in disability. It is that daily expense for those of us who are marginalized in one or more ways, that we have to experience and address. And i think we need to be more public, as we are experiencing these forms of discrimination, to really not only defend ourselves, but really to help educate ourselves as a community , so that we are able to ensure that as we move forward we are developing a more common agenda. That common agenda can really bring us together as a people. [applause] thank you, ms. Heumann. Wonderful. Speaker, holds a phd, is most recently published book, honeypot, black southern women who love women. Professor. Is great to be here this evening and i also want to extend my thanks to the lenders and mr. Greenberg and all the people who made tonight possible. In my research on oral histories , ing black lgbtq southerners am invested in attending to storytelling as a coperformative event. In other words, an event that involves the storyteller and the one who bears witness to the story. Withhistory in conjunction performance is not only a recollection of historical events and facts in relation to the self, but also the interplay between the teller and the listener. Im also interested in the value of what the oral history performance does for the storyteller. This is not to say that im not interested in the actual historical contents of what the narrator shares, nonetheless i am also invested i am not invested in an uncontested truth. Invested in the validation of the person telling the story. Will demonstrate, is why performance might be a key to providing a way to deal with difficult memories. Interviewedwomen i for my most recent book, honeypot, shared stories of sexual trauma and violence. These stories could be potentially triggering for women who are survivors of such violence. Yet, as i suggest, coperformative witnessing is one way that may facilitate healing. In the following excerpt from one of the narratives of my interlocutory, michelle, she tells the story of how she came fullcircle with her father who molested her as a child, when he is the person to help her when she is about to succumb to drug addiction, and addiction precipitated by her fathers violation. Says, on march, seventh, two thousand four, i was sitting in my backyard. Excuse me, it is still real. I was ready to blow my brains out. I had three options. I gave myself three options. Either i can go take another hit of that crack cocaine. Our can blow my heart up. I can go get that gun and i can blow my brains out. Because i am on a cycle and i needed to stop. Bike and go get some help. Go get some help. The third option seems so farfetched. At that time as i began to go get that gun because i needed it to end and i cannot edit myself. I heard this voice speaking to me as clear as im speaking to you right now. And it said, not yet, my child. Im not finished with you. I am not done with you yet. And i know today that that voice was none other than the voice of god speaking to me. And i took a shower. And i got my car. And i called dad. And i said, i cannot breathe. And i need some help. Can you meet me . That one. That violated me. The one that talked bad about me. Call me names, all kinds of stuff, was the one that met me. So they checked me and. When i they checked me in. When i finally got to the psych unit, it was march the eighth. So my clean date is march 8, 2004. And by gods grace and mercy, i am eight years clean. I am eight years clean. Although michelle had been sober for eight years at the time of the telling, the memory of the pain of this was visceral as she is overcome with emotion, interrupting the narration to apologize to me for her tears when she says, excuse me, it is still real. Despite the realness of the events, however, it is michelles desire to have someone bear witness to the telling, that makes the pain of the memory bearable. In the act of performing ones life history, the self is affirmed and the interaction with another who bears witness to the story being told. The healing, then, is in the survivors desire to tell and the willingness of the listener to bear witness. It is the communion of the teller and to the listener. Affect of body to body ffective body to body dynamic of two people suspended in the luminal space of memory. Performance functions and the number of registers to communicate difficult memories. [applause] thank you, professor johnson. Our next panelist is the ida e king visiting professor of holocaust and genocide studies at the sara and sam chauffeur holocaust center. Shields a phd from Hebrew Union College and priestley served as historian the Educational Initiative division of the United States Holocaust Memorial museums leaven Family Institute for holocaust education. The invitationr to be among you tonight. Ill find syracuse crowds so invigorating. And i have been looking forward to being with you so thank you for asking me to be among you. In my work as a historian, i study not only the documentary and material evidence of genocide but the memories of thecide as well, primarily memories of the survivors and witnesses but also those of the bystanders and witness their ,eirs and, more provocatively those of the perpetrators. The memories i study are not just difficult, they are dangerous. The danger posed by these memories arises primarily from of the context of a post Genocidal Society in which the victim come of the perpetrator, the witness and the bystander live sidebyside, cheek by gel very siteoften at the where the genocide was created. Countries such as germany, rwanda and, lets be honest, the United States. The challenges that arrive from this tension demand that the society in which these grooves are living together grapple not only with the injustice of the genocide itself but also the question of divining the nature and the possibility of justice after a genocide has occurred. A process that can force the society to confront, examine, interrogate and perhaps reject the very foundations and institutions on which it rests. Havems and memorial sites come to play a prominent role in evoking and processing these dangerous memories, process also challenged and transformed the nature, mission, financing, programming and leadership of museums themselves. As well as our understanding of the role that a museum plays in the society at large. Longer simply conservators and interpreters of the past, museums have become and should present,tivists in the excavators of histories that have been suppressed or concealed and nearly lost, interrogators of how the received historical narratives are functioning in the present, and shapers of a more diverse, inclusive, humane and just future. My approach to these dangerous memories that threatened to dismantle this historical myth we perhaps hold to dear and to threaten to destabilize the sense of security they provide us is that of a public historian, a historian who works in a public institution, a think tank, museum or rather than in an academic setting. Producing courses and monographs, i present my findings as part of a cross Disciplinary Team that includes digital specialists, designers marketers. [laughter] we present the findings in catalogs and public programming finally, i am not a public historian, i have spent the last two decades as a public historian in a federal institution. If youve never seen one, take a good look at me. I am one of those lazy worthless conniving public career Government Employees [laughter] who are bent on wasting your hard earned tax money, driving the nation by short to hell. [laughter] but, if you turn off the gaslight, me allow yourself to meet and my colleagues in the clear, cold, light of day, you will see people profoundly shaped and motivated by the oath we took on the day we entered federal defend andmely to protect the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. [applause] or to put morse essentially, using the very words of that constitution to crate a more perfect union. That is the ultimate reason for the existence of any and all federal agencies, including the federal museums that lined the mall. For the 20 five years of its existence, the United States Holocaust Memorial museum has struggled to become a more perfect museum. Ever falling short, but striving