Transcripts For CSPAN3 Debating Removing Monuments 20240712

Monuments discussing how people can make decisions about based removing or contextualizing them based on Historical Information , and public sentiment. The American Historical Association hosted and recorded this event. James good afternoon. I say that with some trepidation because our audience is national and international. Morning to some of you and good to some of you. I am jim grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. This is an initial experiment in something that we are likely to call history behind the headlines. We consider Historical Context essential to decisionmaking in public culture and especially in all aspects of public policy. Aha is a membership supported organization. Anybody who watches Public Television or listens to public radio is ready for this. If you would like to become a member and support this type of content, membership links are located in the chat on zoom and in the comments on facebook live. I want to give and especially grateful thankful to History Channel for their generous sponsorship of this webinar. Lets get started. It is an honor to introduce todays panelists, Annette Gordon reed. Professor of law and history at harvard university. And david blight, professor of history and director of the ablution of slavery at yell universe these three. Professors are Pulitzer Prize winning historians and they have won lots of other prizes as well. They have written and spoken frequently and insightfully on issues relating to monuments, history, memory and our nations continued failure to fully confront the implications of its own history. Professor gordon reeds most recent book, coauthored with peter own of is most blessed of , the patriarchs, Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination. Professor blights is Frederick Douglass, prophet of freedom. Both of these colors are notable for the way we remember and honor those people as complicated. Whether we are thinking about Frederick Douglass or Thomas Jefferson. We are going to have roughly 35 minutes of moderated discussion, after which there will be questions from the audience. I apologize in advance that given the number of people, we will not be able to address most of the questions that we get. We will do our best. Lets get started. Lets start with the meaning and implications of removing confederate statues from our public landscape. I know both of you, david and annette have discussed this frequently and in all sorts of venues. This is not a new issue but something is clearly different this time around. So lets start with what is different and why. And, annette, you have referred to what is happening now as a quote great awakening quote. Gooding up is always a place to start. So what we start there . Annette i think it is different this time and i do not know a precise reason but i have theories. Obviously, the killing of george floyd provoked a lot of soulsearching on the part of people. Video, theof the stark nature of the video. Peoplescaptured attentions in a way that has not happened before. It could be because we are in the middle of a pandemic and people have been cloistered and up foren told to come the basis of the Community People were doing something that made them think about other people that they had to think about other people. I have a feeling that may have contributed to it as well. The fact that people could focus on it, and the fact that we are engaged in a typically not something americans do or have not done recently in a communal fashion looking at this, people said something had to happen. It struck people viscerally in a way that the killing of other people have not. People were concerned about iayvon martin and so forth think the social circumstances in which this happened the , context is different. That made a difference in the way that people responded to it. Jim what is interesting we have , the statues being toppled, we have the being toppled in the context that you just talked about. These statues are part of a story and they tell a story. One thing i am curious about, and maybe david you can speak to this. Is this the death of a lost cause . David probably not. But we can hope. [laughter] i try to see this moment now, no one should predict anything right now in this climate, especially us historians. But it really is the culmination of a 150 year counterattack on the lost cause ideology. The lost cause ideology takes form right after the war especially in the 1870s and , 1880s. The Confederate Monuments came out of a later time than that. During the jim crow era. When the united daughters of the confederacy and the united confederates took hold of that process. It was an ideology, racial ideology, and ideology of white supremacy. And it became not a story of loss at all, it became a victory narrative. The victory was over reconstruction. But the attack back on the lost cause led by Frederick Douglass and many others is 150 years old. As early as 1871. Right after, douglass wrote a piece in which he said he was sick and tired of the nauseating flatterys of robert e lee. He wondered why the person who killed the most Union Soldiers and most americans in the dividing country was getting all the accolades. This is an old set of argument however, we obviously now have a different politics. If it had not been for the massive protests in the streets this past month, massive numbers of people in the streets, i doubt Police Forces of various kinds would have allowed people to tear down monuments as they have. Police have not always but by and large have been letting this happen. So there is a politics in the streets