Talk but it is unique in that this is not just a conversation response to recent events, both the killing of unarmed black citizens by mostly White Police Officers or expolice officers, as well as the protests across the country and around the world that have called for systemic change and a reckoning for the monuments memorials and flakes of White Supremacy, many of which relate to the war era what makes our conversation different is we have already had a. Five years ago. I want you to think back to where you were in the some of 2015. Us yournd edna you gave time back then and you spoke in the wake of a flutter at flag intake down at the stake at house a Confederate Flag being taken down at a steakhouse in north carolina. At a state house in north carolina. One of the things you said in 2015 was that you were encouraged by the change in the flag coming down etc. , but you i i think this movement but i am afraid it is not parliament not permanent. Im afraid people thought it was the right thing to do because the shooting was so horrific, but people will forget and go back to where we were. It is the underlying issue. So, i would like to start by asking you, what has been permanent, what has changed in those five years . And have we made any progress on these underlying issues . Changed,hink a lot has and a lot has remained the same as well. What has changed is that African Americans people who are very much concerned about the conditions of people of color and poor people in general have come together to try to make think isn a way that i going to be difficult for anyone to sort of intervene and stop the momentum. But things have gotten much worse as well. I was concerned at the time that there would be a backlash, because there were certain changes moving in the right direction and, certainly, we have experienced that backlash. The last five years have been very difficult, especially for people of color and for folk who are attempting to help turn us in another direction, in the right direction, i feel. But i think i am encouraged this time as well, because we know that the last time changes occurred because of the shooting in charleston. Things are changing very quickly this time, because of a similar kind of violence, but i think it has been the response to it has been sustained for a much longer time than i had anticipated. And i was looking the other day people an image of the who are out demonstrating, who are protesting what has happened in this country, what continues to happen. And i was struck by the fact of how diverse the group was. I am in courage that, but again, as i was five years ago i am encouraged by that, but as i was five years ago i am a bit concerned that it is the flavor of the moment. That people have been galvanized because they saw the death of a man on camera. Many people have died since 2015, and did not have this kind of outpouring. There was a bit of it, but to actually see someone lose his life on camera i think is what has made the difference. I dont know that that is going to be enough to sustain this momentum. I hope it does. I hope this is real change, but i am not sure that that is what we are going to see within the next two or three years. Host thanks. Vernon, i would like to hear your take on that, and you also brought up the concern about a backlash last time, both in this country but also, you know, given what you were seeing on the campus where you teach as well. Vernon well, actually, i am very hopeful, and perhaps even more hopeful than last time. You might remember that i argued of flagsthe coming down was not just a massacre, as horrible as that ,as, because your legislature which had to vote on this with 3, i forget act, 2 which kind of majority, had been the same one, and all those things they occurred before i think what made the difference and why was worried it may not last is that the families of the people who had been massacred actually spoke about grace and forgiveness. And ironically, i think that really resonated across a culture of religions as one of the few things that blacks and whites really shared in many ways, though they use it differently in the south. So, what i think now i see is exactly what edna said, and that is people saw george floyd die. It reminded me of the Civil Rights Movement. I actually think this is different than the charleston massacre, which sort of began it and we saw charlottesville and other things along the way, but i really think like with Civil Rights Movement, this could be a revolutionary moment in a revolutionary time. Been part of it is something that has been going on since i went to graduate school before most of you were born. And that is that we are getting our history better. And places like the Lincoln Cottage are conveying that history better. People have been misled in extraordinary ways in their interpretation of history. And we now have close to release 10 or 20 years close to at least of 10 or 20 years of Public High School teachers and these Public High School teachers are doing gods work, bless them, that they have taught history about not just slavery but potentially reconstruction, this interracial democracy, being much more the nruth of what had happened tha what people have been told. ,hat is, white southerners former confederates, or children of former confederates and others, wrote a history that was not truthful, but it became the history. It was accepted. Klansmen part of the and birth of a nation birth of a nation. As Woodrow Wilson said through gone with the wind. And that was generation after generation. And now we are beginning, from the rewriting of history, which is not actually rewriting or revising it, but the correcting of the story, looking at what the evidence is an telling it. I am more hopeful and actually think this, like the Civil Rights Movement, is a special time. I am not quite going to compare with the five years