ever to evolve. The most important shift in its evolution has been moving the primary focus of its mission from a memory to action and from memorialization to prevention this shift mirrors the findings of the official u. S. Task force on genocide that, a decade ago, shifted the official u. S. Government policy regarding genocide from intervention to prevention, and from the necessity of engaging in armed combat, to the responsibility to protect. We have come to realize that once the killing begins, only an overwhelming force, typically military action, at the cost of blood and treasure, can stop a genocide that is already underway. Have comecourse, we to understand, is to prevent the killing from ever starting. Therefore, the museums collection activities and its education exhibition and public programming now focus much less on the deprecations, the ghettos, the concentration camps and the killing centers in 1940 and 1945 from 1940 to 1945, but rather on the dangerous memory of how countries allow themselves to slide into fascism. And how other countries allowed themselves to be lulled into inaction by indifference. The museum now focuses its education on how educational and exhibition efforts primarily on the. 1933 to 1930 nine, before the systematic killing began, the time during which governments, major institutions and the professions of the perpetrator nations, conditioned and prepared their populations to accept, carry out and justify the genocide of the jewish people. We focus on the. When prevention was still possible but was not undertaken and why. In short, we focus on the most dangerous memory of all. The process by which democracies fail to respect and defend the human rights of its citizens. [applause] dr. Phillips thank you, dr. Millin. Is like a ore professor, and a professor of African American studies in rhetoric at Arizona State university. She also phd from penn Savannah State university in African Market studies and english and is the author of numerous essays. Her new book lynching, violence and rhetoric in american identity has been published by the universally press of mississippi. Dr. Ore . Thank you. I want to thank the Lender Center and the greenberg series for this opportunity to be engaged. Memories are disputed. Disputes. Terested in im a rhetorician by training interested in the way people use violence into bali action and language to get things done in the world and produce desired outcomes. My most recent work examines the relationship between lynching and citizenship and whiteness. Lynching i would argue is a to whites of identity that enacts an arc meant about who is and who is not a member of the polity. This is a history we choose not to remember because white fragility israel white fragility is real. It denies the continuity between the lynchings of the past and the present instantiation. Im working with a colleague to understand how race denotes a different orientation to time. Of interest to us is the way discourse perpetuating lynching forgetting and discourses asserting its permanence manifest competing temporalities of race. For instance, the statement, we are beyond race, we are over race, denotes a few torah or progressive standpoint. Wheres statements like trayvon thein and emmett till are same thing is to be stuck in the past and manifest and inability to get over race come to let it go. Suchtements statements that trayvon and Michael Brown are the same thing were considered incendiary by conservatives and some moderate whites. To remember lynching is to recognize the structure that informs lynching forgetting is premised on the sense of forward making White National time, where black death has no meaning in the present. Where with regard to public responsibility. Because the place a black bodies and lives in history is marked by the norma committee of death, dispossession and containment. Norming of death, does possession and containment. To say we are beyond race. Memorials like the equal justice peaceute memorials to and justice, Americans First memorial to victims of lynching disrupts the notion of america beyond race and the weight draws continuity between historical atrocities such as lynching and slavery and contemporary manifestation of racialized violence such as Police Battalion mass incarceration. This truth telling Police Brutality and mass incarceration. This truth telling work has the capacity to produce generative disruptions that move us in the direction of restorative justice, to the production of cultural conscience and how the past reverberates in the present. [applause] our next our next panelist is dr. Oft, the emeritus founding founder of this missoni and museum of the nasa goal Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. He serves on the board of directors for the International Coalition of sites of conscience. Mr. West. Thank you. I am honored to be here talking with you p i would like to memory the subject of and in the context of museum by looking through the prism of the National Museum of the American Indian, where i spent a good deal of my professional career, 20 years. I would like to begin by quoting my first boss at the smithsonian institution, the secretary, Robert Mccormick adams, a distinction anthropologist. Heres what he had to say at the inception of the National Museum of the American Indian. This is a National Museum that takes the permanence, the authenticity, the vitality and the selfdetermination of native american voices at the fundamental reality it must represent. We move decisively from the older image of the museum as a temple with its superior selfgoverning priesthood to a forum committed not to the promulgation of receipt was dumb, but to the encouragement of a multicultural dialogue. Not the promulgation of received wisdom, but encouragement of multicultural dialogue. Embedded art difficult memories in particular. I want to talk about them with two aims. First to discuss from the perspective of a museum director, the process and substance of memories and difficult ones. Essential, i want to discuss the Transformative Impact of the invocation of a voice in memory, as i will describe it, uneasy ms and that when he first century. Museums in the 21st century. From the beginning the nest museum of the native American Indian at a threepronged statement. St that it is a substance international of the present and future and not comprised merely of ethnographic memory remnants of prior cultures. Second that the native peoples and communities present firstperson voices of cultural memory that are authentic and authoritative. Third that as an institution, the and mai had a profound response ability to deploy and apply human and Cultural Assets in support of contemporary native communities. To bring those assets directly to Indian Country in order to maintain and sustain 21st century cultural survivals and success. Relationship of the substance to aspirations and process, memory and its invocation by museums . Most, memory is authentically and convincingly found in originating and firstperson voices that are authoritative. Second, memories, especially difficult ones, are not merely an exercise in the retrospective. They can be vital in knowing, dressing, and predicting the perspective too. And finally, memory is a profoundly important and powerful path, not only from the past to the future, but also from the specific in time and space to the more general and universal, in different times and different space. The impact of the future of all that i have just discussed on the fundamental nature and institutional intention and the 21st,useums, on rather than the 20th, let alone the 19th, century, i have boys been a person believing i have always believed in the glass halffull. I believed that in the 21st century museums, whatever their typology, will be less the temple with a superior, selfgoverning priesthood, and more than a holiday or weekend stop on the tour bus route, to visit houses of you beautiful objects. Second, i predicted this opening of the museums curatorial and interpretive doors and windows, will be utterly transformative and making the 21st century civil,truly civic and space and place for conversation, discussion, debate, perhaps even controversy. But always a safe place