Transcripts For CSPAN3 Memorializing Salem 20170813

You all have in your folders cards like this which are an invitation to commemorative activities, a celebration at the witch trials memorial tomorrow. I am here to introduce our keynote speaker. I have noticed that we have not really talked about the people who have sponsored this symposium. I mentioned the Salem Award Foundation. I have to tell you, donna has been driving this bus. [applause] i know she has pulled the entire History Department along in her wake. I wanted to make sure she got credit for the incredible amount of hard work that it takes to pull off an event like this. It has been a wonderful day. On to what i am supposed to be talking about. I am glad our keynote address is in the afternoon rather than in the morning because, i think, we have all had time to stop and think about what the problems we face in commemorating something that happened 325 years ago. Perhaps nobody has given it more thought than our speaker today, dr. Kenneth foote. I had planned to pull a few choice nuggets from his resume to use for my introduction but that has not been possible. I am not an academic. I am from the business world, where the mantra is a onepage resume. I was somewhat unprepared for these 10 pages. Instead, i am using a little bit from what he has posted on the yukon website where he chairs the department of geography. He joined the faculty there in 2013. American and european landscape history, and issues of geography in higher education. Instructional technology. He is here today because of his interest in what we might call the landscape of tragedy. His book, if you have not read it, i recommend it, it really awakened us to think about how we deal with places where bad things happened. How those sites are marked or not marked continues to be one of his main areas of interest. He is a graduate of the university of wisconsin, masters and his doctorate at the university of chicago. He has authored 10 other books. Enough articles and chapters and contributions if i listed them, it would take up his entire speaking time. Prior to joining the faculty, he had been associated with the university of texas in austin and the university of colorado at boulder. He has been the president of several geographic associations and has won numerous prizes. I know we are all going to value what he has to say today on how what happened here in salem has played out across america. It is my honor to introduce dr. Kenneth foote. [applause] dr. Foote thank you very much, shelby. I would also like to thank the Salem Award Foundation for helping organizing this as well. Maybe give a call out to the Geography Program at salem state. [applause] it is an honor for me to be here at salem state for this symposium. My first visit to salem was in 1984. It changed my life. I have been haunted by what i found in 1984. What i saw has shaped much of my research over the last 30 years. For the next 45 minutes, i would like to focus on the four questions on the first slide. Other sites have been stigmatized. Salem is not alone in that context. The first thing i want to do is focus on comparisons between salem and other sites. I would also like to focus on why it is that sites like salem are so difficult to commemorate. I would like to go from there about the comments that came from the previous panel. We have zombies walking down the streets and so forth. [laughter] i do not think i have to say a lot more. It does raise the issue of what comes next. Over the last couple of weeks, i have been reviewing the growth and i do not think there can be enough material on the salem witch trials. Im impressed by the number of books, websites, movies, television that up and focusing on witchcraft. I was a bit humbled by the people on the panel and you gave lectures earlier today because we have so much expertise here in the room today that i do not want to claim to be an expert on salem. My expertise is as a geographer. Do not take me to task if i get a name wrong. We really do have some wonderful experts. My interest in geography comes from the standpoint of geography. I was very much interested in this study of the sense of place, the deep emotional bonds that people develop to places where they live. It might be a persons home, where you go as a retreat with your family. It may be a place like marblehead, a wonderful place for recreation. Or it might be someplace you might enjoy going with friends. Domino park is one of the centers of community. It may just be a place i have this photograph around walden pond. People go there by the hundreds to honor thoreau. When i first came to salem, i was interested in these ideas. I just came up from boston and it was a day trip. I spent the day looking at maritime history and industrial history, interesting places because there was nothing much about the witchcraft episode. This is 1984. At one point, i asked people, where did the executions take place . People said, we do not know, nobody really knows. I find that curious. I was in germany and i was in berlin to give a talk and i was struck again by the highly stigmatized sites. The wall in central berlin was put up to isolate sites of nazi power so people could not get to them. That summer was the time of one of the worst mass murders in American History. The shootings at a Mcdonalds Restaurant in california. What happens when these events occur . How do these events affect the emotional bonds . Do people feel a deeper attachment . Since then, ive been very interested in this idea of how events of violence and tragedy affect the bonds we have with place. I visited dozens, hundreds of sites in the United States and europe, because much of my work is in Central Europe and hungary. I visited sites of individual tragedies, murders, mass murders. I have also visited sites like this mine disaster. All of the men in the community