welcome to the how and why, the making of the international african-american museum. i'm carey taylor, associate professor or this history at the citadel, and joseph is reilly's co-teacher for this semester's exciting course. we will introduce our special guest this weekend, but first i wanted to briefly explain the format. mayor reilly and secretary lonnie bunch will engage in a fireside chat9-style conversation after which we'll open it up for questions. we can ask that you put your questions in the chat function, and and i'll relay those to secretary bunch. so with that, i'll turn it over to my colleagues, mayor joseph reilly. >> thank you, professor taylor and secretary bunch. [inaudible] the secretary of -- [inaudible] the director of the national african-american museum of national history -- [inaudible] secretary bunch is the director of the chicago -- [audio difficulty] his connection -- [inaudible] [inaudible] mr. secretary, describe -- [inaudible] >> in many ways, i am so honored to be with you because of my profound respect for the mayor, for what you're doing. in some ways the museum's created manufactured reality. you've got sacred ground, sacred space. so the opportunity to tell important stories in a space where they actually happened is very powerful. so i've always felt anything i could do that would be supportive to make -- on that war is very special. so i am in i awe of how you and your colleagues who have worked so hard to create a museum that'll help us understand not just charleston is, not just slavery, but understand -- better. >> [inaudible] describing -- [inaudible] georgetown, north carolina. [inaudible] >> well, in some ways this is an example of sacred space. basically, i went up to -- plantation above georgetown. and as i walked could be the street, there were four or five cabins still standing. and he had lived in one of those cab. bins with his grand -- cabins with his grandpa ma. grandma. he would take me to one side of the cabin and talk about -- [inaudible] he took me to another side and talked about children watching the chimney so is it wouldn't catch on fire. he took me to the back talked about the crops -- then we went to the fourth side or, rather, i went to the fourth side. he didn't come. i said, you know, why don't you want to -- [inaudible] he said there were rattlesnakes over there. so being a kid born in north new jersey, rattlesnakes were not anything i knew anything about. [laughter] after i stopped running, i said to him, why didn't you warn me? i'm not sure what a historian does for -- but if your -- [inaudible] help them not just what they want to remember, but what they need to remember. and that shaped me for my entire career. aside from being terrified of a rattlesnakes, helping people remember what hay need to though. in other words, using history as a way to educate, to challenge, to provide understanding, context and maybe some reconciliation. that came from from a american i met one time, and so the reality is the kind of wisdom he gave has been -- [inaudible] everything i've done since that moment. >> i took that wisdom from your book, lonnie, to heart, and we will take it to heart in the museum we are creating. in the book the national museum has four pillars, it should have four pillars to support the efforts of the museum is. not monetary efforts, but the story. and they're all fabulous. one, paraphrasing mr. dinkins, but one is that the i museum should be a place of meeting and memory, telling stories of america. cited in the global context and full collaboration, but i'm interested in all of those, but i feel that our museum has a special -- to have citizens deeply move by the story of african-americans that our country never learned. so, dr. bunch, please give us your thoughts about this responsibility for our museum -- [inaudible] >> well, in many ways one of the great challenges is, first of all, to make sure those stories, those histories are remembered and well told. but the challenge is really to help people understand that those histories shape us all. these are not stories about african-americans for african-americans. but, rather, in some ways this is one of the quintessential american stories, to understand our notions of spirituality, resill yen i city, optimism -- resiliency. where better to hook than in this community? so the challenge is to make sure a good museum is like a two-sided coin. one side gives you this really deep understanding of the history. but the other side wants to take that culture and use it as a lens to understand what it means to be american is that, in essence, the best museums in history help us recognize that the stories that we tell regardless of what the community is are stories that shape us, that inform if us and that make us better as a nation. so i think part of what is apparent, what you're doing is you're illuminating some of the dark corners of the american spirit. in many ways the discussion around slavery, slave trade and really the origin of america is contested. some people don't want to have these conversations. and yet i would argue you can't understand who you are as american white house understanding that early -- without understanding that early history. you can't understand how our politics, how really our foreign policy, our culture how it was shaped by slavery and the struggles over slavery. so i think in many ways the work that you're doing is really valuable because it really allows us to understand something that often we don't pay attention to. but the other piece i think is so important is part of what you're trying to do is make sure people understand how this has been shaped by an international power. i think in many ways as americans, you know, we are many some cases very isolationist, you know? until we had to get -- [inaudible] or mexico, only 13 if % of us -- 13% of us had a passport. so i think the notion helping americans understand that they've always been shaped by international issues and that to this day we shape the world by our own culture. so i think that's an important contribution as well. >> thank you, dr. bunch. you write so beautifully and you're a great storyteller, especially memorable to me are the stories of the enslaved woman on the alabama cotton plantation who rose each morning, fed and left her children bent over in cotton fields in the hot sun and then refused to let -- strip her of her humanity or hope. or the story of your grandmother who took in the laundry of other families, scrub ised floors not -- scrubbed floors not her own so her children and grandchildren would not have to work. there are so many stories, and we've just been talking about it, and there's so much to learn and so much to be enhanced to strengthen that. so, lonnie, thank you so much for being a great storyteller. thank you for being the most fabulous museum director in the world in secretary of the smithsonian, and thank you for being here today. and i will now ask professor kerry taylor to open up the chat room and then to have questions of dr. bunch -- >> may i, may i, mr. mayor, make one comment before you go to questions? >> yes, sir. >> you know, i think one of the things that is really important that i discovered throughout my career, i know you're working on the museum, is the importance of women's stories. often in history women's stories get second shrift, and the notion of leadership that women play in organizations, in movements, the notion that women carry a burden of struggling for fairness and freedom at the same time they're struggling to raise families, i think that is really unbelievably powerful. and i take great solace from the role women have played and recognize that i'm standing on a lot of their shoulders. and i think it's important to make sure that people recognize that often history is told through the lens of a male perspective. and i think that misses so much of what is essential to really understand about our past. >> that's excellent. and, of course, we have hear dear friends of -- here dear friends of mine -- the. [inaudible] she was like rosa parks. she wasn't very big but, oh, the power of that -- [inaudible] courageous women. if lonnie, thank you very much is. and then we'll open up the chat room and professor taylor will monitor that for us. >> yeah. just as a reminder, please pose questions in the chat, and i'll relay those to the secretary and to the mayor. maybe as i guess a point of privilege, i was wondering, secretary, if you might comment on the museum's mission against -- i'm talking about the d.c. museum -- against the backdrop of this dynamic period of political change in which it opened and particularly i'm thinking about this phase of what we might refer or to as the second phase of black lives matter protests triggered by the killing of george floyd. has that -- what impact has that had on the museum's mission and, you know, our thinking around the museum in. >> well, i think it's had an impact on the museum and the smithsonian writ large. for example, i think what has been really important is to recognize that museums often forget that part of their job is to collect today for tomorrow, to make sure that we put in place what i call the rapid response team. i first sent them out to ferguson years ago, to minneapolis after the murder of george floyd, when black lives matter in washington, d.c. was having those confrontations, we were there to collect a lot of material. i also sent the rapid response team the on january 6th. so that, for me, what is important is that i realize for many times in my career whether it was at the smithsonian or other places that i wanted to tell certain stories, and the collections weren't there. so i felt it was really important. and i started years ago when i was associate director at the smithsonian of actually bringing the curators together quarterly and saying what should we know today, what should we collect today that somebody needs to know 20 or 30 or 50 years from now. so that really is important to me. but i think it's also essential, i believe that at times of crises cultural institutions help to contribute mightily to making a country better, to helping the country heal. helping the country understand. i think that if a place like the smithsonian is only about yesterday, then it fails. if it uses yesterday to help us understand today and tomorrow, to understand and contextualize the challenges of black lives matter or january 6th at a time when the public needs to find a trusted source, museums tend to be that trusted source. and so what i want to do is never abuse the relationship and the trust people have with the smithsonian. i want to use that to educate, challenge, to prod, to help us find reconciliation. i think it'd be very easy for institutions to say that's not my issues, but i -- my issue, but i think in a crisis if you're not contributing, if you're not fighting the good fight, if you're a place in history and you don't use that history to help othersed today, what you're doing is making history nostalgic rather than -- [inaudible] >> terrific. we have a question from professor tiffany silverman who asks if you might address the challenges around honoring the past as we become equitable to other perspectives and i think specifically she's thinking about monuments and, you know, symbols of the past. >> i think one of the things we know as historians is the evolution, right? the sweep of changing interpretations. and i believe very strongly that one never should erase history. one should pruning that history from time to time -- [laughter] and there ought to be opportunities to do two things, to help people understand what monuments really