for unsafe ideas. And heres the hope that is not yet a prediction. But it is the creation of the museum as a forum, with its potentiality for civil discourse , that at the least aspires to enhance mutuality of understanding, respect and future reconciliation. Yeare United States in the 2019, wouldnt that be extraordinary . Conclusion, and heres the kicker in which i have complete faith. Memory as i have discussed and defined it in the context of the museum of the national American Indian, museums generally and Museum Practice will remain defining, central and ultimately empowering for the future of American Society and its wellbeing. And for all of my colleagues here on the dais with me tonight at all of you and to Syracuse University for doing this program, i would like to part with some assurance in cheyenne, my own language. [] [translated] mystery, walks beside you and walks beside your work, and touches all the good that you attempt. Thank you. [applause] dr. Phillips thank you offer such a rich and powerful group of statements from folks working in a variety of communities of memory, from a variety of perspectives. For my brief time in getting a chance to chat with you, my goal is to pull out some of what i thing are themes and ask folks to talk and then hopefully others will jump in and we will see how the conversation goes. One theme that strikes me across discussions, professor johnson, is this idea esther west talks about, voice and the concern of being omitted. I wonder if you can talk more about the importance of recognition. You talked about stories and validation. What is the importance of having your memories, your traumas, your expenses validated or recognized, your voice heard . But notbody has a story everybody gets to tell it. Things i found in conducting oral histories is that people are at first hesitant, not because they do not want to tell their story but because you asked. And once they begin to tell their story, they begin to learn things about themselves. That they had not thought about. Important that you hold the space as a listener for them to tell the story, even those that are difficult, that are traumatic. One of the things that happened when i was conducting these oral histories with women in became verywas i emotional in bearing witness and so i had to stop on a number of occasions and take breaks because theyning, were impacting me in a very profound way, very emotional way. When oneieve that allows themselves to bear witness of someone elses story, it can also change their own perceptions about the world. I will share one anecdote about a performance i did. So, i turned my first book, the oral history of black gay men of the south, into a oneman show. Show around the country. One performance, one of my colleagues but her husband. And did not tell him what the show is about. [laughter] q a, he raised his hand and said, i want to let johnson, professor that my wife brought me here tonight but did not tell me what we are coming to see. I came to the lobby and saw this gay stuff. On the poster and i was like, what the . Because, you know i was not down with that kind of stuff. He said, but after listening to you share your stories of these men and your own story, i was thinking to myself, how can i judge them when i am an excon . And i have been through my own stuff. And ive had to wrestle with coming to terms with what i have done and the things that i have done in the people i have hurt, and all the trials and tribulations i have come to and people forgave me and gave me a second chance. And im listening to tell these men stories about all they have come through, and i cannot judge you anymore. And i want to bring you on my radio show. To talk about this. Now i thought this was a throwaway. [laughter] but it wasnt. One month later, he invited me on his radio show, which is based in irvine, california. And it is a predominately African American audience. And he brought me on the show to talk about my work, and to disabuse people of myths that circulate about what it means to be gay. At now he is one of our biggest champions. [laughter] every chance he gets he emails me or talk to me. It turns out our mothers were born on the same day, the same year. [laughter] that is the kind of transformative work that can happen when we allow ourselves to be open, to listening to other peoples stories, people who are different from us. Or who are going to the Holocaust Museum and andriencing facetoface, encountering what another culture, what another person went through. The trauma. Theres nothing like that toward social change and social transformation. So for me, as you can tell, im performance. Because i am a performer, but also giving people a chance to perform their own stories. Heumann . , judy. When i left government i was a fellow at the ford foundation. And Darren Walker said would you like to be a senior fellow and you can do anything you would like to do for a year . And so catherine and i had just started an organization and i decided, talking with friends, we were going to a paper on the representation of disabled people in media. Its roadmap to inclusion, changing the boys, changing the face of this ability in media. The reason we were interested in doing this paper, was because, there such an absence of positive reflections of disabled individuals. So, have any of you have children or nieces and nephews and read books to them . How many of you have ever read a book that included a positive image of a disabled child or adult . Ok. Not most of you. How many of those children have a nonwhite . Moviesd if you have seen documentaries, others that reflect his ability in a very negative way that reflect disability and a negative way as objects of pity or horror . The issue of story is very important. I have been doing something called the human perspective. We have done a hundred interviews now of disabled individuals of different ages and types of disabilities. Youi agree completely with about the issue of stories. In the area of disability, there such a profound absence of stories. An absence of positive images on television. An acrosstheboard. So i think the absence of those of us with visible and invisible disabilities from various communities, really reinforces the invisibility and the fear of disabled individuals and their family members, speaking out. So, one of the results of our paper is that we are looking, we have looked at other organizations that have been working on issues of diversity. Like in black media, native american media, etc. , and looking at how those communities have also, while doing great work, are not documenting stories of disabled individuals and those differ in categories. And i think this is critically important because we all have different stories to tell. And though stories are also different from within the communities we come from. And in order to really allow the richness of story to come forward, we have to be putting a disability lens on the work we are doing. When we are looking at the numbers of people that im discussing, each one of you, when you look at the work you are doing, and storytelling, whatever it may be, in a classroom, or in your daily jobs, looking at what it is you are doing to bring forward the stories of disabled people . Dr. Phillips very powerful, thank you. [applause] another part to this question, and im thinking mr. West and professor carson, thinking only about the story and its transformative power but also the ownership of the story. You talked about the language of memory. And i wonder about the importance of the authenticity of the first voices in crafting those stories that circulate as part of the public memory we have. Mr. West, yes . I think that is an extremely important aspect of it. I was interested in the comment which does relate to the question you just asked me of the power of memory, is both internal, because with respect to the group of whose memory it is, we learn lots about ourselves knowing though stories. But ultimately it also is external. In other words, those memories serve as a bridge outside of our own community in ways that i ink are corrective over the long haul. Think we were, i very specific about the control of the storytelling at the beginning, in part because