ago. That was a massacre. But this is a time, i think, of change. It started then, but i think we really know are beginning to put it all together in a way that we can understand how we got to where we are. Ent it is not just slavery ded racism. Act in 19oting rights 65, the great john lewis has just passed on, and think about this. John lewis would not have been allowed to vote. He could not go to troy university. I mean, this was 1965. I like to tell people, i talk about the 14 generations, figuring 25 years as a generation. We have had told generations, 12 generations 12 generations of laws. Privilege lawws osrd and two generations of not. Some of that is coming together in a very excitingly. Thinkgs things things are going to happen. We will have backlash. Edna is right. Georgeia helps publicize floyd but there is a media inire that skews things ways, and if you are only looking at that one media outlet , you are getting a very different story. You cannot even make up your own mind without having the facts presented to. To you. But the media works in other ways, too. We will have to see, but i am more hopeful than i have ever been. Host thats great. That is good perspective. I would like to pickup on something that you just talked about, vernon that also came up in your comments edna. Theit is this talking about dialogue that we can and need to have, but also how our perspective can change, and then you also mentioned, vernon, this idea of, you know, the history that has been taught for years, and years ago, we all talked about how the north was likewise complicit. So, one of the common refrain to hear when people called a takedown monuments or memorials or rename things is that doing that is the racing history erasing history or that attempts to maybe to tell a more complete story that might contradict that version, that that is revisionist history. As highly respected historians, how would you respond to that . Thats me. Ok. Removingt think that a symbol is the racing history. Is the racing history. Ing history youve been a museum. And if they are too large for a museum, you create a practice for them. , you create up just for them. Like that exist in this country or elsewhere. It gives us all the opportunity to look at the history of the symbols in a different way. If you have a monument on the sidewalk or on public property, people are not going to stop to read what might be on this thing. They are going to pass it, and they are going to soon, this is a monument to a great person. They are not going to take the time to find out what this person did that he would be celebrated in this way. But if you take it down, you put it someplace where you can the complete history of this, that is very different. But i dont believe in destroying. I was taken aback recently when i learned that there was this attempt in washington to remove the freedom is the Freedom Memorial from lincoln park. I thought that was very ill advised. That is an understatement. People need to understand first the history of that monument. It was built by formerly enslaved peoples, many of them veterans who had fought for their freedom and for the freedom of their people. They paid for that monument. Aat is a monument does monument represent black people the way i would like to see it . It is not. Did the people who paid for have a say in how it looks . No, they did not. But it is supposed to be a celebration of freedom. And i dont think you take that down. You cannot see that in the same light that you would a monument to a confederate general. They are two very Different Things. But, if people are concerned about what that monument seems to suggest in terms of the role of black people in their own liberation or lack thereof, then you put Something Else beside it and you show what the true story is. That one you dont takedown. The others you can take down and put elsewhere. Destroying them serves no purpose, from my perspective. And you are certainly not shortchanging history by removing them. You are not erasing history at all. You are a technology you are acknowledging that there is a problem with this symbol in a country that is supposed to be wedded to the idea of liberty and justice and equality for all people. Host vernon, your thoughts . Vernon i agree with everything edna said. I think each monument must be looked at separately. Each plaque, each historic house. I think i said at the last time we talked. You know, people dont learn their history from the books that we historians write they do learn it from the Lincoln Cottage, from the monuments we put up, from the public history we tell. That is where it comes from. That is why a have such an affinity the land of lincoln. I think that is a great message versus the land of calhoun in South Carolina or clemson. But you need to look at each one. I am reminded of the judge when she went back when he went back and pardoned the friendship nine, the first and see went to jail in rock hill, South Carolina. They accuse them of rewriting history. He said, you cannot rewrite history, but you can rg ight a wrong. But i think that is a good distinction. You have to ask at each memorial, what was it about . Youree to look if looking at people, i was part of that generation that helped destroyed the idea of heroes in history. We mightve been wrong. When we learned that jefferson at that time, we were not even sure, probably had a mistress who was underage. What else can you call it . Wrong. Then we sort of started throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I think you got a look at the total contribution of an individual. What was the ark of their life like. Like. Arc of their life peopleer thing is when are talking about very few of these confederate monuments are true art. They were just a plaster of paris, little forms and pumped about as fast as they could and sent them out. There may be some that truly are