mean whether confederate monuments or whatever, what they really mean and what they really symbolize, when they were built can and what they tell us not just about the historical moment they're celebrating, but the moment they were created. you know, like so many federal monuments were created during the era of jim crow segregation or later during the civil rights movement as a way to send a different message of the change the country was undergoing. i think it's important the help people understand that. i think in some ways if i could do one thing as a historian, i wish we could find ways to help the public embrace ambiguity. in some ways we tend to looked at things, we americans -- like everyone -- we tend to work for simple answers to complex questions. [laughter] but history teaches us nuance, complexity. it teaches us that there's amazing things that when you have those debates around the shades of gray. and so in a way i think that if history could really help people understand evolution and change, subtlety, what a major contribution we could make to the country. >> i'm going to paraphrase a question from -- or, i guess a request here from our excellent student melanie delgado who asks if you could comment on the changing political dynamics from president bush through president trump. and i think she's asking specifically if you'd address some of the material you deal with in the book. >> i think that while it's crucially important for my success at the smithsonian, i think for any leader of a cultural institution you have to become with, you have to be political. it doesn't mean you have a specific political point of view, but you have to recognize -- as the mayor knows -- that you've got to build allies, that you've got to work with people who have politics that are very different from yours. so, for example, i came back from chicago to become the head of the african-american museum, i knew i needed to create a bipartisan sense. but i also knew that, candidly, when i walked into some members' offices, they said see this black face? -- [inaudible] but i also learned, however, in chicago that i became -- i got a lot of support from republicans from the north side, democrats from the south side, so i used that. i had those folks from different politics take me around. so, therefore, people could see that i could sort of handle things from at least as nonpartisan as i could. it didn't hurt that a friend of mine became senator, then president. [laughter] okay, that didn't hurt. but i the reality is that what i realized is that if i couldn't get every president to care about the museum, i couldn't get the support i needed on the hill, and i also thought it was a missed opportunity because i felt the museum's job was to educate everyone. and george w. bush was a big supporter. in fact, i will always celebrate him because there were many people who said this museum wasn't worthy of the national mall and that it should go someplace off the national mall. and heed stood up and said, why of course it needs to be on the mall. and i quote him every time. with president obama, it was an interesting challenge because initially, even though we were close friends, the notion was, you know, you don't want to be seen as simply a black president. so the notion was how to provide support. and if you noticed during his second term, became much more visible and vocally supportive and became one of the great supporters of the museum. and with president trump it was important for me to be able to help expand the notion of what african-american culture was, its impact on the broader society. it wasn't always easy, but it gave me something to do. >> cheryl harden loves is reflecting on the impacts of walking through the doors of no return in the slave castles in west africa, and she was hoping to get your thoughts on how it is we connect the african and the american stories in both the museum in washington and here in charleston. >> well, i think, i mean, one of the things is really to tell truth, okay? these things are connected, completely connected. it was international considerations that led to the creation of the united states, that began the united states. that the slave trade is part, really it's the first global business. and so really helping people understand that is powerful. i also think it's important to realize that we are so connected today that it would make sense to recognize how connected we were in the past. and i have been struck by something that happened to me. i spent a lot of time trying to find relics or pieces of a slave ship. i went around the world. i negotiated with the castros, which i was not successful which tells you my limited ability to be a diplomat. [laughter] but i looked around, i had to bring together scholars from the u.k., from south africa, brazil, and we began to map the ocean floor trying to find these wrecks. and because for years every summer i taught in south africa during the '90s, some of these folks that were museum people, they called me and said we might have a ship that sank off the coast of capetown. can you look at that. so we brought our expertise, we found the ship. it had left lisbon in 1794, went around the cape to pick up 512 people in mozambique. and then on the way back to the new world, it sank. so i felt an obligation to -- [inaudible] so i went to mozambique, and the chief of the people said i have a gift for you. he gave me a stress is el, a bowl -- a vessel, a bowl that was with regard. and when i opened it, it was full of dirt. and i was trying to figure out, okay, what are you saying to me. and he said to me something that was really powerful that made the connection. he said ill like you, my ancestors would like you the take this soil, take it to the site of the wreck, sprinkle it over the site of the wreck so for the first