were lost. I have also visited sites associated with the revolutionary war, the civil war where we have different approaches to the portrayal of history. The history of japanese americans, chineseamericans, hispanic americans. The Branch Davidian fire, that horrible event near waco, texas, where 69 people died in a fire. Leading to the bombing in Oklahoma City. After many of these visits, there is no single outcome when tragedy strikes. Some events are so important, they become judge does so important, they become sanctified. They become so important, people dedicated, consecrated for that particular event. The opposite side, we have obliteration. Rectification is the most common outcome. We do not see any great significance in this event and we will put it back right. There is another outcome which i call designation. Something important happened here but it did not quite it is not quite enough to push it toward sanctification. That designation is a step toward sanctification a little bit later and i have some examples. We will come back to gettysburg in a minute. In the 1920s, the terrorist attack on wall street in new york, the last physical evidence of that bombing, a few shrapnel scars along wall street. That has faded from view. We have the chicago river, a cruise ship tipped over as it was loading. It claimed as many passengers as the titanic. If you looked on the right hand corner of this powerpoint, you will see an important point. Sanctification occurs rarely but people think it happens more often because it is so visible. We tend to see sites that are sanctified because they are very visible in the landscape. We see them because they are very pronounced. They only occur typically in about three sorts of situations. The first one is when there is a moral or ethical lesson. I point to gettysburg because it is one of the most decorated landscapes in america. Many of you have probably visited and every engagement is marked on the ground at gettysburg. It may be a sense of community loss. I have a memorial in wisconsin, destroyed in the largest forest fire in u. S. History. Heroes and martyrs, president s, great leaders, even great entertainers john lennon, we have Strawberry Fields in central park just across from where he was shot. Those sorts of things. Sanctification is important because it means we are setting aside a part of the environment and setting it aside for a purpose. This is dedicated to the memory or remembering or commemorating some event or person. Designation is a step often times on the way toward sanctification and the examples i have, i can tell you about that process. The first photograph is in memphis, tennessee. That is the balcony where Martin Luther king jr. Was assassinated. That is why it was marked for years and years and years. That marking was done by the owner, walter bailey, and he lost his wife the next day. It took 20 years for him to move this toward sanctification, getting support from the city of memphis, the state of tennessee, and finally the National Government to turn this into a civil rights educational center. The lower lefthand corner, one of the japaneseamerican internment camps, also was a step from sanctification. The families went back as a pilgrimage and those pilgrimages were very important in providing restitution for the families. Rectification is the most common. We do not see that significance in some of the daytoday violence and daytoday tragedies that go on in American Society and many of these sites are put right. I was not born yet when this crash occurred in madison, wisconsin, but my mother told stories about it because she heard it happen. The window to our kitchen looked out toward the University Arboretum and she saw the plane spiraling in. The last one of the four is obliteration. Events seen as so shameful, tragedies involving gross negligence, taboo subjects, are so shocking and shameful that communities try to they do not want to be reminded of it. In the upper righthand corner, the site of the homestead of ed gein. He is the inspiration for norman bates in psycho. He is also the inspiration for the texas chainsaw massacre. When he was caught and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward, the neighbors were upset because people kept coming to visit and they were vandalizing the farmstead and someone went out and burnt all the buildings. That is what it looks like. In newtown, connecticut, the horrible mass murder at the elementary school. When the building was torn down, the contractors walled off the entire site. The contractors had to agree to keep it completely anonymous so nobody would visit those sites. They have decided on putting up a memorial there. It has been a struggle for the community to lose so many children and teachers. This is a case just across the river from cincinnati. It was a very popular supper club and the owner was careless. A fire broke out and claimed almost 300 lives. Nobody has been able to rebuild on that site. What i found in my research, it is constantly moving back and forth. We can see these changes occurring through time. An example of like to show is an invention, the way we see the national past. The lower righthand corner, a site you may have walked on. This is the precise location where the revolutionary war broke out. This is a test. Where is it . The boston massacre. The center of that walkway is the precise place. That was not marked for another 100 years. Now we have gotten past the first 100 years. Now it is time to mark the sites associated with the war. Bunker hill, we see this big obelisk, that almost never was completed. It was finished in 1875. That took a long time. This was raised by private donations. This was not done by the National Government. This is a significant event because the american troops held their ground. Then we get very distinctive points. The photograph second from the right