art, and those i think should be preserved. We have to remember and heres something i started talking about recently and can put and put in this recent book im writing, and that is, what does it mean . And every, nearly every Courthouse Square in the south in front of the courthouse is a statue to the confederacy, often with words that ring out White Supremacy. Arly they were corrected were corrected with that in mind. Were erected iwith that in mind. To go into the courthouse where you may not have to arrest. To get in trouble. It was good trouble for john lewis. That is still a symbol for many people to say dont expect to get a fair share hearing of justice here. Nowhere on public land should there be the kind of statues that send that message. Im perfectly happy if people want to buy the land and put it somewhere or in a graveyard kept by the daughters of the confederacy, put it up. Im not saying not to display at. But there are many of them that have rather offensive language. Some dont, but some are very explicit what it is about and i think when you are paying taxes as a citizen and that is offensive to you, you shouldnt be there. Im not talking about a personal offense, but to you as a group of people, as citizens in a democracy. Those are some of the things we want to think about and im happy to elaborate on being clear. A greatthink thats thing to elaborate on because there were two Different Things and there are many different ways to look at meaning. But you raised both the context of where it is, if its in front of a court, for example or the legislature, public land versus private, and also when it was put up. Vernon and why. Theyve made it clear why it was put up. Where. Hen, why, and can you talk more about the themes of that behind a lot of these monuments and memorials and the naming of things coming up now . Vernon absolutely. One of the things and let me point out the confederate monuments, and you can deal with all of these you have native american and so many other things, but they are not just about honoring our dead soldiers, which is what was here. They were also a part of the American South, white south, refocusing the narrative of the civil war. They died defending southern liberty and freedom from a depressed Central Government in washington. They were all put up at the height of jim crow 18 50s through the ninth teen 20s was the height of it. Its the reconciliation of north and south at the expense of particularly African Americans, leaving out the africanamerican soldiers who lincoln said made friends and winning that war, the reunion of the soldiers. It is ironic that robert e lee said lets furled the flag, never fly again, lets build no monuments. Be a monument of robert ely, they should say this is the man who said lets dont have monuments and lets listen to him, maybe. But thats not the way, ironically, his monument has been put up. People were explicit about what they were doing this is where people learn their history. Ive looked at all the Southern State houses the South Carolina one, have to be careful on that because i have a 50 minute lecture on that, but every single statue of an individual there, there is not one africanamerican, and every one of them either argued ,trongly for White Supremacy owned slaves, and were against the Civil Rights Movement and against segregation. I used to give a lecture saying nowhere is there the name of an African American on the statehouse grounds. I had to change that because i think it was an appropriate thing to do, and they should be credited for it, Strom Thurmonds family added his africanamerican daughters name to the list of children. So there is an africanamerican name, but it is not exactly the way that we we have people like thegreat Benjamin Mays or wonderful congressman, Robert Smalls who made so many contributions, and children, i was a generation that worked so hard to get rid of the idea of heroes, but i change my mind. We need role models. At least alternative role models. I dont want to tell people how to think. But there were always lax and whites in the Southern States and every state ive ever looked, always blacks and everywhere ive looked, there have been those that stood against the grain. Findsaved out you will some of the most antiracist white people, living the most courageous lives at that time, so what does that say about the excuse that well, that was a different time . You should know better. Did i go off track there . Erin i like your comments on that, about how the place and the why and the where affects the meaning of these things. Say im not want to against people having for what it means to them i think we need to be sensitive to this, that it is important to people and they believe this. You are not going to stop them from believing it from yelling at them, actually and we need to engage in what it means to others. The latervey gantt, mayor of charlotte, he integrated clemson first. He once said if you came uphill to the morrows of a south carolinian, you can appeal to his manners. The morals of a South Carolina in. When i say this is hurting other people, do you really want to do that on public property . You can do what you want to other places, but what is public property, taxpayers property, then that is a very different thing than you having the personal right to be wrong. Erin i like that. The personal right to be wrong. Edna, go ahead. That i should point out vernon was one of my very first graduate professors and i remember distinctly, we had a conversation in class where he was asking me to give my views on Baldridge Phillips and american need gross slavery. I took the position that there was nothing worth knowing about aldrich philip because he was a racist and because of the , that was wrote inaccurate from my perspective. And vernon taught me, as a historian, to be objective. And i have always attempted to do that, but as an