we had never had before. Americans, at native everything about us was always in the third person, especially in museums. People had a very fractured relationship with museums themselves. And there were exterior or external disciplines, academic disciplines, through which we were interpreted. And they were not our stories. It is revealing that even with and for apology, even with anthropology, which supposedly had one of the most direct relationships with native people and their stories, the role of native people was always as quote informants quote that is the term in science and that tells you what our role was. And was not. At the exhibits we opened exhibits with on the mall, we worked with 24 communities, 12 from the United States and four from latin america four from canada, and eight from latin america. That was a process in which the communities with whom we were working had absolute control over the story from the very beginning. It was through their eyes the story was told. Was at theteresting time which would not be true now, a generation later there was immense blowback, from the academics over that, it was looked at being antiintellectual to let people a letter then fashion have control of the storytelling and yet for me, it was at least a step down that road that says, nobody is arguing for a new exclusivity. But we are saying there are those who have not been in the docket of storytelling, who should be adding to, and in some instances, controlling, how the stories actually told. And now that is accepted practice and lots of museums. Reaction wasthe much more mixed to begin with. I think the museum field has changed in that regard and it has to do come again, with the power of memory and whose memory youre talking about and who controls the articulation of oft memory for purposes storytelling in museums. Dr. Phillips thank you. Dr. Carson . I think theres something similar in the work i find myself attempting to do. In,he rooms i find myself or the students i find myself in front of. There have been this idea there had been this idea that maybe we would be able to use, not maybe. That we could use hiphop to talk to and connect to young people. Way, youwill be the know, that folks who do not want to read the great gatsby. [laughter] or to kill a mockingbird, or whatever it was, [laughter] we would connect to them by translating the stories into legacy appreciated. Into language they appreciated. It was interesting. Idea of, not the stories that already exist in a certain way that we already have an of being translated into this line which we do not accept, are these ways of communicating that we dont accept or only except then whatcular way, about the stories that might be created in that room . Of how those connect to all those stories that might be accepted in particular ways that we do not see. Or we have to squint hard to see it as literature. And then, when what you do, like a lot of the time by the time of Kendrick Lamar wins a pulitzer prize, kendrick mar does not need a pillow surprise. A pulitzer prize. [applause] im thinking there are no prizes for the rhymes that go unheard. That is what the concern is. By the time i am submitting a dissertation that has been the form of a rap album, i do not need that phd. You know, i am in that room already. So what about the folks who are not ever going to be allowed in those rooms . And theresfor people to be able to understand though stories as can treating to this larger narrative as contributing to the larger narrative . As a product of memory. As a product of forgetting. That is ongoing. Who is going to do that work, if nobody is attempting to even listen or to tell people to translate themselves into something that is better or more acceptable . Know, i feel like that is that work for me. Sure, but going into the places where the regular living ateople communicating, and that being the place where the histories are as well. Powerful and it is brings me to another dimension of things you are talking about. This panel so, im thinking maybe starting , the role of the museum, but also other sites it encounters, and to the others, other places where memory happens that are not the traditional academic, historic home. Dr. Millin . Dr. Millin yes. Let me think for second here. Dr. Phillips sorry. I will have to think. I am so i work so deeply in sites andof memorial the stories that we tell their and the context the stories here and the t context, it is difficult for me to abstract from that. Dr. Phillips sure. I am not sure i am answering your question. There is a film that is coming out in march. It is called crip cam. And two other people , all renowned in documentary film making. This will detail camps for disabled people in the 1960s and 1970s in new york. What is important to me about this film, it was able to be ,enerated because this guy jimmy, who was a wheelchair user and a camper at 15yearold, when videoe group cameras were just coming out, brought the cameras and trained people on how to use the videos and help campers went around gathering stories from other campers with disabilities. Its a pretty profound piece that is going to be coming out, seeing netflix release and the obama Producer Company is behind it also. Me, in the area of disability, documentary films are really important and there is slowly a growing number of them. And they are being developed with the voices all of disabled individuals taking charge of what is happening. The stories are of thebecause significant involvement of disabled individuals. In this case, it is younger disabled people. It may follow a number of disabled people through today. So you see the development of people. And the film itself was because the camp was originally a averse camp, also brings in number of other components that were not being discussed at that time. Its really watching the growth and development of the voices of i mean, groups who really, between 15 and 20 years had notsomething people thought about. And had jimmy not remembered this film was out there somewhere and had not gone to find it, this would not have even been produced. Dr. Phillips yes. I hate to be a bitch dr. Phillips bitch away. Dr. Millin could you restate your question . Dr. Phillips im an academic, question wasy convoluted. We have the official museum, the documentaries, the classrooms, the Street Corner where people are talking, etc. , etc. , so thinking about these sites and how they interact. Maybe that is a clearer way of asking the question. Or not. [laughter] dr. Millin let me take a run at it. We have an Interesting Program which weseum, in partner with universities primarily, started out in the south. Now were moving to the north where racism manifested itself in different ways. But as present. We are partnering with them and bringing our part of the program, the faculty there brings their part of the program, and we start with the conversation. We learn thereby by not being the sovereign institution that knows best. We go out there and try to humble ourselves a bit and listen to the story, listen to the experience in the locale, listen to what people tell us and absorb that. I think that is one thing. I think social media we have spent a lot of time on our website we have some of our. Ebsite people here tonight we decided about 10 years back we were not just a National Museum. We were a global museum. So we started to translate the website into 15 languages including pop what what is the word . What is the word . Apua new guinea. The three languages of that tiny community. We talked about translating beyond our borders. We talked about the challenges because there is no word in arabic for concentration camp. You have to learn to speak through another persons language. Its really challenging. I just want to Say Something about story, too. We really felt the key to education is personal story. For every Educational Program we do, we try to find personal stories, either historic or the living witness or living survivor. And we have a program at the museum called firstperson, re a survivor at grace at great cost to themselves, i have to tell you stands up and tells their story in front of what is a packed house. And absolutely standing room only event. We post a sign in the atrium