Remotely, but we began thinking about the pandemic in january. We are a division of medical historians and we followed the news pretty carefully, especially news about Public Health. We reached out and began speaking with the Public Health service in january because we thinking about how to document this story. It has been a slow process for us. Steve at what point did you realize the pandemic would stretch into the summer and now the fall and potentially into the winter . Alexandra as historians, we thought about the difficulties inherent in making a vaccine, so we were pretty sure it would last for quite a while. For a fair amount of time. We would remain at home while a vaccine was being created. We still dont know what is happening, as you know, and so we are still taking things week by week in the museum. Steve so before mid march, what were your job duties and how has it changed over the past couple of months . Alexandra i oversee a division of historians of medicine and science and we had been planning an exhibit on the history of medicine for the museum. Four years ago. When the pandemic was beginning we were very deep into the , planning part of it and we began to think about now were going to have to change the exhibit to include covid19 and that meant we needed to collect objects related to covid19. We would normally be doing that anyway because we collect objects as history unfolds, but now it became imperative especially in regards to the exhibit we were planning. We went to the designers and asked them, can you find extra room in your designs so we can have a section on covid19 . That has become the center point of our exhibit. It is not that everything in american medical history leads up to covid19, but we know that our visitors are going to try to understand the past and where we were before covid19 in terms of medicine when they come. In many ways, it has reshaped the exhibit. Steve to follow up on your line, a Harry Potterish addition what do you mean by , that . Alexandra when designers begin to plan an exhibit, they account for every inch in the exhibit. We had already planned all of that out and needed an additional section to deal with covid19. We had to go to our designers and say, can you find extra room in your plans, and they were wonderful in helping us to find that extra room and shifting a lot of the exhibit around. They found that extra room we needed to tell the story. Steve so that extra room will include what . Alexandra we are in the middle of collecting objects around covid19 and we have done a lot of thinking about which are most iconic and will tell the most powerful stories about this event. The ventilator is something we have been thinking a great deal about. Americans hear about the ventilators but they dont know what they look like or how it works. That is something we might think about putting and the exhibits. We also know that masks are a central part of this story, every american is making a mask or thinking about a mask or living in a place where they asked to use a mask. It is a story that represents all americans. That is an object we might include. We also think about test kits. The faulty ones as well as those that have been more effective. Very something that we are much in flux right now with, depending on how long it takes to create a vaccine. We also thought about leaving an empty space in the exhibit that demonstrates that a vaccine is coming. It depends on when the exhibit is able to open and what is happening and how the story pans out. Right now, it is very much up in the air. Steve clearly, a lot will depend on a vaccine and other therapeutics that will allow us to return to life as normal. When do you think this will be available to the public to view at the smithsonian . Alexandra it was originally scheduled to open in 2021, but now we are thinking it will unfortunately be pushed into 2022, because all work on exhibits, fabrication and things like that, have really been stalled at the museum. Steve lets go back to one of the last major pandemics. We have seen pictures from that time, but what do you have that continues to tell that story . Alexandra sure, i want to point out that 1918 or 1919 is not the last pandemic that we have had. We have seen an hiv aids pandemic but there was also an influenza pandemic in 19 57, 1958, and a pandemic in 1969. Thinking 1918 if the pandemic most of us are most familiar with. Interestingly, we at the museum dont have any objects that relate to that pandemic. I think there are multiple reasons for that. One is that the National Museum of American History as currently constructed didnt exist in the same way in 1918 and 1919. The other issue is that, although we are very aware of that pandemic and although we talk a great deal about that pandemic, the truth was that in the 1920s, people really wanted to forget what happened. In fact, one of the scholars who wrote about the pandemic in the 1970s called his book the forgotten pandemic, because people tried to move away from and put the pandemic in the past. The fact that we dont have any objects is not surprising. Steve are other museums, either here in the u. S. Or around the world doing what you are doing to try to chronicle this moment and preserve it for future historians . Alexandra yes, many museums not just in the u. S. , but across the world are trying to document covid19. We have been in touch and working with colleagues at medical museums cross the u. S. To talk to them about collecting, because we think this is such a huge initiative that we really need to coordinate and talk to one another so that we understand what our colleagues are doing elsewhere so that we can document the story without replicating what other museums are doing. It is such a