africanamerican woman, it is very difficult to be objective when you are confronted with a like lee orsomeone sokson or whomever who was intimately associated with the confederacy, or even someone like Thomas Jefferson, who can be seen by the average american as a great statesman and as a historian, i can see him that way as well. But as an africanamerican, i have two remember that this man who claimed that americans were entitled to certain rights did not extend those rights to people of my color. To so it is very difficult separate oneself and say this was a great american, he just made a mistake here. Attitude about black people, his willingness to enslave black people tarnishes his reputation from my perspective. So it is very difficult to see him in any other way but to see any of these confederate monuments in any other way. I thought long and hard about whether or not we can at least tolerate a monument to a confederate soldier, justin average confederate soldier who had nothing to do directly with the war except to fight the war. And it is very difficult for me, although i understand that these people thought for what they believed was right, what they believed was right was wrong and i dont know that we can ever just excuse that. And so i would be in favor of removing any kind of monument that supports the idea of a lorry is because for the confederacy or a glorious cause for the southern people, people who support leading the nation, not being willing to accept that their country in creating another country because they wanted to continue practices that did damage to a whole race of people. , states right was certainly a part of it, but its also about supporting a society aced slavery,y based on and thats very difficult for me to get around. Vernon let me just add one thing. Theres only one place i disagree with you. I think a lot of those common soldiers did not believe in their cause. I think thats part of the myth arereated and finally we getting some novels and history to show that as well. There were desertion was not just because they wanted to go home but they figured out what this war was. Ive often said the big mistake was wasnt people having accused me of misunderstood lincoln when i argued he was a southerner. He thought common southerners remember,fight, but lincoln defined the war at first not about ending slavery, and edna has explained that very well in her book, which i was happy to get to be a reader of, but about preserving the union. Ive often wondered what would happen now if in fact ink and had said we are going to end this war against slavery. I dont think he would have been able to have got a guard to go down from the north to fight the war and im absolutely sure, in fact, we will never know, whether southerners would have thatt if they knew the war they were fighting for was not about their ability to leave the union, but there to end slavery. , a lot didt of it dessert. I think part of the myth is this commitment to it. Ive had this argument with a lot of sons of the confederacy. You are dishonoring my great grandfather. Grandfathergreat was drafted. He did not want to go. They had to come and find him under the wagon and then he deserted. How much do you want to argue this . He wasnt about honor, he got forced into it. We forget that the south was divided. When you take all the black soldiers who fought for the union that came from the south in every state has a regiment of white soldiers who fought. In those who fought ran off to tennessee and joined union things. Weve created this myth of the unified white southerner who is committed to slavery and all the other things. It just was not true. Edna i will let you win this one. Vernon i dont have to win. We can disagree. But i think we are playing into peoples hands when we say i really do leave, maybe most people dont agree, but i do think an elite group of slaveowning and many who had visions of empire, slave empire and spreading slavery because everywhere in the world except the United States was going back toward monarchy. That is why lincolns last best hope, he really meant it that micro c was failing everywhere. Democracy was failing everywhere. So these white confederate leaders had a vision of this very elite group that democracy doesnt work. Has nothing to do with monuments. Because itnk it does gets to where we started, where we were talking about symbols versus the systemic change needed. So i think thats a good question for us to end on before we turn it over to the queue and day with everyone joining us here. Where do we go from here . What is the thing that you to deserves more attention right now . How can we make sure we are not having the same conversation in five years . [laughter] wea i think the first thing do is we ensure micro c does not die. Because i think we are headed in the wrong direction at the moment. Voter suppression is just one of those examples of it. First and foremost, we have to get ourselves together in that regard. Once we have secured democracy as best we can, we can talk earnestly about what we need to do to go forward. We have never been willing to really, seriously talk about what the issues are in this country. And vernon, i remember, when i was rereading what we had talked about five years ago, you had talked about the fact that we were talking past each other. We really arent very serious about what we are doing. Im hoping whats happening out there in the streets now, whats happening in terms of people making certain that go to register, that people are able to get to the polls, im hoping that will lead to some serious discussion about what else needs to be done in the country. I am very fearful because of what im seeing not just in terms of whats happening to africanamericans, but whats happening on the border to immigrants, to people who really do believe that there is an American Dream that they can be a part