time since 1794, my people can sleep in their own land. i'm crying, i'm just so moved by it. and then a woman comes up, a woman probably in her 20s, and she said to me my ancestor was on that ship, and every day we say his name. so is it made me realize this was not about yesterday, it was about today and it was about tomorrow. and that helped transform how i thought about things. but it made me realize how fortunate i am to get to explore the past through the lens of the museum. >> our esteemed alumni, norman seabrook, has a personal question for you, secretary bunch. mr. seabrook was living in washington, d.c. in the 1970s and '80s, and he was curious about your experience of traveling -- transferring from howard to american university. and wanted your comments on that. [laughter] >> okay. all right. as the mayor knows, i always tell the truth. i fell in love with a girl at american-u. what the heck -- [laughter] you know, and i thought, oh, what love. i'll transfer, we'll live our lives together. we dated for a year and she dumped me. [laughter] so, you know, what can i tell you? enjoy being 19. [laughter] >> that's great. my colleague, sean edwards, thank yous you for sharing your thoughts -- thanks you for sharing your thoughts. she'd like you to discuss history from the point of context in modern times and the importance of that. and says often times requests for facts about historical figures and the contexts of those facts, you know, may not be desired. >> i mean, i think that one of the great challenges of being a historian or somebody who cares about history is to realize that context is everything. that without context, there's not understanding. and so i think the public sometimes thinks that history is a simple fact, a simple date. but the reality is, is the context around the fact, around the date that gives me, that obviously gives opportunity for differences of opinion as to what that particular moment meant. but i really think it's crucially important. .. when you go to the museum there are probably more quotations in any museum should have. you see many stories such as the stories of joseph. we all know a lot about africans who gained their freedom and had a freedom paper but the story of joseph was somebody who had that paper and gave his freedom in the 1850s but he needed that paper was the key to his future and he was terrified that if heu treat it with them all the time it might get destroyed by perspiration or you might lose it. he wasn't very good with his hands but he made this ugly piece of tin and he put the freedom paper and that can and he carried with him every day for protection. what happened to? every night he would come home according to the family and he would take out the paper and you talk about the fragility of freedom. the importance of freedom, the rarity of freedom. and the family kept that for five generations and gave it to us. to me that's what we mean by humanizing. we know people of freedom papers but to see it through the lens of that particular individual was really very powerful for so many people. so that's what i mean about finding the right tension between contextualizing and reducing it to human scale. >> our student tyler has replacing the netflix documentary writing at the african american museum and denote quincy jones in that film along many, many other celebrities who have been a part of the museums creation and he was curious as to what it was like working with all these high-powered, high-profile folks, each of whom were sincere in their desire to see the museum succeed but also have other kinds of needs. >> that's nicely put. basically we are working with a personalities who all want to be the boss, and i learned something very early. my very first board meeting, before it even started the job, they sat me down next to oprah winfrey, next to bob johnson, across from the head of time warner, head of american express. i'm terrified. i'm a kid from jersey. what the heck am i doing here? so the next day after the meeting, because i didn't do very well, i was like stutterin stuttering, -- called it his office and said you looked a a little nervous. i said, you think? basically he says something to be that has been so helpful during this process. he said those people are at the top of their game, the best in their field. and so are you. and more importantly, they want what you are about to give them, which is to build the museum. so view yourself as the equal. it made me realize that if i glad i could learn how to work with them but each one was different. quincy jones, i'll tell you the quincy jones story, it's the best. i saw quincy jones the very first time come huge house in beverly hills and you walk in and there's like oscars in amy's like laying on the ground. oh, my gosh, quincy jones. i was there early and he's finishing and meeting and introduced me to this person and it was somebody from sweden. quincy jones spent a lot of time in sweden and i just come back from sweden and i said i really like sweden and there's a museum i love which is about a ship that sank. wait a minute, you know that? that's my favorite museum in the world. he opened the closet and he had a -- to the museum. because i could talk about that museum, we began to sort of have this conversation. the second thing was this is really silly but when i'm 14 years old i think the most beautiful person in the world is peggy lipton from the mod squad. i forgot that was his ex-wife. i was telling about peggy lipton. he called her and she came over. oh, my god -- was so embarrassing. hi, i loved you when i was 14. somehow i wasn't that cool. but that allowed quincy and i'd have a great relationship. >> this is something of a follow-up. we had some number of staff members and other associates, the international african american museum who are with us today and