the auditorium is filled. Mostly young people, which excites us very much. And they tell their stories. Not just the stories of the victims, the survivors, are important, but we need to hear the stories of perpetrators. They tell why, the admission of their guilt. But they every now and then throw out a detail that is so unusual, and they sort of toss it out throw that out and see if she comes back to it and comes back to it. Gotif they dont, whew, away, go on. The good interviewer comes back and says, about 10 minutes ago you said this. Lets talk about that. All of a sudden, you get those details to come out. And we have to have those stories, too. The stories, have the passage from anne frank that we all know. We have to have the stories of those who of obliterated another persons humanity. And listen to them without any forgiveness, frankly. Or any intent to reconcile. Just listen. And we may also have to listen home we among us identify as perpetrators and weerstand our role whom identify as perpetrators and understand our role in the projection of atrocities around the world. There are all kinds of stories play ast place must role. Personal stories are an absolute necessity for conveying. You can go up and have all of these details about blah, blah, founded, that the minute you read the passage from teenager in the ghetto starving, or the teenager whose parents are desperate to get out of the country, those are the stories we need to hear, too. Theres nothing beautiful. Theres nothing noble. Theres nothing in lightning and uplifting about genocide. We are not fragile. We can hear those stories, and we must. Otherwise we are lying to ourselves in the way that the perpetrators lie when they tell their story. Not only the witness and the survivor stories. I think you so much for your story i thank you so much for your story. We also need to hear what part austriaerpetrator up story is our own story and claim that. Dr. Phillips yes . A couple things related to no,g an academic no, no. Said,couple things you richard, about being an informant. I come out of a tradition that is called performance studies. People are confused. What is the difference between that and theater . I will not get into it to i will not get into it. One of the things my field does is take an ethnographic approach to research. We are on the ground, in the field, in communities doing research. One of the things, we purposefully do not refer to other people as informants. Ory are our interlocutors coperformers. Related to the question about different sites and also academics, and also academics, one of the things i am committed to as an academic is not speaking to other academics to my research. I am not riding to other to other writing academics. I am trying to highlight and ameliorate the voices of the people with whom im studying. And one of the ways i do that, and this is related to your question, is find multimodal forms of communicating that work. Is aes, the oral history book that will be in a library. To theo adapted it stage. To the stage. To a documentary. People who will not come see the clay will see the documentary. Its creative nonfiction. Of engagingt ways people stories and way they recognize themselves, not overlaid with a lot of academic jargon, that they do not even recognize themselves, but also in reaching out to these broader audiences, finding different words present the the works that bring people in rather than alienating them. I think disseminating difficult memories through arts is also key through art is also to this process. Dr. Johnson stole a little bit of my thunder [laughter] i was thinking of spaces outside a museum space where stories are curated, really thinking about the culture. Drama. As thinking about i was thinking about film. That is important given my academic background and how i came to develop what i am identifying as democratic literacy through literature, specifically with the regard of the history of lynching an African American literature. How the stories exist in history, is curated over time, told to a community in an effort to better negotiate america up austrias ways are at it becomes this test. Thatcomes this pedagogy you passed down from generation to generation. N that is nots cano taken up by the public schools, but a canon that is used by communities. There is still a continuity as a result of that shared experience. About ways that we produce stories and share them with each other for the purpose of forming one another about how to negotiate our circumstances. Of course, documentary does that as well, but i was thinking ut the hidden transcat transcript in scripts and in music. There are stories that need to intold, that cannot be told a public venue, but need to be told and registered so certain individuals will hear what needs to be heard. And certain individuals dont need to hear there will be consequential damages for those who need to listen. I am signifying to a certain extent on meager spirituals, right . Spirituals, right question mark and definitely hiphop and r b speaks to this as well. Negro spirituals, right . And r billy hiphop speaks to this as well. Museums have much more bilateral is him with communities outside and organizations outside. You see more and more instances where the Museum Associates with different kinds of forms that from the outside with the community, as well as the multiple modalities, i think, is a very good point. For us, in the native community, the fact that the current poet laureate is a native American Woman is extraordinary in a lot of different ways. But it has to do with various ways in which memory gets communicated. Joy harjo i have known all my life. We are both from oklahoma. But to your point about how you filter these things, that is certainly true in the native community. There are certain things we share. There are certain things we dont share. We are just becoming much more picking andd about choosing and negotiating our way through that, the community is, and i think externally, other communities are more respectful of the kinds of protocols we may choose to pick from inside the community about those kinds of things. I can think of another example. Right now, over a quarter of the population of the United States is hispanic or latin, and its heading toward 30 . A good portion of that population still communicates largely in spanish. What we have found out was how draw them into our audience question mark how do we make them an audience . How do we communicate . Old technology, plays a role in Spanish Speaking communities in the United States. Newspapers, social media, documentaries just dont play. They listen to the radio. As we began to explore, we found really cool radio, radio like it used to be, you know, with the variety programs and the news programs and not just the constant music you find. But it really is how do you pick up this technology that we look upon as so antiquated really and yet it has such possibilities in this one munity possibly others depend upon it as their main source of communication with one themer, and how do we ask to share that network with us . And how then do we give them context that is worth listening . Which means we have to talk about how their community relates to the holocaust. We have stories about hispanic soldiers who fought against fascism. Hispanic soldiers who, you know, which in war work brings up the exceptional bold deprecation of mexican americans in the 1930s only to ring them deportprecation ation of mexican americans in the 1930s only to bring them back. We have to look at it through the eyes of their perception. In other words, and American History and the relationship to the holocaust through the eyes of these communities. Because its not separate from American History. It is American History. [applause] so, we have to figure out how to do that. Which, of course, means Museum Boards are overwhelmingly white, female, and delete. And elite. Hall at walk up the niemans and you will hit an art historian. I am going to remember that. Dr. Millin the museums have to change. We have to go for diverse funding. But that means people are funding us they have got to theireir faces and stories in our exhibition and in their websites and in the we produce. S and