that is bringing this about. I would just add right now, i dont have any data on this but trumpism, lets be honest, the nature of our politics for the last three or four years is out there in the streets. Is everybody demanding a Confederate Monument be removed . Or attacking a Confederate Monument . Or even other kinds of monuments . Are they always thinking about trump . Probably not. But trump has developed a toxic kind of politics that is now bringing out all kinds of resistance that we had not earlier seen. It is directly related to Police Killings but also to a bursting out of rage against trumpism. I just hope this can be harnessed somehow into something. Jim that was my next question the harnessing. , you talked about how the politics affects what happens in the streets. Right before that, annette framed the politics and what is happening in the streets, it has a larger context that ties together. I am curious if both of you can talk about how what happens in the streets affects the policy. The politics we have a bunch. We have a bunch of monuments. Annette it is an interesting question. We had this moment where we had huge numbers of people finally looking toward the question of policing in america. Particularly, the policing of the africanamerican community. And voicing support for black lives matter. And then the focus shifts to , statues. And for me, there is a little bit of frustration. It is not that i think monuments and statues are not important but it is way more important to get the issue of police reform, voter suppression, those kinds of things on the front burner. We have fallen into battles about culture, the culture war things that deflects from real economic, social kinds of issues. That brought out to begin with. People are being killed. I mean africanamericans feel , threatened by police. This is something that has been going on for decades. And everybody can tell you a story. Many black people can tell you a story about people they knew or they know of who went into police stations and did not come out. People who had encounters with police that ended in death for minor things. Those kinds of issues have brought people out. I want to talk about monuments and i think theyre important but i dont want us to get away from those kinds of central issues. What is going to happen november 3 with the election . Voter suppression, all those kinds of things, those are things i would like to be focused on. There is a way that we have this moment. Lose it,oment, we can lose the momentum on that if we focus too much on the wrong things. As import as they are. David that is a powerful argument, annette. And one of the ways it manifests is it is easier to oppose a monument that it is to figure out a vast new social policy. We are historians, we like evidence and all of that but one of the things i wish people would do now, is actually go and read the policing injustice act. This is the house bill. There is a lot in there. It is not everything but it is a new kind of civil rights act. It even has a federal antilynching law in it. There is a lot in that act. That is how this has to get andthat is how this has to get converted, harness into a new politics. Into a new politics. A new civil rights regime of some sort. What is interesting about the monuments is we have a Tipping Point here. We see this throughout history, a point where people who would have really defended Confederate Monuments a year ago cant quite do it now. Even republicans in the senate are saying maybe those military bases, maybe that wasnt such a good idea after all. So there is a Tipping Point here that we were not at even a year ago. Annette absolutely. David we werent there in the summer of 2015 after the charleston massacre. Back then it was about taking the Confederate Flag down and a few monuments were under duress. [laughter] now it is everything confederate. Annette everybody. David every moment like every , Tipping Point has excess. It is going to have excesses. Everyone is moaning right now, how could you take down a grant statue . He was bequeathed one slave and he freed that slave and so on, he saved the union, he was the general. Ok, right. There are going to be excesses and we have to stand up and say toppling that one, that is wrong. Annette yeah, thats wrong. David topple that one . Ok. I am with you. Annette you make choices every single day. We do that all the time. The point is how that takes place. The kind of discussion that takes place. Some will stay and some will go. All three of us have talked about this. There is not an inevitable slippery slope. This is a ridiculous argument. Annette, you have written prizewinning work about jefferson, founders in general, this is what is constantly brought up by the people who say this is inevitably going to all , the icons will be smashed. What are the criteria you can imagine, using, thinking about, when you say there is judgment here. Annette the criteria, there is lots of them. The one i am always giving, the distinguishing the confederates from the founders is that the founders created the country and the confederates tried to destroy the country. I think that is a pretty bright bright line rule. When you lose the war you dont usually get to continue glorifying yourself by putting up statues of yourself in Public Places mocking the people who defeated you. The confederates were vanquished. There is no reason for them to be there. The confederacy was a branch. If you think of it was a branch a country as a river that went , off to nowhere. There was nothing they can contribute to us that we cant get from some other place. It is not what we stood for. Their values are