is the High Water Mark of the confederacy. This is the point where the civil war began to go in the favor of the union. Right in the middle of the war, troops were turned back. Very specific in terms of telling the story of the nation. I point to this last slide on the righthand side because that is the site, we are looking from the custis mansion at Arlington National cemetery across from John Kennedys grave. This was the weekend after Jacqueline Kennedy onassis had been buried. By the time of the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, when Jacqueline Onassis Jacqueline Kennedy was picking that position of the grave, she wanted it to align with the lincoln memorial. She wanted to be able to see the National Capital to the right and the white house to the left representing John Kennedys contributions to the nation. The same thing happens in other places. I used to live in texas. I used to be focused on texas history. Texans are very proud of the texas war of independence and this was in 1835 and 1836. The commemoration emerged very gradually. The first commemoration was 50 years later. They wanted to be buried with their comrades near houston. By 1905, the alamo, which had been completely abandoned, becomes curated by the daughters of the republic of texas. 100 years later, you have the tallest masonry obelisk in the world. Over a span of 100 years, this becomes an incredible invention of how the tradition has been built and described. It happens in places like chicago. In chicago, the city flag has two blue stripes, one representing Lake Michigan and one representing the chicago river. The century of progress, 1933. Two others represent the chicago fire of 1871. Another one represents fort dearborn, which represented a massacre. In the photograph on the left, you see the fire academy of chicago. The fire academy, you see a little sculpture. That is called pillar flame. That stands on the exact point where the chicago fire began. The exact spot. After all of these years, they see it as a point of pride because after the chicago fire, chicago modernized its police and fire programs. It is a starting point for the modern city of chicago. The fire changed the city government, police and fire and so forth so they see it as a mark of progress. Many of these things, we can see looking at the landscape, what i find interesting visiting salem is how the witchcraft episode is described. This is not just the markers on the battlefield but the whole landscape has been named. We can look on this map and we can find important engagements in that battle. If you look at the center of the map, you may recognize the peach orchard. There is also the wheatfield. These are major features which have been marked in terms of memorials. I was reminded of some of the work of david lowenthal. That is very true here for gettysburg. We can contrast this with an event that happened a year later in colorado. The sand creek massacre. It is during the civil war and there is a lot of fighting going on. Young men are attacking white settlements. Many of the older adults are staying home with children. It escalates in 1864, militias are gathered in colorado and they slaughter an entire village early in the morning. This was recognized as shameful almost immediately. This is really way out in the plains of colorado. You can see from the photograph that there is nothing marked. This has disappeared. This reminded me, this idea of shaping of the past worthy of public commemoration in the present is it is very important to keep that in mind in remembering things. I have to remind us all that very often these debates revolve around where and what to do. What to do up there, what to do here in salem. That is the focus of debate. What about salem . I am not an expert in salem witchcraft episodes. In many cases, there is great tension going on here between sanctification and obliteration. We know there is something important we need to remember about the salem witchcraft episode. This is very difficult to come to terms with because it is something that is shameful and shocking when a Community Turns on itself and kills people. It is worth reflecting on some of the reasons i think it is difficult to resolve that tension from other sites i have looked at around the country. One of the major points of tension is whenever we memorialize an event like this, it calls attention to the perpetrators and the killers themselves. In the upper lefthand corner, it is the dedication of Columbine High School memorial for those who died in the columbine shooting in 1999. This was put up in 2007. People really objected to it. A couple of people push this forward because people said, we love to honor the victims but by doing that, we are calling attention to the killers. We are putting up a shrine to those two High School Students who killed our neighbors. This site in the middle is the house of terror in budapest. It was the headquarters for the gestapo and it was taken over by the secret police after the second world war. People said, look, great, we should Say Something about the victims. Doesnt this create a shrine . Doesnt this create a shrine for the people who have oppressed all of these people . I point to the controversy in dallas, texas. People said, we do not want that building. That is where oswald was situated when he shot the president. If you create a museum in that building, you are creating a shrine oswald. I think very often, when debates starts about what to do after these tragedies, there is an attempt to other the killers. Lets dismiss this as next ordinary event that was caused by some outsider. And so, we think of president lincolns killer, a deranged fanatic or a crazed anarchist shoots president mckinley or a homophobic bombs olympic park. It is interesting that because you can explain away the violence by explaining the way the perpetrator. Was not