i'm wondering, i know you had conversations with the mayor and other staff members but i'm wondering if you have talks on maybe some of the mechanics -- thoughts -- building the museum and building the staff? >> i think, i wouldn't be one, there may be more people are no much more than i but i really think one of the things about institutions, if you do it right, you build it to the family. you build a staff that recognizes that you can't pay them what they are really worth. and you want to make sure that you give them the opportunity to engage with interesting people come to town, but to feel that regardless of what part of the organization they are, that their wisdom counts, that no one has a monopoly on wisdom and you want wisdom to flow through the organization. the other thing is to recognize that what you do when you build a museum is you often don't see how your little moment, the project you're working on, how important, and how transformative that is. i always say to my colleagues i need you to bring your a game, i need you to be better than we can all imagine. because i don't want you to spend your time thinking what does this mean to me? i want you to spend your time thinking what does it mean to the public, what does it mean to ancestors rex and if you do that right then you'll get your a claim. all the people who work on the international african american museum -- [inaudible] they feel they are contributing to making the country better. that is worth more than i could ever pay them. >> professor silverman asks for your comments on the relationship with the smithsonian in the military around issues of cultural preservation? he's thinking especially the rebooted monuments program and dismissed owns cultural rescue initiative. >> well, in some ways i always felt the smithsonian isn't this amazing place that is blessed with resources and expertise. it has the ability to work with anyone. anybody who calls will help make us better. so i have been so moved by the work the smithsonian has been doing for now generations but especially over the last decade on sort of cultural preservation, whether it is actually going to help rebuild many of the shrines that were destroyed, whether it was helping haiti rebuild so much after the earthquake, whether it is the work they've done helping communities that have faced floods in the united states. it is in some ways the smithsonian has this amazing group of people who know how to preserve and conserve and how to say things that are threatened. the smithsonian has its own version of monument men and women whose job it is to basically show that we can -- [inaudible] one of the things i'd like to see more of his a close relationship with the smithsonian in the military, especially the telly museums and the like because in some ways while there are relationships in ad hoc. people building the marine corps museum but it really is -- and i'd like to see more of that because most people don't know the largest collections of the smithsonian that are not natural history, because they have 5 million butterflies but our natural history came from -- so much of the smithsonian came from the military, wars, exploration. the largest collections in the museum of american history that i once oversaw military history collections. so there there's been lony from the 1880s to today. >> a couple questions here i'm going to try to collapse, the first of which is on the current access to the museum, and donna wonders if it's easy to get into the museum these days given covid? and then the second question is, if you could talk to efforts at ballinger engagement at the museum. how have volunteers been expanded in the museums of programs and activities? >> well i think the museum -- everything is virtual but to be honest it's still one of the hardest tickets and when i open it, it's very gratifying but it's also very interesting because all these people,, because i'm now more visible and i got a call -- this woman who said she wanted tickets to the museum and i said, my staff to let me do that anymore. she said, -- i was your girlfriend in seventh grade. she said her name, i don't remember her at all. when you're 13 you remember every crash you had. i didn't believe this but it was such a good life i gave her tickets. so i think i am flattered and humbled that people want to get in the museum. we expected 4000 people a day. we got 8000 people a day. and it is the most diverse museum of anyone in the world. what really moves them more than anything else is 30%, 30% of the people who come to the museum say they have never been to a museum as an adult, and this is the first time they've done it. so it really provides the kind of educational opportunity, the kind of interaction. because you know museums are at their best, they inform communities. people come together, they know each other about an artifact or an exhibition or a public program, and the conversation is taken in so many different directions. that's what happens time and time again at the museum. so i'm so pleased and we will probably open winner whee in d.c. but i am so please that people find it's become a pilgrimage. it's become a site that has people understanding the challenge of race in this country today. so i feel very fortunate that i was part of the group of people that got to do something that mattered. >> and involving volunteers. >> volunteers, sorry about that, i get carried away. one of the things that was really important to me was to create an extremely active and large volunteer program, a program that -- [inaudible] but also a lot of researchers. a lot of people do, one of the things we do is we transcribe the papers, papers that are really important but hard to read and hard to access. so the volunteers can we have thousands of volunteers who come and do that. now they do it from