not what we stand for. African chattel slavery, the inferiority, they specifically repudiated jefferson and that declaration of Alexander Stephens did. So we can do without them. The founders are different. They founded the country. It is hard for me to think of living in a place without telling the story or actually commemorating, not celebrating. You think of one a statue is about. Wase, it is not about this the greatest person who ever lived or whatever. It is about recognizing that this person did something important. And i think founding the United States, there is a lot of people that dont think i was a good idea but if you think it was a good idea that these people did that and you see them, the important thing is to see them in all of their complexity. To see them in all aspects. You have jefferson, soyou have jefferson, you have washington. You mention that they bought and sold people. You mention those kinds of things, the good with the bad. We are to my mind stuck with , these people who created the country, the confederacy, that is not a story that continues in any kind of way. We have made use of the things that jefferson put forth. In particular, ideals. Whether it is some religious belief in your heart, those ideas have been useful. So that if i would make. Understand people say he owned slaves and therefore they should go. But that is like you cant redo , your parentage. He cant stop and pretend those people did not exist and that they didnt do something. That week, most of us think was a positive thing. You have to tell the whole story about them. It creates a much more mature when you tell the whole storyit creates a much more mature attitude about history and historical figures. They are not about our best friends and the people we want to hang out with or whatever. These are the people that did things that we have to know about. In order to understand who we are. And take the best of what they to do things differently, gave, reject the things that were bad. I think it is hiding your head in the sand if we pretend they did not do anything positive. Or that the negative things automatically outweigh them. We have to talk about both of them. David annette, can i ask you a question of a sort . Say it isll i would so true, to focus. If we can help the public focus their minds on what the confederacy was. It was an insurgent revolution to create a slaveholders republic. I would just say to people, we dont want to name too many books here but you should read stephanie mccurrys most recent book called confederate reckoning. If you have any kind of progressive view of the United States and if you actually believe in our pluralism and in equality, you cant read that book without a tremendous sigh of relief. Death confederacy did not win. Reliefemendous sigh of that the confederacy did not win. [laughter] it is really important to understand that. Annette you let them off the hook. They wouldthem, and like nothing more than to be lumped in with washington and jefferson. No. We are just like those people. No. David they were the vessel of the American Revolution. Resisting, resisting centralized authority and all of that. That is a central tenor of the lost cause. Annette they never quote stevens. They dont look at the documents that framed that government and society. They were slave owners and they were racist and they may have been like jefferson and washington in that sense. But the documents that they set for their nation dont comport with anything that we say we believe. We can take the constitution, transformed by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment. We can take the declaration and make any society. We cannot take the cornerstone speech or the constitution or the secession and we cant do anything with that and continue in peace in this country. David or jefferson daviss 1200 page memoir. Annette yes. David on every page it defends the existence of slavery because africans were savages. Here is the quick question, we are living a moment where there are a lot of people. I will just name it, the 1619 project suggested that americans ought to reconsider what the founding is. That the founding is really when slaves arrived and not the creation of the republic out of the American Revolution and the writing of the u. S. Constitution. Maybe that set of assumptions was out there anyway. I am not just blaming the 1619 project. There are a lot of people who said the founding was all racist anyway. It was all in the service of slavery. Why not get rid of jefferson . So i dont believe that necessarily. Annette i know, it is hard to respond to that. In the first place if you want , to pick something other than 1776 as the founding, you might pick the british founding. 1607. You might pick when englishmen rolled up on american cotton and said we discovered it. And began to push Indigenous People off the land. So that is a point, certainly 1619 is a point. But that was part of the english empire. That is part of the english empire. There is no United States of america at that point. We cannot treat it as though those moments put forth some inevitable outcome that we end up at 1776 and me sitting in my apartment right now. Anything could have happened at that point. I think the founding was racist. Certainly the constitution protected slavery. And sean could speak to that. David i think is watching. Annette at protected slavery. But it also unleashed an antislavery movement. The revolution did. And that was not inevitable either. What happened from that was not inevitable but it did. The fact is, africanamerican people other people said wait a , minute, this applies to us as well. And that