part of our community. It is very difficult to do that because it is a kind of denial. It is difficult to do that if people come from the community. In salem, this happened so long ago, really. Think of what has happened. The maritime power, the industry, house of seven gables. A lot has passed. Maybe it is just not necessary to bring up the witchcraft episode. I do not agree with that. Sometimes people say, it is time to let that rest. Another thing is that a lot of people might say, compared to the violence in early america, the witchcraft episode does not amount to very much. Compared to what happened in europe where you have 50,000 witches or supposed witches killed, this is not a very big outbreak. I think of the mystic massacre people argue if it was genocide. To have you have the puritans going in and murdering a whole village. Down there at the bottom is what that site looks like today. It is a suburban street and there is nothing there at all. Theres the fairfield swap site. That finished them off. We think of the massacre in deerfield, which was a brutal fighting and we have one single memorial in deerfield for that event. I think this comes to an important i think sanctification point. Is very difficult when this event occurs because police and military forces have turned on their own people that they are supposed to protect, the citizens. When it turns on itself, it is particularly difficult to sanctify. That also applies to the situation here in salem. When neighbor turns on neighbor, it presents a difficult issue in terms of sanctification. I point to the bath school bombing. This was actually the treasurer of the school board blew up the school, claimed about 50 lives. I may be off, but it was a substantial loss of life. Or the race riots after the first world war. , the horribleh oute is running the negro of tulsa. This was not the only race riot of that period. In 1923 you have neighbors turning on neighbors and chasing these africanamericans out of this area in florida. I think this comes up with events that relate to police violence. I have this example of this horrible event where the Chicago Police working with the fbi assassinated fred hampton and mark clark. I think that photograph in the lower left corner is one of the more horrible photographs that i will show you today because i think those Police Officers are actually smiling. They know they just got away with murder. They killed two panthers and they were never penalized for doing that. We have this terrible bombing in philadelphia in 1985 where the police bomb the separatist group on the west side and they killed 11 people, including five children. No one ever went to jail for that. These sorts of things are very difficult and they have to do , with other major events in u. S. History. I think of the haymarket riot where you have the police turning on citizens. They want the eight hour workday. With the haymarket affair, we have two separate readings. On the lower left corner we have the reading of the people who were executed for leading that. We can question that legal decision. That monument on the lower left is the cemetery where they are buried, and on the righthand side is a Police Monument and their defense of chicago. Even today, that is a highly contested event. Somewhatnts that are similar, i think of bleeding kansas where you have neighbors killing neighbors. You have characters like john brown, who was so dedicated to abolition he was willing to kill , his own neighbors who were slavers. His whole family was dedicated to ending slavery. You have this back and forth. Fighting across missouri back and forth. In many cases these are tensions that still exist today. This also happens to events like sand creek. This is my son andrew reading a plaque at the base of a Civil War Monument at the statehouse in denver, colorado and this was memorial put up in 1809 honoring the great heroic battles of colorado troops. Listed on that monument is the battle of sand creek. In 1999, the Senate Finally passed a resolution and said, we thisot going to take down memorial, but we are going to describe the fact there is no way we can describe sand creek as a battle. It needs to be described as a massacre. It is really quite striking. Maybe it is something that could be mirrored here in salem. The cheyenne have created a spiritual healing run that is run every year around thanksgiving, close to when you massacre occurred. Had thert where they sand creek massacre site and they run to denver. They use that as a way of talking through some of these issues about memory. So what makes salem different . I do not have to say very much. I just grabbed a few illustrations of that which imagery. Hopeless focus hocus p bewitched, they dealt with witchcraft. It is quite striking because is this the way we want to remember a key lesson about wrongful persecution and religious tolerance . This is something that is highly questionable because there is that defense that people do not reflect on what they see here. They see the kitsch side of things. Maybe it is time to think about how we might do that. I think there are ways forward. I can think of many sites that attract thousands of visitors. Three weeks ago, i was at auschwitz in poland and there were huge crowds there. Auschwitz is treated as a cemetery, as it should be. And there are rules about going into that site and how to behave and how to act. People follow them. The guides are scrupulous about that. There are things you do not do inside these caps because it would be disrespectful to those who died. I also think of the World Trade Center site in new york city. You know what it is like there. You have probably all been there. It is almost spiritual in some ways. People assume a certain attitude toward that site when they walk across the plaza. Last standk of the hill on the little bighorn battlefield. People would