they have to be included in for whichamerican, they have a full and equal right to that. Mean a change to the way museums have existed. Dr. Phillips dr. Carson . Dr. Carson to the conversation it academic language and believe im an academic as well. Dr. Phillips im sorry. Dr. Carson no, its all good. The concern that i had when i was a doctoral student, where i was a doctoral student, and i think the places where these histories are written, or particularly what i am doing, means something. And there would be examples right there on that campus. What we couldnt talk about, even though we had all of the language to describe it. Heres a little Plantation House in the middle of the campus and down the hill from the Plantation House, that is open seven days a week, is a football field. And at the time, the number one Football Team in the country has amateur athletes making a whole lot of money for that university, and every time you try to talk about the history of the plantation, folks telling if youto say that, or dont like it here, leave. Or ask, why did you come to a place like this . Realize, saying that directly, there have to be frequencies that need to be engaged to have this conversation with all of the folks i was trying to bring into that conversation, and really felt, well, maybe metaphors are easier. And literally wrote the piece maybe metaphors are easier. For some reason, its easier to talk about how we cant see our history in the present layout of the land, but if we have a mascot and we are calling her ourselves tigers, if we are talking about how we may see our stripes, that may be a way to get into the conversation about how we are telling ourselves a peculiar kind of history. Or if we cant talk about the ways that certain people are killed, and nobody is even batting an eye because of the ways we rape those people stories, maybe there is Something Different than talking about the tragedy of an orchard where certain fruits is treated in peculiar ways. Where people come through and knock it down and it is bruising on the ground and people find a way to empathize with this fruit in a way that they do not empathize with human bodies. That is doingrap that. There are all of these other forms. I thought it was really interesting to write an album anded owning my masters, no one bats an eye. Which masters are being owned . The metaphors do the work, even though it is more effectively disseminating the desired message. That find or i found has been the most impactful part impactful for me to speak to academic audiences and the folks at home. Its really easy for me to send my folks my work, and i do not have to send them a study guide to go along with it. Right . Right . Excellent point. Dr. Phillips i think we have some time to open up to the audience if they have questions or comments. Hopefully brief questions or comments. I think we have a microphone. Second row . Of the audience was memorable, and like dr. Carson said, you probably have major on platforms. What i am curious about is said,g moments where you i cant afford to not have a voice. I cant afford to stay with the crowd. Of got to rise above that. I have got to rise above that. That is my question. Dr. Phillips yes . Im sorry, was that directed . Dr. Phillips what is the question. Thank you very much. Mr. West . Me, it began rather early in this way. , my dad isy cheyenne, my mom is white. I was born in california, but i was taken back to oklahoma by my father right after world war ii because he wanted my brother and me to be raised in the cheyenne community, which is located in oklahoma. It was kind of a curious set of circumstances. My mother was the daughter of missionaries, white missionaries , and missionaries mississippi at that. That mywas a marriage mothers parents would not even was marrying a man of color. That is why i look italian or something. My father actually looked very, very native. My father spent the first 25 at boarding school. We wouldry firm that not. The lines were drawn very clearly. What community i belong to, what my cultural identity was. That was something very clearly defined very clearly in my own memory. At the same time, i will say that my father also said, even though i heard stories of what life was like for him in indian wereing schools, and they active instruments of the cultural is a show in decultu ralization. A lot of understood cheyenne, but he did not speak cheyenne because he was not permitted to do so. He told me numerous stories of against being banged the wall by anglican nuns because the reservations were turned over to churches at one point. He never wanted my brother and me there was a flip side. The Positive Side of it was there was a culture ration acculturation within the cheyenne community. That was the Positive Side of it. The other side of it was he never wanted my brother and me victims. Rselves as he said he thought that we had the power to control that. That is what he wanted to inculcate in us as we were growing up. To your question, i never remember a time i was confused about that. I was always very comfortable in my skin from an early age. That is the way he wanted me to live my life and it is the way i have tried to live my life. Judy i was the only disabled person in my family. Ad identifying, having disability as part of my identity, gradually evolved and eventually i began to meet more disabled individuals and i began to see we had more things in common that we would begin to address. Of disability is something that is still new and emerging. My identity growing up, both of my parents had been sent down from germany during the holocaust and their families had perished in the holocaust, so i had a jewish identity and then i had this other thing. I had polio. I was in a wheelchair. I didnt get to go to school until i was nine and a half years old. Toy had to send a teacher the house for two and a half hours a week in brooklyn, new york and that was considered totally appropriate. A law1975, there was not in the United States that said disabled children had to be educated. So, when we look at the civil rights act, brown versus board of education, it does not pertain to disabled children. At what isok happening to africanamerican disabled children in the educational system, when you look at the number of africanamericans in juvenile justice facilities, 70 of kids have disabilities, and to follow that through the prison system. In part, because i believe there has not been a community. You know . There is not been in identity for people with disabilities being able to come together and address issues of racial discrimination, disability discrimination. When you hear stories of Police Brutality against black and latino and others, you never hear whether or not those individuals had disabilities, and in many cases, they do have disabilities, but is not part of the social justice rhetoric. Saying earlier is we really need to have a better understanding of what the issues are. Of i think the ability continuing to support the voices of disabled people, the stories of disabled people, their similarities across the board and their differences across the board. I think ultimately we are way far behind where other communities are now, but the ability to work more closely together, i think will advance the disability rights movement. Rights movement, storytelling, and social justice. Heard it as a question about voice. It made me think. My brother and half of my family is in the front row. Question and i thought my brother could probably answer this question for me. Me my mother did not permit not to have an understanding of why wasnt who i needed to be. She also created space for me to be who i wanted to become, but that was within the context of knowing who i was. With that said, as i moved forward in life, it became kind of a guiding principle in a that as things i went through transforms me it really has been about breaking dust to trailays blaze your impact. I would say i have always walked alone. I have always said this. I haveays others always encouraged others to walk alone beside me. We are about the ways all individually on journeys. Some of those journeys intersect at certain points in time. We meet new people. We gain new knowledge. We build