has been the basis for a struggle up until now. That is real. It is as real as the founding is many things. It is not any one thing. It is what you make of it. And people may Different Things of it. Jim so you are focusing on the first, east coast. Which we do. And on the english. What happens if you shift the angle of vision . There are issues over the statues in the capital capitol. It is easy to identify 11 or 12. There is also father sera. He never donned a confederate uniform. He never took up arms against anything called the United States of america. He did some putting bad things to people that are the ancestors of americans. What do we do when we think about father cera in the capitol . Annette david, do you want to try that one . David we are going to have to come up with some kind of principles that we apply to these things. Every case is not identical. We seem to have a developing set of principles about the confederacy. The insurgency to destroy the United States. Treason if you like. What are they doing inside the u. S. Capitol . It would be like putting up a statue in the u. S. Capitol of the general who commanded the burning of washington in the war of 1812. And what happened to native americans in california we need another set , of principles about how much that offends americans broadly. Not just native americans. How much that is inconsistent with values and our mission as a Pluralistic Society today. I think we may need some kind of commission within the congress, and maybe not just congressman. Hopefully not just congressman. Jim the American Historical Association needs to be part of that commission. David you might get 500 i agree with you and you might get 500 volunteers off this webinar. Who knows . Annette ya. David to come up with some but to come up with some criteria, otherwise this will be willynilly. Even if somebody passed a rule that you revisit these things every 25 years, that is considered. Jim that was my suggestion. It was only my suggestion. David you do have a lot of power, jim. Annette you can make it happen. David you cant do this by popular referendum. Look what mississippi just found out, they had referendum on the state flag years ago and they decided to keep it by 75 . Right now, the politics are such that they just got rid of it. Annette yep, got rid of it. Which people thought would never happen. David a lot of things are happening right now that people thought would never happen. Nobody in my field has studied this for most of their lives ever thought lee would be gone from monument avenue in richmond or a bunch of other things. But it will be gone. You are right, father did not wear a confederate uniform. Did not take up arms against the United States but he slaughtered. Annette what about the the Union Soldiers that turned west . After finishing off the confederate elders . Soldiers. Rate i was talking to somebody yesterday. A lot of my response to this, they be yours as well is that we are historians and we deal in the past all the time. We know all the terrible things that people do. They have always done it in the past and present and will do in the future. David it is a given david it is a given. You cant purify your history. You cant purify the past. Jim i think the point you have just made, annette is so , crucial. I saw it happen last week. In my own neighborhood. I live four blocks from the emancipation memorial. Mens memorial. One of the issues there is the difference between how we as historians think about that statue and how people as parents think about that statue. What does it mean to be a parent and walk past that statue . With your nineyearold, how do you explain it . I am curious. What is happening in that park is exactly what you just described, people discussing it has become a way in which there is civic culture happening. Which is how it should be. What do you say to people all of these monuments around the country are in a sense, role models. What you say, to high school teachers, to parents . How do you do to explain all of these controversies to young people . Annette david, you have written about this. David i thought he was asking you. It does not matter. I am happy to take that on. I have been all too public about this, i guess. I personally hope that the freed mens memorial it goes by different names, sometimes the emancipation group. I hope that statue survives. I agree and have said so that the imagery today is certainly racist. The kneeling slave, the very christian, godlike lincoln out reached, giving emancipation. And of course forever, people , can debate whether the kneeling slave is rising, breaking his own chains and all of that, i dont even want to get into that. That has always been debated. One of the important things butone of the important things about that particular monument is first of all it is about , black freedom. It was created by black people in large part. 20,000 raised by africanamericans. The first five dollars as people are happily learning, by charlotte scott, former slave from missouri, who for the rest of her life was known as the one who created the freedmen memorial. It was unveiled in a classic d. C. Parade with bands and fraternal orders and all of the rest. The master of ceremonies was don mercer langston. Douglass was order of the day. Amy bishop gave the opening. But i think that ground, in the rarest of cases are monuments rendered important by speech at its unveiling. Most unveiling speeches are either forgettable or repulsive. In this case, douglass gave the second greatest speech of his life, the first being the fourth of july speech. But his freed mens memorial speech was a masterpiece. In