huge story. As you can imagine, all museums have limited space, so this has been a fair amount of coordination. Steve in processing the story are you collecting material you , think potentially could be used by some of your successors years from now . Alexandra absolutely. We know that the objects we bring and will be of interest for historians in the future. We have a fabulous collection in the museum right now. We have a collection that has objects dating back several thousand years. Not just american medical objects, but also Roman Medical objects as well. We have always had scholars come in and studied them and write about them. I know my colleagues in the future might be using some of those objects, probably to do an exhibit on the covid19 pandemic. This is such a huge event. It is very hard for me to think that 100 years from now, the museum would not be thinking about doing an exhibit about covid19. Steve so when visitors walk through your exhibit, potentially in 2022, what do you want them to learn and what will the takeaway be . Alexandra one of the most important things to learn is pandemics have always been with us and will always be with us. You mentioned 1918 and 1919, and i mentioned there were a series of pandemics in the 20th century. I think it is hard for us before covid19, itbefore was hard for us to emphasize what it was like to live in a pandemic, the kind of fears people had and the worries about how to protect themselves. When we originally began planning the exhibit and it opens with two epidemics and a pandemic that occurred in america before 1860, we talked about how we get our visitors to understand what its like to live through a pandemic. Now we know our visitors will come in with a very different understanding of what that feels like. What we are really trying to do is show them the different approaches that medicine has taken over the years and the way that things we take and accept, such as germ theory, there was a long time before people accepted that idea and before it began to inform the practice of medicine. I want people to understand the change and how long change happens. We talk about revolutions in medicine but they come fairly slow. The other thing we want our visitors to understand is the very different ways that disease has impacted different groups in america very differently. Obviously, if you were a part of a native American Community in the 19th century, your experience would be different from someone who might have been a white elite in the northeast. Steve this has been a Public Health issue, a medical issue, a political issue in 2020. Is there a way to deal with all of that . Alexandra again, it is really interesting, as a historian, to think about the different ways politics and culture respond to pandemics. The tensions we are seeing over mask wearing that was fairly , widespread and common in 1918 and 1919. The race for a vaccine, that technological element to the story. That occurred in 1957 and 1958, as they were trying to control a pandemic. There are a lot of parallels and a lot of ways in which these epidemics are shaped by the issues we confront in our own society today, for example, health care reflects Racial Disparity and has a long history and is deeply rooted in American History, and we want our visitors to understand that as well. Steve as you go through this process, what has intrigued you the most or surprised you the most . Alexandra it is an interesting question, because there have been multiple things. When we first began, we were somewhat uncertain as to whether or not this would emerge into a fullblown pandemic. There was the sars outbreak and the mers outbreak. We were a little uncertain as to whether this could become quite as widespread in the way it has become. Oddly surprising, even though we all knew as his terrains of medicine that we were long overdue for a pandemic, we still were shocked by how quickly this escalated and how widespread this became. That is obviously a result of the rapid nature of travel in the world today. That was kind of shocking to see that play out, even though we kind of expected to see it. It is one thing to think about something theoretically, but another to see it actually play out. In terms of surprised, i have been surprised by the vehemence and pushback that has occurred over mask wearing. In 1918 and 1919, the pushback was understandable, because people didnt really grasp germ theory in the same way we do today. I have been surprised at the extent to which that pushback has occurred. Steve are you getting firsthand accounts and oral histories and will that be included . Alexandra yes, we have asked americans to contact us with their stories and objects they may have. We are collecting the stories in emails and that has been very interesting for us, but we are also planning to do oral histories in the long run. We would like to do them with practitioners, but also with ordinary americans. That is a longrange project for us, because we historians always like to cheat and have hindsight whenever we do a story, so we feel that we will not really be doing oral histories for at least about two years. We are also obviously looking to budget for that and so we will need to plan ahead for that. But that is the major part of the project we would like to do. Steve what is your background . Why did you pursue this area of history . Alexander i have a phd in history with a focus on radical history. I went to the university of wisconsin which had a department in the history of medicine. I became fascinated by this when i was an undergraduate and i was studying not American History but italian history and looking andmedic she family florence and i was struck by the prevalence of disease and the way that