of. I have friends who are Asian Americans who are afraid to go out to certain places, even before the pandemic because of the way they are treated. This is in the United States. We are no longer an example for the rest of the world. Thisre not serious before about inclusion. But i thought we were moving in the right direction and now, what im seeing is we are definitely going the wrong way. So until we can get those issues us, weontrol that divide are always going to be in this situation waiting for the next thing to happen that is going to galvanize us as a nation just to have it all collapse because we are not serious about solving the underlying issues. Vernon i started out i believe this is a revolutionary moment as was the Civil Rights Movement and i believe good revolutions are both exhilarating and there is a time for wariness. And i think edna has hit on both of these. One of the things that worries this,d before we started i know edna heard me talk about this way back in 1974 even. I agree with edna completely about lets get rid of these statues and the one that really bothers me, theres one to dr. Sims, one of those on the date houses in South Carolina who operated on africanamerican women without anesthesia and is celebrated as this father of gynecology. Theres not any contextual thing about this at all. Thats how i think what do we do about if you keep Woodrow Wilson or jefferson, you got to contextualize that there were great words spoken, but deeds are less than what we would want from anyone. Big issue for me is this it is a revolutionary moment. It is a good revolution. But we have to be we have to beware. One of my wariness is is the renaming of then tillman hall, do we say like when we took down the Confederate Flag off the dome and then put it in front of it and then took it down and put ,t in a museum, which is fine do people and say great, we vended racism . We havent. Statueshese things, the are a history of, they are symbolic of problems that are historically created. We created racism. Theres clearly no such thing as different races. But there is such a thing as racism. Lawse created it by making. We started with laws that made it even illegal not to be racist. Segregation, it was illegal for people to be in integrated situations. No one is upset at the fact that we took down the signs that said colored only or white only or no irish allowed. Upset abouture get a symbol that says the same thing. For many people, which would be confederate statues and other things. Thats just to give you a comparative perspective. But why i really believe in history i take my religion seriously, but if i didnt take my faith seriously, i think history would be my faith. History helped put us in this mess and history, i think, can get us out of it if people just understand that we were not just taught to be racist. We were legally made to make other people less than their potential. Even if you are a black veteran in world war ii, you could not school afterte university. Could not use the g. I. Bill to buy a home in a place where it would accumulate wealth so your family could then go to college after world war ii. Your children, because of redlining, because of covenants which went back to 1911 in minneapolis, where george floyd was, that said you cannot have a black person in this neighborhood, which is the good neighborhood where you invest in a home and you get the equity and the money and that becomes the basis of wealth. So whereas africanamericans make a lot more money than they used to, the wealth gap is still there because wealth is passed on, is accumulated, is part of heritage. Reconciliation commission, as other places like south africa has. And im hoping this is part of what will be coming. Im hoping in november, with a different situation, i am hopeful and pray that we can actually take advantage of this good revolution going on. I think it is being stymied in many ways now and used as a backlash and i hope it doesnt negativering out the things and i dont want to get into politics very much, but thats the other side of the voter suppression. People know better now. Tillman, excuse then but they know they can mobilize people and separate partisanship and race these days, and by trying to disenfranchise through the very same methods i was Expert Witness to el df in texas and the judge quoted me the in person voter id laws are nothing more than a poll tax on poor people as a way to keep them and it has been shown over and over again and we are using the exactly the same methods that we used in 1890s to disenfranchise people or make their vote the diluted so it doesnt have the meaning of other peoples votes, which you cannot do in a democracy. Democracy depends on the belief in the ballot and people having the vote. I would also argue a free society demands we know history and its complexity and nuance stop this has been a great conversation. Got 15 minutes and we have a lot of wonderful questions, so im going to turn it over to joan. Some of these questions are along the same lines, but they are about different specific monuments, so im going to let how to askfacilitate these questions of edna and vernon. Thank you. Because we are running low on time, im going to do my best to make these rapidfire questions and i appreciate everyones patience as i do that. We had two questions that were related. One was from tom who wants to know should we take confederate memorials off of all National Park service lands, including battlefields . Theres a bill that has gone through about that. The second part of that question comes from bruce, which is can we do anything about confederate monuments on private land, or is that just up to the people who own the land. Start. Will ive always felt people can do whatever they want to do on their own property. I might not like it, but i have nothing to do with something owned by someone else. But if im