the first part, he took on lincoln directly, honestly. He said Abraham Lincoln was a white mans president , he was a white man and not a black persons president. That he was not our president. Then came the famous line, might white fellow citizens, you are Abraham Lincolns children, i and my people are his stepchildren. An incredible metaphor, stepchildren by adopting. By necessity and circumstance. In the middle of the speech comes a pause and he shifts, not to celebrating lincoln, but he says with a refrain three times, under his rule and in due time, under his rule and in due time, lincoln found the method, the way to create the policies by which we became free. It honors lincolns essential political pragmatism, and at the same time douglass was dead honest about what most black folks have thought about lincoln and the first year and a half or more of the war, including douglass. And the last point, that speech is really directed at the audience in the first two rows because he had president grant, members of the cabinet, justices of the supreme court, members of the house and senate, the entire government sat in front of him and douglass is telling them, you are losing reconstruction. Reconstruction is falling apart. Annette david, let me. David if you dont act now, you will never have another chance i am sorry, i went on too long about the speech, but i know the imagery of the monument is offensive to many people but not all people. And i am now in dialogue on email more than i want to be with people who live in the neighborhood, africanamericans who live in the neighborhood, who have different opinions about this. It may be breaking down generationally i dont know. , it is interesting how people but respond to that particular image, such a 19thcentury image. Annette for me, this is what i disagree with david on. I think the statue should probably i know museums hate it when we say it should be put in the museum. David where will they put it . Annette right. I think the museum of African American history would be a wonderful place to put it with douglasss speech and everything in context. The difficulty i am impressed by , the fact that this was black people who raise money for this but they did not get the opportunity to say what the image should be. David thats true. Annette its not surprising that the image would be a white savior. David and the kneeling. Annette i am not one of those people who say Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head and martyred for coming up with that policy. And having people think that he was crating black citizenship. He sacrificed all and i am not going to put lincoln in a corner. But africanamerican men bled and died for freedom. As soldiers africanamerican , men, women and children ran away, left plantations, and ended the plantation system. Black people brought about their freedom and contributed to bring about their freedom. The idea that they would raise money, give it to whites, and the answer would be a white savior motive. You said this is a 19thcentury thing, it is not a 19thcentury thing. If you want to talk about race, we can talk about today the image of the white savior in films and movies, everywhere, this notion that you cant have blacks and whites existing equally. Not a statue with a person standing next to him. Maybe not shaking hands, that might have been too much, but maybe a gesture toward it for their joint effort to end slavery. I said before about the confederacy, things going off into nowhere. The notion of the white savior exists today. And people who are whites and who see themselves as progressive and allies still have an easier time dealing with us when you are in a position of superiority. That is a comfort level. Even if you are doing something good, it has to be whites here, blacks down here. And so i think, seeing that image, it is a similar feeling i fell going along Central Park West with Teddy Roosevelt with , the native american and the black person on either side. I dont have a problem if you could just get a welder to separate those two people off and just had tr on the horse, that will be fine, but it sends a message. If that message were something, the emancipation message, if that were something that had gone. If the notion of the white savior did not exist today, i might have a different view. But the 19thcentury is still present in the 21st century. And so i would not want my kids , walking past that. I feel the same way taking my kids into the museum of natural history, that statue, what is that saying about who you are and who you have been . David let me just add my proposal is to build an additional emancipation monument next to the freedmans memorial. It was actually douglasss suggestion, which we only recently confirmed. Recently verified by intrepid research by sand and white who found clippings in the past week to my knowledge of douglass five days after that unveiling. Republic, the newspaper in washington, d. C. Douglass said he did not like , the kneeling slave, he wanted a standing strong image of emancipation. He himself suggested an additional monument should be put there. I guess my point of view on this is why not have both . What incredible teaching one can do how many people are going to really see this in a museum . You are right, if its in a good space in the africanamerican museum, it may indeed be seen by a lot of people because a lot of people go there. Annette a lot of people. David have that juxtaposition why not that shows then and now, past and present and celebrate douglasss speech as well, and why not have a douglass statue . Jim would that be your solution . Lets extend this problem. I