disease shaped peoples lives on a daytoday basis that it did not do for us today. That is what fascinates me. Germ theory, that idea that i mentioned, has really bad if they transformed the world that we live in. We never think about what it means to just turn on the water and expect to have water, we dont think about sanitary measures in places that go to like hospitals, we all take this for granted. And that leads us to have a difficult time understanding the world of the past, but if we were to get into and understand that world of the past, we have think how different disease was in that period. It would not have been uncommon for most people, they would have experienced the death of a sibling or parent when they were gone. We dont have those experiences today. When i thought about people in thesibling or parent when they e gone. Past, to me, that is one of the largest differences in the way that they lived and the way we live today and that fascinates me. Lord at the museum of American History, thank you for joining us on cspan3s American History tv. Alexandra thank you for inviting me. This is American History tv on cspan3 where each weekend, we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. You are watching American History tv, exploring our past every weekend on cspan3. This week, we are looking back to this state in history. On september 20 4, 1957, president eisenhower flew from rhode island to washington, d. C. To address the nation about violent resistance to nine africanamerican students are to integrate Central High School in little rock, arkansas. In that city, under the leadership of demagogic extremists, disorderly mobs that deliberately presented that carrying out improper orders in the federal court. Local authorities have not eliminated that violent opposition and under the law, i issued a proclamation calling upon the mob to disperse. This morning, the mob again gathered in front of the high school. Obviously, for the purpose of presenting that carrying out of the first order relating to the admission of negro children. Follow us on social media at cspan history for more clips and post. Sunday, we visit the National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture which opened in september, 2016. Here is a preview. This just came through the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, looking at the making of the Atlantic World and a global economy. The driver of the trade was sugar and that driver of the trade actually moved forward the effort to ship as many human beings across the Atlantic Ocean , forced into slavery. Now we come to the story of the Middle Passage, the Middle Passage being that space transporting africans from the west coast of africa throughout the americas across the Atlantic Ocean. We are fortunate to feature dynamic options including artifacts from a slave ship found off the coast of south actually went to mozambique, picked up africans on its way to brazil to sell them as enslaved africans. The ship crashed off the coast of south africa. We are fortunate to have organized with George Washington university, the university of cape town, and partners in mozambique as we were able to identify this shipwreck on the ocean floor off the coast of south africa. One of the key markers to identify this as a ship wreck is some of the Archival Research revealed that there were 1400 battle stones on the ship, those were used to offset the human waste and we know that there were battle zones on the ship because we found them on the ocean floor. We are excited to feature those in this space in the Middle Passage. The white hood became the symbol of the ku klux klan and was widely seen across society protecting the identity of individuals, though in most communities, everyone knew who was underneath the hood. It was not just the physical terror up a mike by the clan and the lynchings that the clan and other parts of society conducted. Individuals were illegally murdered with no consequences on the perpetrators from the 1880s into the 1940s. It was a constant process of terror, of intimidation. The other part was not so physical, it had to do with intellectual and psychological intimidation. The publication of a book, the ast, whiche perpetrates the idea that africanamericans were put on earth to serve white people, they are not their own beings, not their own human beings, not their own selves, they are here as servants. That kind of intellectual structure and the psychological makeup that that had on White Society as well as the detrimental effects on africanamericans, which had to resist that barrage of negative information about them created a sense of terror that was constant and unremitting and get africanamericans responded in a number of creative ways. Physicalt simply terror, but involved things like a denigration of africanamericans so that stereotypes, what have become collectibles in 21stcentury america, where constant reminders to whites people that africanamericans were inferior and reminders to africanamericans that white asiety did not value them individuals and as productive members of society. Learn more about africanAmerican History this sunday at 10 00 p. M. Eastern here on American History tv. In 1995 and 1997, the u. S. Air force published reports on the socalled roswell incident in 1947 in the new mexico desert. The alleged sightings of aliens and ufos have led to numerous books, conferences, documentaries, hollywood films and several museums alleging a , u. S. Government coverup. Up next on reel america, a video companion to the air force reports. This 1997 documentary argues that experiments involving highaltitude balloons, parachute dropped test flight dummies, and several air force accidents were behind the public sightings