paying to maintain a monument because it does because it is on public land, and it is expensive to me, then i should not have to pay for that. So i would call for removal and if we are talking about a National Park, i agree with vernon that these Historic Sites are doing a much better job with telling the complete history than used to be the case. A bit ofps with tweaking of the history, not just simply having these monuments there for people to draw their own conclusions, but using those as teachable moments to explain what this history was behind it. I dont have a problem with that. But Something Like that monuments on monument avenue, those kinds of things, that kind of stuff needs to be removed. Are doingto see they that. Its happening all over the country, and i think its high time that it did. But that doesnt mean we are destroying the history. We are just putting it someplace else and being very open about exactly what happened. Vernon i think you have to look at each one separately. I feel very strongly, as edna does come about the public property. I get angry and i have to pray about it because i see people around me here i live in South Carolina, flying the Confederate Flag, and its all i can do to not want to go and take the flag down ive actually gone a couple of times when i have had friends, i asked if they would mind removing their flags out of courtesy. Sometimes this works. I do think it is a chance to reexamine our history, but i like the way things were done by mitch landau and having meetings which brings in dialogue. As we look at specific ones and a Community Comes to grips with its heritage and history, we were successful in greenwood, South Carolina two take away the monument, even though there was the heritage act, which segregates the soldiers that fought in world war i and world war ii, the korean war, and replaced it with one where the unit, the soldiers were not segregated. That was a Community Effort and i think that was one way we are able to make a difference. The other thing is alternative role models such as the great dr. Benjamin mays in my hometown. The only monument that exists to an individual now is to bend mays, the great theologian, one of the three greatest theologians of the 20th century. His most famous people being Martin Luther king jr. When i was growing up, the only historical plaque was to the preston brooks, so we were great at football because we realize the only way we were going to get recognize was to beat the fire out of people. You send messages with what you memorialize and who you memorialize. I think its important to get some alternative role models, especially women, recognized as well because they are giving us alternative role models about what democracy means. One of the problems has been the American South and South Carolina in particular, we just dont criticize anybody whos ever been elected to office. Thats the way it was in the textbook. If you were president , you were a great person. A lot of people still feel that way today. I think weve got to learn to think critically and one way we can think critically is be more honest about these people who do have monuments and we have ways to do this now. Revolution, you can hit a thing on your phone and get a full lecture on the horrors of what this person was really like. Joan before we go to edna before we go to the next question, may i respond to a member of your audience who said there are southern taxpayers offended by lincoln. Me just say lincoln did not fight against his own nation. Lincoln did not hold people enslaved. What we need to her member is a wrong was done to millions of people of color. So when the descendents of those , those peopler who were wronged, see an image, a symbol of that oppression, then of course we are not going to want to pay having that pay fortained having that symbol maintained. We need to understand what this is about. Its about oppression, not mayor anyone elses concerns because i just dont feel good when i see a southern monument. It is much, much deeper than that. Thank you, edna. The next set of questions that are related to each other are about specific monuments and to vernons point about catalyzing a president. Folks are curious what the two of you think about Thomas Jefferson, the jefferson memorial, and the washington monument. Vernon, im going to let you take this one first. Vernon [laughter] story and hes a friend of ours and a dear person. I was in graduate school, i got all pointed when i found out about jefferson. Id grown up in 96 and loved jefferson and discovered he had a child mistress, pretty much. Not only owned slaves i just became furious with jefferson. So when i went out to illinois to teach, i didnt even have my phd. The first class i had, edna was income 8 00 on a saturday, wasnt it . Drove all night to get there. I just finished and showed up to class and i had read a book by a professor at illinois who is a dear friend and i adore him to this day. But i thought this is great, hes writing, attacked jefferson, i cant wait to meet this colleague and i get there to discover he doesnt like jefferson because hes a monarchist. Balance hereittle going on im mad at jefferson from the other side and it sort of taught me a lesson about you have to look at the whole thing. A man who can write these great words, if he wrote them, youve we areder since assuming he wrote equality and liberty, justice, those things that is important. Thats important summit he would write that declaration. I had thrown that out, i was so mad at jefferson, i would have taken a sledgehammer to any monument. But now, i look at it and say youve got to look at the whole picture. So it is a tough question. Same thing with someone like washington. Would you have had a United States without a George Washington . Spending the rest of my many, many years washington was not at the top as he has moved up among the