coalitions. Our coalitions become diffused. We go along another path to where we feel we are being called. For me, the overarching motivation has been, what i do now, how i move now, will i recognize this person in the mirror if i wake up tomorrow . Blessed as to wake up tomorrow morning, will i recognize this person . Those are the things that give me drive. Alone, even though i may be walking with others. Nomad. T see myself as a i just see myself as the spirit, you know . Out and about, inviting others to engage me and helping others wish to being gauged by me. Ged by me. Nga and keep in mind engagement does have a level of violence and i am aware of that. Have invitedi fear, but not to keep the fear from moving me forward. Yeah, i grew up in a very privileged, very welltodo family. Hadelltodo family that been privileged and welltodo for many generations. Probably the last time we were persecuted as jews was when we were thrown out of the city of york in 1290. Was really cocooned in the solution. Had myot married and first child who was diagnosed at seven months with the jewish tay sachs. Disease up and smothers the Central Nervous system. It is horrific for the child to suffer and it is horrific to watch it happen. Years, she would lose something every day, and the next morning, i knew i would have to walk into the room and decide what ever i saw in the bed was a human being. That, along with the fact that when you lose a child, you lose , and you have to completely rebuild everything you believe, everything you hold dear, everything, and that question of what is essential to how do human being and we know that and how do we describe that really became the Guiding Force from that. And im very grateful for this experience for that reason is my understanding of human beings broadened and broadened and i think that was the turning point of my life. I moved away from what had been androfessional training moved into history and religious studies. And one of those things where sorry that she had to suffer so much for me to gain so much. Less of forgiving the event, when you stop seeing human small and strictly delineated, and begin seeing them as possibilities and varieties and just glorious, you know . You let go of this tightness in your chest where you are investing your psychic energy in holding onto that definition. You can let it go and hopefully take that energy and use it to build something better. Thats it. [applause] i cant. Johnson pinpoint a particular moment. There have been various events in my life that catapulted me down a particular road. Theone i am on now is post passing of my mother. My mother asked in july. That is now my new normal. I was very close to her. So i am trying to figure out a. Ath without my mother and i know that she lives on within me. I am my mothers child in so many ways. I was the baby. And the favorite, according to my siblings. [laughter] i cannot disabuse them of that. I am trying to figure out life tmy my mother pos mother. Has been an incredibly wonderful one for me and an incredible tragic one for me. Dr. Phillips you know, i have n trying to think, how dr. Carson you know, i have been trying to think, how everyone is responding. When i was growing up, the constant things i had were my brother, my mother, and teachers. And all of those teachers werent good. Some of them were though. , i mean, i that remember we also didnt have a whole lot, so i remember being or feeling, if not explicitly being teased and always feeling, like, outside of whatever that thing was. And sometimes really hating having to go to school or leave home, and other times really loving that. And something in there made me want to teach. But you know like that relationship that i had with my to holdand my mom used me she had these books we could not touch on the shelf, like the encyclopedia books. And so she made me feel it was bookseged to get those and i had to wash my hands in everything. Try to memorize those books and tell the stories in my own words and i would owe to school and i would ask the teachers if i could write my responses in rhymes. I had a fourth grade teacher who said, yes. Not only that. Idea with this form, this of having to speak out for folks because nobody was speaking out for you so you had to be that person. So, yeah. Dr. Phillips thank you. [applause] dr. Phillips one more question, yes. Can you talk about the National Moment we are in with historical narratives being rewritten, monuments coming down, collegiate holdings being renamed . I, myself, am an editor at national geographic. We are expanding the stories we are telling and broadening those stories. Its happening across institutions. Challenge naming the theing the difficulty difficult memories as an opportunity for healing and reconciliation perhaps. Can you talk about where we are and if you have any recommendations for how we move forward . [all talking at once] fairlyllips we will be brief and our responses. You should be up here instead of me. Thank you for the best question of the evening. Will say i am not very happy with where we are, quite honestly. Way weck in this need to figure out all those points of genuine discourse in civil and civic behavior that we can find and cling to them. And i am glad because im actually involved in a project wherenational geographic they are dealing with the issue fairly soon, repatriation, for example, in the native community. Whatever your platform is i do not care if it is museums, it this, etc. Do way. We are in desperate need of open discourse which is simply flat on his back at the moment. Whatever we can do to improve that, we should. Dr. Phillips other folks . I am all for reconciliation, but it is a long process and it tends to be personal and the problems we are facing are systemic. Racism being the original sin of this country. It is ais a systemic systemic evil and it goes right down to the root of every institution we encounter and we until 101 wewait reconcile. That forces the people who are suffering the legacy of our white racism and the history of enslavement to continue to bear of that legacy. So, i am all for reparations. And lets not [applause] and we have good models. The jewish material claims against germany is a good model. Whatever it is for the ones who are targeted by this legacy and burdened by this legacy, first and foremost the africanamerican community, but and mexican americans, they need to be part not only part of the discussion. They need to be leading the discussion. They need to be partners to the discussion. And it needs to happen now. It needs to start. I think the two have to go together. You cant just simply wait until everyone feels reconciled or made reconciliation somehow a prerequisite for justice. [applause] any final thoughts is our time runs out here . It is so hard because thats a really huge question. I feel like the generation of students we are teaching now are really driving things because they have taken things into their own hands. They are literally pulling down monuments and statues and demand thing names be taken from demanding that names be taken from buildings. And you know, i am a product of two public southern universitys universities, the university of North Carolina at chapel hill, where just about every building has the name of a slaveholding family. Different universities have different strategies around this. They say, no, leave these statues up. And some of them will do a compromise. Well, we will leave it up, but we will also give you money for new faculty and africanamerican studies or will create new scholarships. Others have said we will remove these statues and put them into a museum. Actuallyof them are that tell alaques different narrative about who the person is. What the right answer is. But i know that these questions are not going to go away. But i know that people are not going to like i did as a student just walk by the building or the statue and suffer in silence. The new generation says, no, you are going to respond. I am going to tear it down, or you are going to give me some money. Either way [laughter] [applause] there is going to be a response. Where are the new whatials going to go and new memory practices do we need todevelop to pay homage illuminate a history that