home. so the goal was i wanted as many people as possible in the museum, and i felt that the volunteers were a large group, they became our best champions, and so in some ways one of the things i love the most and i miss the most is being able to walks to the museum and just hang out with the volunteers. i learned so much. i moved they are 85 and they are 35. and so i really think that i always think you can tell the success of a museum by how diverse and how excited its volunteer corps is. >> i'm going to try to squeeze in a couple more questions. i think we are going to close to our deadline. norman is thinking that recent attacks on voting rights, and he asks how does the museum continue to address contemporary issues related to civil and human rights? >> i think it is both drawing from the work that's in the museum that talks about what it meant to struggle for voting rights, how long i history it was, how many people suffer, how much loss there was, how much creativity there was in trying to figure out how to achieve that struggle. and one of the things the museum makes clear is that -- may be evolution from slavery to freedom there were two things that wiki. when was education and the second was protecting your freedom using the vote. and so we tell that story. they also do really nice job of programs that connect the past to the present. for example, i know that john lewis gave us some are true, his involvement with both the voting rights act that 65 but also the struggle to protect -- so we discussed we try to make sure there's those connections. we think the african-american museum has, i think you know, it's a benefit. people expect it, to have a contemporary presence. so as long as you build that in then i think you can fulfill those needs that people are expecting. >> this is related to this question is, question is what's our elevator pitch for the international african american museum in charleston? if you're put on the spot how do you make that pitch to someone as to why they need to visit and to support the international african american museum in charleston, south carolina. >> there are thousands in history who hurt us because we can't hear. the story that you tell on the wharf is one of those silences. but if we can hear that silence, if we can be brave enough to confront that history, if we can learn from both the pain and the resiliency of those who experienced that, if we could learn from the collaboration of the cross racial lines to end slavery or the struggle for freedom, if we can do that, what a nation we could be. you can do that really very well at the museum. >> if you use that you have to pay me. [laughing] >> are there plans with the african-american museum in d.c., either traveling exhibits or other plans for something along those lines? >> there have been 25 traveling exhibitions. even before the museum open i started a traveling exhibition. so we're doing those traveling exhibitions in a traditional way as well is now more virtual exhibitions. because my belief was that if the african-american museum in d.c. is successful, but it doesn't have other institutions, then it fails. so what help the museum is, it's the beacon that draws people to washington but that pushes them back to charleston come to detroit come to los angeles. what we realized and i think is one of the great contributions is the museum is still creating conversations around history here what we see is after the museum is opening more attendance and african-american museums and museums that talk about civil war, for example. so my notion was what we're going to do is use the museum to sort of beat the drum for the power of history and recognize that while there are stores that are told at the museum, you need to see how those stories play out in charleston or play out in other museums and other communities. so that's my key. >> here's a set of question. this must be a riley relative, the question is have you ever met anyone who does not know when to quit and what it means, or the meaning of the word no? joe reilly. >> joe reilly is no doubt a friend but a special guy, that the times he served as mayor, his vision for this museum, his desire to shows expertise for teaching. i wish we could all be a joe reilly. >> well, there's a probably nearly a dozen other mostly comments, thanks and praise for your work. secretary bunch, but i'm going to turn it over to mayor riley to close us out, but thank you so much for taking the time to answer the many questions from the group here. >> it's my pleasure. and as i said you guys got me out of a budget meeting, so believe me, i'm a happy guy. i also want to say that, and i mean this in all sincerity, my profound respect for the mayor, my profound respect for the -- history and -- the citadel kuwait city, made me better as historian, as a scholar and so i look forward to being able to even fifa stand in the back to peek over someone's shoulder for when this museum opens, because it's going to be a special day, it's going to continue to open the country, better understand itself, help the country a limited corners of doctors, find silence that gave no more be solid. in many ways this museum will be transformative. >> great, thank you. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] enhancing our society. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] all around great person. thank you so much. >> thank you. my only hope is when they run me out of the smithsonian you will let me come to charleston. [inaudible] >> right. listen, thank you all very history. gloria browne-marshall is a professor of constitutional law at john jay college of criminal justice in new york there. she teaches constitutional law race and the law evidence gender and justice before that. she was adviser college. teaching africana studies she is a civil rights attorney.