evaluation, but how he treated democracy. How he wanted to step back. Yes, he owned slaves. And he punished slaves and other things. Was rall thing is he it is complex. But theres a large framework there and you have to decide which of it you are going to set. At the whole story of jefferson needs to be told. The whole story, if you are going to celebrate jefferson, you also say this man, or he claimed not to believe in black equality, though he writes all men are created equal. At the same time, he certainly felt himself or he, at the most, was attracted, lets put it that way, if he did not love and africanamerican young woman who was underage and things. That story needs to be told. What i worry about with what edna is saying is i can just see a mythology growing up after this election of a lost cause, if it goes away, i hope, with another role model i dont like. Nature,ink that is our more of people than they are. Are complex. Edna and i know, we go round after round on lincoln. Thats a good example. There are africanamericans beside southerners who would not want to pay taxes to have a picture of lincoln there and i think thats the right. That is their right. But theres no way you cant look at the large picture, you would not have a United States if it wasnt for lincoln and, what i like about the ark of his life is that he grew and changed in a direction toward greater equality for all and support for africanamericans as citizens as opposed to some who went the other way. Wilson is a more complicated character in that way. Hes from the south that he was much more like northerners about Race Relations and things and youve got the issue of his trying to bring peace to the world, though it failed and this idea of those things about democracy. So you have to look at each one and make those decisions. He is the one who segregates the federal government. Been leaking, it had not segregated. Since lincoln, it had not been segregated. Reaction as much as a to being part of the Democratic Party as him. So it is really complex on these kind of people. When you get to complexity, you can have legitimate arguments, but theres some people that theres no complexity about. When i was talking about the civil war, i try to tell my friends when they are flying the Confederate Flag in my face that i had grandfathers on both sides that fought and died for the , but imagines well how you felt that 9 11 or if you had been around for the japanese bombing of pearl harbor. Thats what brought the north into that war. The confederacy fired on the United States. It was the same kind of reaction. That is when i said if that hadnt happened, im not sure lincoln could have raised forces , let alone to have ended slavery. Killing of the george floyd when soldiers got to the south and saw what it was. You can document again and again and again what they were saying i dont care about slavery, im not fighting to end slavery, they were racists to me. Blackst down south, and who were enslaved, help them, help them and all kinds of ways to win battles even when they were not soldiers and they saw what slavery was firsthand as opposed to what people wrote about it and said about it, its not all that bad and all this, they became ardent abolitionists. It was a Civil Rights Movement, people just didnt believe it was that bad in the south. It was not until newspapermen and Television Cameras caught dogs attacking children and water hose taking the skin off of people that you saw, its not until george floyd is losing his breath second by second that people believe that this really happens. So i think part of it is just not knowing. Erin we have a question that will be our last question but i think it is really relevant to that and i want to thank everybody for the robust discussion occurring in the comments. Theres a lot of interesting points being made. We willfinal question for tonight is what role we talked a little bit about george floyd as a catalyst for the current upswing in the discussion on this front. What role do you all think the pandemic and other aspects of the Current Situation have had in catapulting this to the forefront of american conversation again . Think what has happened is that the pandemic has actually slowed things down. I think if there were no pandemic, you would see many more people in the streets and the changes occurring much more rapidly. I think some people have stayed away because they are truly fearful of this pandemic, as they should be. So i think more than galvanizing people to go out into the streets, it has slowed the momentum a little bit. I know we have seen things escalate, but i think you would see much more of that if we did not have the concern with covid19. And if i may go back, i would just like to respond to the question about Fort Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The words that jefferson wrote our beautiful. But the words did not apply to the people who were enslaved, apparently. And apparently did not apply to thewomen either or to native americans who were not even considered a part of this emerging new nation anyway. And by the way, someone asked how old was Sally Hemmings when he took her as his mistress, vernon, i believe she was 15 years old . Vernon some say 14, but you are probably right. About then. Edna she was a child. Vernon the words you would say edna in the times of george leftngton, yes, washington instructions for his enslaved population to be freed when martha died, but he could have played such an Important Role earlier than that. He didnt have to come right out and say this is wrong, we need to do something about it. He could have used his moral authority, if he had that, during the time he was president to try to move the country closer to that kind of equality Thomas Jefferson had talked about. And instead, what he did was he hunted down people who ran away from his farm. He never stopped running