started out by saying the wonderful work about what you do is the two of you present historical figures as complicated people. Annette yes. Jim here are two complicated people, general sheridan and general howard. Both heroic figures in terms of their role in the civil war, although somewhat less heroic in terms of their role in killing and removing native americans after the civil war. David, your solution would be anytime we have a statue of sheridan, we put another statue next to it that somehow commemorates or helps us to remember the other things how do we deal with complexity people lived 5, 6, 7 decades . How do you deal with the complexities of their lives . Annette it is tough. David i am not sure sheridan merits that kind of worry and concern. [laughter] there are sheridan monuments clearly. There is a sheridans square in d. C. And one in new york as well. Annette there is one in new york. David down in the village, isnt it . So yeah, and most people dont know who Oliver Otis Howard was in less they know howard university, i suppose. But you know, yeah, this is a message, complicated, and it , always will be. This is a mess, complicated, and it always will be. But i think people need a reminder that you just cant purify the past and you cannot purify your memory. You have to make choices about these things. Some monuments, some memorials are worthy of keeping not just because of what we can learn from them, but because of the circumstances of their creation, and some are not. Annette hmm mm. David and we will have to come up you know, not that yale is a paragon for this, but when yale had considered getting rid of the name of John C Calhoun on the president ial college here, the administration created a committee and i was on the committee to try and come up with principles that you could actually follow by which a university, at least, we are not talking about a nation or company or a city, but a university might rename something. And we did. We did a lot of research. We called in gordon reed as an advisor among others. Annette yeah. David we came up with these principles by which the administration could put calhoun through those principles. And then the end, they said we , are going to remove that one. We have to think on these terms, whether it is monuments in congress, on a Public Square or elsewhere, school names. Annette yeah. David rather than willynilly, the politics right now that this has to come down, do we wait for the new politics for that one to come down . Or do we have some principles . Otherwise the mob will take the monuments away and the mob can get away with it. Annette yes. In any event, the notion of taking it down without deliberation from other people is problematic. That is the law professor in me saying that is problematic. David we believe in deliberation and knowledge. Annette i believe in that, they will take down statues of people i admire. That is not the way to go. That is not something i would encourage. Jim doc owes what to what you earlier said, annette, back to the value of civic culture. And maybe one value of monuments is if we say not only principles but process. Maybe every 25 years, we will look at all of the names in some kind of civic process. Annette and i said that is very jeffersonian, the earth belongs to the living, every generation of people should sit down and there should be a discussion about do we agree with this and is this what we wish for . It will not necessarily solve all of the problems but we have to have discussions about this. And they have, i think, a larger benefit, because we see where we agree and disagree, what our values are and our points of commonality. But not talking about it, having a large conversation about this i think would be a mistake. David and we should listen to young people, lets face it. That may seem like a cliche. We should listen to young people right now, what they think about all of this. Especially when they get themselves informed. [laughter] jim i am looking at the questions, we have a lot of questions, we cannot get to all of them. [laughter] i will pull some out randomly. Not quite randomly. Someone has suggested that maybe, especially given that we are supposedly a nation with democratic values, maybe we should not build memorials of people. Maybe our memorials should not have people. Annette i was just about to say, maybe monuments are a thing of the past. We dont seem to do them very well. Very few new statues i look at am i impressed. Some people have done them well. Maybe that could be it. David emancipation is not a person, it is an epic historical process. The pivot of American History. It is the greatest result of the civil war, but not a Single Person by any means. Annette yes. Are things like industrialization. Annette but it still does not answer the question about what do we do with the ones already there . Because there are people, members of our community who admire and like the statues of people, who find something meaningful about it. So that maybe not the question suggested maybe we should not be building more, but it doesnt answer the question of what do we do with the ones that are there, how do we decide who stays and who goes . David that is a fascinating thing to ask and i taught a andh of courses on memory memorials. When i asked the question what memorial have you ever visited that really works for you . What memorial have you ever visited that made you weep . What monument did you ever visit that offended you . You know, we all will have perhaps different answers to that. Some people are appalled by triumphal 19thcentury statues. Equestrian statues. They fit their age. Some people