has been silenced . Silenced through a systemic, you . Now iteration erasure i think about the removal and the replacement. What is it being replaced with . Im also thinking about memory this is also where in the absence, once these monuments and memorials are taken down, the process of remembering them in their absence and what kind of work that does. In all have i have been, accepting of monuments as memorials. I see them every day. It does not mean that they do not do fine ones, do not do damage. It just means the violence, the damage they do is something i have come to accept. When i think about their realal, i think about what social justice work is being done . Does that file is the conversation about it . Now that it is gone, we dont have to talk about it anymore . Is it the removal of a manifestation of america beyond race . Not haveke i did anything to say other than to pose these questions because i find it encouraging in a but troubling as hell. I agree with that. Its very complicated. We had something in l. A. Which l. A. Has the largest urban group of native people in the country. Like 50,000 native People Living within los angeles. A columbus statue was taken down recently. And it led to the same set of quite complex questions that you are asking, and im not sure theres a simple answer. Thing, one of these suggestions was they move it to the autry museum of the american west. Over my dead body. I dont want it in my collection either. Seriously, its a complicated question because how do you go about achieving an just removing the iatue, the columbus statue, am not sure is completing an answer because there are a lot of things that are left on redwered by doing unanswe by doing that. There is no history graphic power in removing the statue. Dr. Millin [indiscernible] dr. Ore there is . Withinlin you get there the lost cause movement. That is when the myth was sown. You know . Gone with the wind. It rises and papers over mr. West but i am not as interested in the past as i am dr. Millin you cant get away with out asking why are they there in the first place . And im not saying its a good thing that they are there. Im just saying mr. West all i am saying is its not the complete answer. Dr. Millin i agree. We need amr. West perspective nature. Its not just explaining the hole. Riveting the retrospective, if you well. Dr. Millin that lives today. Theres charlottesville. Mr. West i understand that. We will talk afterward. I lived in clemson and that was one of the things we were doing when i was a , changing thent name of the big main building. Know, theun, you stuff going on in charlottesville. I agree. Take all that shit down. That. E with but theres other stuff. Those things like those other think, the monuments, i they are monuments to other things other than the people whose names are on them, and those things remain. You know . You have housing issues, employment issues, education issues, and all of these things are symbolized by these are monumental columns that are symbolized by these physical monuments. From onenot separate another and i do wonder, when , then hows are gone do we get people to Pay Attention to those other things . Thats not me saying they shouldnt be gone. Im saying we should be working toward those other things as we have the conversations about the statues. It seems like we get really focused. Lets meet at the statue with our tiki torches. That is what those folks do. And then it becomes all about the statue and the ticket torches and not all the things reverberating through the community and that is the thing that gets lost. This is the spectacular thing. True. Dr. Millin there have been hundreds and andhere have been hundreds hundreds of institutions in the United States where people have been murdered, raped, died. There are no statues. There are graves. And theres really very little attention paid to these issues. Kind of rings is back to Syracuse University in the early kind of brings us back to Syracuse University in the early 1970s. There is no museum on disability history. There is effort to get a museum on disability history. Quite friendly, i think it is very important. But i wish the other museums included disability history. [applause] but i think as we have these important discussions about monuments being put up, recognizing people who have done great injustices in the United States, we need to be looking at gravesites that exist throughout the United States and in institutions that have gone nameless, where many people thought it was fine that these people lived and still live. We have Nursing Homes in all of our communities where no one is looking at what is going on in those Nursing Homes. And those are institutions. Communities, our we hear stories about people childrened and having who are comatose and on and on and do not see any outrage in the community. I think it really does compel us in having these discussions to look at what needs to be done. I think about disabilities, but not only. Thats what im here to talk about. But i think it is about looking more broadly at whose voices are not being heard and what responsibility do we have to make sure the voices of the to . Ard are being listened we are talking in some cases about people who will not be able to tell their stories traditionally. Its one reason why violence disabled individuals can be so profound. Some of that work has been done in syracuse by professor Arlene Cantor who has been doing work at beth israel and they have been doing work to help nonverbal people with intellectual disabilities who rateience an extraordinary of violence, how they can be brought up as witnesses against perpetrators. And the stories go on and on. I think personally, this discussion is very important as we talk about issues we were just discussing, but im really trained to figure out how we get the issue of disability, which is so far behind these other discussions, to really be taken seriously in the context of the doing. Erybody is because to me, ultimately, we are talking about 66 Million People in the United States and one billion people in the world. Not effectively supported in their communities. Their voices are not requested to be heard. They, we, need to be part of these discussions in a way that i think is possible in the United States, because we do grapple with some very deep issues. But quite frankly, i do not think we have begun the discussion as earnestly as we need to. Disability studies is something in emerging throughout the country. Syracuse has been doing great work. From my perspective, the work syracuse has been doing at a domestic level, as well as an international level, on these topics needs to be explored more, bringing people together from diverse immunities to look diverseissue more communities to look at this issue more deeply. Callhillips i think that to hear the voices of the unheard and to hear the stories that have been neglected is the perfect way to end this powerful and provocative panel. I want you to join me in thanking this amazing panel. [applause] thank you all, and good night. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] this is American History tv, exploring our nations past every weekend on cspan three. America, 30 years ago, the u. S. Army launched operation just cause, the invasion of panama. The panama deception is a 19 93 Academy Awardwinning independent documentary that takes a look at the invasion and the medias coverage. At 6 00 p. M. On american artifacts, the spot where general George Washington and the Continental Army crossed from pennsylvania to new jersey on christmas night in 1776. We will see the reenactment and talk to several participants. At six 30 pm, civil rights pioneers talk about rosa parks and her long history of civil rights activism. At 8 00 p. M. Eastern on the presidency, diversity of texas at austin professor jeremy seri and Purdue University Catherine Burnell tug about impeachment including the current proceedings against president trump. That is what is coming up here on American History tv. The shooting began at midnight. Everyone ran towards their home. Hollering. Ted children began crying. It was a complex operation. 27 targets were hit simultaneously. Someone in my family got shot. I do not know nothing