for that poor woman. When hercules left, the cook, he tried to bring him back to the plantation. So if he was truly someone who believed in the rights of all humanity, heasic would not have done that. He would have just let them go. In terms of Woodrow Wilson, i dont know what to say about Woodrow Wilson. [laughter] some vicious things at a time when we needed moral leadership. Prevent it. Ot he tried to do so many other things for the world, but he needed to stop in his own country and tried to make changes. And im hoping as we go forward, we will have clinical leaders who are willing to step forward and do that. Thatn i wanted to add enslaven did not people. Thats an important point, it was just amazing when you look at this. I do think he thought slavery was the wolf either years, because he wrestled with it and they made those choices. With the pandemic and it also underscores, if you look at the data, how historically africanamericans and other minorities have less Good Health Care and are more vulnerable. All of this is related. That we just forget sometimes. It is a complex story, but we have to understand it. And i have hope people are beginning to understand it in a way they never have before. That is a good, hopeful note to end on. Edna, vernon, thank you so much for taking the time and thank you all for joining us. Sorry we couldnt get to the comment section, it was exploding toward the end there. Really great conversation happening there. Thank you all for joining us this evening. I hope you learned a lot tonight and there are a lot of resources being shared and can forward to having next conversation with all of you and i hope you can take this forward and feel hopeful about positive change in our country at this time and i want to wish you all good health and good hope for the future. Thank you all. Thank you for all you folks do. You do a good job. What a great job you are doing and i think its making a difference. Having dialogues like this i wish i had a chance to talk to everyone there. I have my own strong views, but i try to be respectful and i think we have to be respectful of other peoples heartfelt use. Edna absolutely. Erin i agree. Its important for historians and educators to find ways to really Work Together to make sure that more complete story and dialogue is happening at all levels. A really important partnership. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Learn more about the people and events that shape the civil war and reconstruction every saturday at 6 p. M. Eastern, only on American History tv, here on cspan3. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv, covering history cspanstyle with event coverage, eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures from College Classrooms and visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Ted keller, coeditor of environmental histories of world war i talks about the diverse ecological impacts the First World War had across the globe. Heres a preview. From an environmental standpoint, it is not at all surprising germany lost. What is shocking is that it sustained over 1. 7 million soldiers on multiple fronts for over four years as long as it did. Germanys eventual defeat revealed the ecological constraints of waging war. Ofmans imported around 25 their food and that included eggs, dairy, vegetable oil, fish, meat, much of the fodder consumed by german farm animals came from russia, argentina, and the United States. High agricultural yields relied on chilean nitrates for fertilizer. With the british blockade and poor domestic harvests that followed, german agricultural plummeted. Theres a massive attempt to mobilize food. This is a german placard and it says hold out. It is a potato that has a strangely human face. What it says is that though we are framed by our enemies, though we are surrounded and threatened with hunger, we germans will hold out. We will mobilize last potato. Desperate to increase agricultural production, germans plowed up church arts, school grounds, they plowed up forest blades, they even plowed up the soccer fields, which is telling. German soccer clubs were not crazy about that. At the soccer fields. Pink of the children. It didnt work. They plowed them up. We find Food Shortages exacerbated class tensions and Worker Councils that complained the parks and socalled Luxury Gardens and affluent neighborhoods were not being used for cultivation. The response they got was that they were too shady to use to grow anything. The German Government attempted to arbitrate inequalities with ration cards and price controls. It did not work. It created a vibrant lack market. Regulations did control every phase of agricultural production. But, often, it was bureaucratic clumsiness or shortsighted policies that resulted in Food Shortages. Heres an example for you state officials, having determined gluttonous pigs were competing with humans for grain, the government to cleave the claimedg massacre which over 9 million victims. What it did was produce a momentary glut of pork. Sausages every night. But it did nothing to alleviate the grain shortage. More detrimental still was the death of all of those little pigs, what it did to the delicate ecology, the balance between human and Natural World pigs were not only consumers of fodder but great producers of fertilizer. Their departure from the fields had dire longterm consequences. Learn more about the impact of world war i on the environment tonight at 9 05 eastern here on American History tv. You are watching American History tv. ,very weekend on cspan3 explore our nations past. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies and brought to you today by your television provider. The big nominating conventions go into political history. First the democrats name the kennedyjohnson to get and now the republicans who elected Abraham Lincoln as the first president just 100 yearsgo