love modernist visions of something complicated and some dont. What monument moves you, what monument doesnt . It is kind of worth asking people. The vietnam memorial, everyone not everyone, but most people today, there is a consensus about that design that has been adopted, almost, as a place of healing, a place of mourning and commemoration. Annette and it was controversial, people hated it at first. David the Reagan Administration did not want to put it. Annette they wanted something triumphal. David exactly. Annette in fact she created something deeply moving and personal to people of all types. David and it has been modeled elsewhere as a way of memorializing, at least, after a at least, death in war. But it is worth asking as commissions get created, what memorials actually work for people and what dont . One of the things i have already recommended publicly i dont know if it will happen but the Biden Campaign should get ahead of this issue. If the confederate landscape is coming down and the loss causes in deep trouble. Im not saying we will eliminate it ideologically but if the lost , cause is coming down, what might replace it . Why doesnt the Biden Administration bring together a bunch of people and think about that . In email yesterday, saying we need to advocate a memorial to we need to advocate a marble new deal. I dont know if that would work, right now but why not . , get ahead of the issue and say there will be a National Project that will also become local. Most monuments are local if you think about it. They were created by somebody in that town. So to rethink the idea of memorialization, especially about subjects like emancipation. Annette im still waiting for infrastructure week. That is just me. [laughter] david i know. Jim the monuments, when you said there local they are local , chronologically as well as spatially. When you say what are the monuments that make you cry . What are the monuments that inspire you . Doesnt that change over time . David yes. And one has to usually know the story the monument represents. Jim but most people dont. Right . Most people, you walk past a monument and your kid says who is that . Annette you dont know who they are. Jim yah. David or if you say phil sheridan, what are you gonna say . Jim what do we do with that as historians knowing peoples values change over time, and to go back in some ways to where annette started, that social and political needs and conflicts in the country change over time. David my favorite example of that question is the shaw memorial in boston. The shot 54th massachusetts memorial. That is augustus st. Gaudens masterpiece. That is in a very public place, a bus stop. Monument tells a narrative, a story. It tells a deeply moving story of what black men had to do. They had to go die in a war to be acknowledged as men. Furthermore, it is an artistic masterpiece. It is a bas relief like no american artist has ever created. Once people learned that story, that monument moves them still. Not just because there was a movie made about the 54th, but they have to know the story and what it represents. And it is about suffering, about blood sacrifice in a war. The ways that can grab our emotions that other kinds of stories dont. But monuments do need to tell a story if they are really good. Annette yes. And the ones that we are upset about are the ones that tell stories in another way. Tell stories that are painful in another way. It is not a story i talked about the values we have, the value of suffering and redemption in those kinds of things versus people like versus the white mans burden or manifest destiny. White supremacy. Jim one of our questioners has asked what the two of you think about, instead of individual monuments, and maybe this goes back to seans marble new deal, commissioning artists to create monuments exactly to what you just described. Annette, monuments to values, monuments to emotions, to the way we feel about our environment. Would that be in a sense i hate to call it a solution. Robin kelly has suggested all our colleaguerobin kelly has suggested all military monuments be wiped off of the earth and that would be the statement of values we would like to see. But these monuments do state our values, so should we be more explicit and say monuments are about values instead of people . Annette the problem is that the word monuments to values. Because the people supposedly exhibited values that the people admired. There is a statue of jefferson in front of the Journalism School at columbia. Its not about him being a slave owner, it is not even about the declaration. But it is about the notion of freedom of the press. , that is what the people that put the statues up, typically they are not putting people up for no reason. It is somebody they think embodies a particular value. I think that is always what or tr, courage, when he is by himself, but that monument was the value of white supremacy. Clearly. We should do that but that is what has been going on all along. The question is some of those values that are serving us very well. David i love that question. I have Great Respect for robin kelly but i want to be careful with that one. I would hate to tell surviving world war ii veterans that there should not be a memorial to them at dday, or the shaw memorial, i am sorry. It is military but by god annette those people fought for something that we value. They sacrificed in ways we, are not and do not have to thankfully sacrifice. I would not want them to be forgotten. David and a key point is historically, monument making came out of the romantic age. At least the monuments we know of. Where the individual hero is always exalted. In the 19th century, the measure of every sculptor is whether they could do an equestrian. That is how st. Gaudens started with the shaw memorial and ended up putting the soldiers there. This exultation of the romantic, individual hero why not a National Monument to the natural rights tradition . The American Republic was born out of this thing jefferson called natural rights. Lets inspire some really creative artists. To go after that. How about popular sovereignty . How about a monument to equality . Or we could say every civilrights monument is a monument to equality and it is. But maybe we do need to inspire artists now, or maybe they already are inspired, maybe they need to tell us. Annette moving away from people as the embodiment of these things. Because thats why you dont name things after people who are still alive, you dont know what they are going to do. [laughter] now we know with historical figures, we know what they did. I we want to say oh, lets get rid of that. David as jim said, these people lived 60, 70 years as a human being and they might have done awful things as well as the one thing heroic we are recognizing them for. Annette exactly. I was talking to some of the to somebody the other day, if you gave historians a week, we could rip a person. For anybody. Persons had to be result has a problem somewhere. Annette and let me say, i dont want to minimize slavery as a thing that people did, but the point is, as i was suggesting before, and this is looking at it the way we look at things historically. It is very hard to have a person, anybody, who will not have something that people will find revolting about them. And i think thats really important. We have a lot of questions relating to education and young people, and it does seem to me, what you are saying is one of the values of learning history is that humility, right . This recognition that very few people go through their lives purely heroic. Some go through purely villainous, we know some of those people. David unredeemable. James unredeemable. But thats to be an aspect of humility that kids learn by learning history. And having a relationship to people that is proper. Think, you can admire people for what they did. But this notion, its a must like hollywood, how the dream factory made them. Is not enough to watch some of the screen and have to know all about their private lives. And identify with them, so much so that people had to lie about who they were to keep this thing going. You have a personal relationship with the people you actually know in your life, and a stake in those people. A healthy skepticism. Maybe changing how you view, what your connection is to the person. Just look at what they did, that not all into them in the sense that this is me and i identify with them and i am pretending i am them or whatever. A healthy skepticism about everybody. Detachment is the word i am looking for here, about the figures on the public stage who did something important. They are not gods and you should not measure yourself as them or by them. David also with school naming. Jim yes. Are you suggesting that when schools have names, usually the students at some point have to learn why the school was named after that person and it becomes an assent a kind of role model you are describing, annette. Should we be suggesting that every curriculum should also consider including a critique of the person for whom the school is named, no matter who it is . David well, almost you have to, dont you . There was a place in texas i think decided, i am forgetting where it was, decided to change all of the stonewall jacksons and Robert E Lees to names from nature. The only safe way to go. Birds, nature. [laughter] street names, the same thing. I was just going to say really quickly, after the charleston quickly, after the charleston mascara 2015 and all of our panels about memories and monuments and so on, i decided i would go to every audience with three principles. One principle, you had have a deliberative process. The second was you had to learn some more history first, always hard. The third was learn some humility from the process. That sounded so schoolmarmish and scolding it did not always work but it still seems to me it is important. If we are not deliberative about this and dont learn the history behind how this monument got here and we dont gain a little humility about human nature, the exercise might be futile. Annette i think thats right. These are people. David humility is not in vogue, though. Jim it is time to go and you are busy and i am ok in ending on the relationship between humility and human nature as an argument for why everyone should study history and why history should remain central in the curriculum, which is important to remind people right now. Thank you very much and we will be back with everybody another time. Inside a Different College classroom and share topics ranging from the revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thank you for your patient. Patience. Watch professors transfer to jean to engage transfer teaching to a digital environment. Andeagan met him halfway encouraged him. Madison originally called it freedom of the use of the press and it is the freedom to print and publish. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan3, every saturday. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. On the presidency, two programs from the Franklin D Roosevelt Library Series designed to keep public keep connected with the public. The direct is of the president ial libraries talk about the campaign for the white house in the midst of the Great Depression and the transition that followed