not imagine having a zombie walk down last stand hill. They wouldnt allow it. It is a National Park site. It would be completely inappropriate. These sites of tragedy are i think important. They are points of reconciliation, reflection, and remembrance. The little bighorn battlefield, good case in point, a few years ago the National Park service allow the dakota sioux and other native american groups to begin marking the sites of where some of the warriors fell during the battle. They had never previously been marked. Marking death sites is not part of the plains indian culture, but they said ok, we want to , mark these sites. We will make that concession because it is important to present our side of the story and how we fought to defend our way of life. So the little bighorn battlefield has become one of these points of reconciliation between the plains indians and the u. S. Government. Angel island in San Francisco bay is being restored as a memorial to this horrible period of the chinese exclusion act. This is where they interned people, the chinese, and sent them back to china. So these are important points of reconciliation. I think there may be ways forward, the middle ground because these sites of , sanctification are important. For several reasons. First of all i think it is very important to honor the victims and survivors and the families. Just like shelby is working on collecting the testimony of descendents of those involved in the witchcraft episode, these are important sites of people who have been involved for many generations. It is also very important to recognize heroes and martyrs. To say, these are people who stood up and said no. They ended these trials. They stopped this from happening and we need to be able to , recognize that. Even in these awful events of tragedy. I also think it is important to keep the memory alive across generations. Going back to auschwitz, many of you may have participated in the march of the living. This is an annual event in april. Thousands of people march between auschwitz i and burkett how are and auschwitz ii. It is about a mile. They are saying we are alive, we have survived. This is something that happened. This happened during the second world war. But we will not let this continue. We will not let this go on further. This is something we need to continue. This idea of continuing the memory across generations is very important. As i move towards the close today, i think it is important to see that public memory is more than the memorials. The Public Memorials are just a starting place. They anchored traditions. They anchor our activities. They mark the spots of events. I put down there a quote from an article i wrote with a colleague on the geography of memory. Public memory has to do with contemporary experience. At has to do with visiting a battle site or celebrating a centennial or dedicating a memorial. It has to do with the precise search of things we have been dealing with today. It gives people a place to come. It gives people a place to remember events and also to reconcile. This left can photograph is the dedication of the Columbine High School memorial. The students were so proud. They were wearing their sports clothing. They were coming because they were honoring the people who died. The photograph on the right is from the dedication of the Oklahoma City bombing memorial. Talking with some of the rescuers and so forth, they said i could not come back to Oklahoma City until today. It is the first time ive been able to be back because it had such an effect on my life. I came back because this is a good thing they are doing in Oklahoma City. I might also point to Something Like penn state university. These are photographs taken on the 40th anniversary. Kent state as an annual vigil. They have a midnight walk all the way around campus that comes back to the site where students died. You see in the upper lefthand corner the speakers in the afternoon sitting on the hill were a daffodil is planted for each soldier who died in the vietnam war. You can see the vigil there at sandy shores. Those are member of her sorority singing around her death site there in the parking lot at kent state. Professor jerry lewis leading, he was there. He was trying to deflect the national guard. I think as we look into the future, i have to say that there are other cities facing as many ghosts and skeletons as salem is, honestly. I was very struck. I would recommend if you have a chance some time that you listen to the full Youtube Video of the orleans about the removal of the confederate monuments in new orleans. New orleans, the controversy is removing memorials. In salem, it is the opposite. Putting up memorials. But he makes such a stunning argument about why this issue of memorials and public memory are so important. He says century old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place. This removal is, however, about showing the whole world that we are as a city and a people able to a knowledge, understand, reconcile, and most importantly choose a Better Future for ourselves making straight what has been crooked and making white and making right what is wrong. I think that very much applies to some of the debates we are having and feeling about addressing issues that happened 325 years ago. I think it is imperative for us to look ahead. In closing, i will point back to bridget bishop. We are meeting here to honor her memory today. I can point to so many sites in the United States just in the last couple of years where we have signs with peoples names on them because they have been killed for various reasons. Because they are gay or because they were protecting muslims because they were africanamerican. Think this memory work involves more than memorial. It involves engagement, education, community action, and so on. What i find so exciting is there seems to be a commitment in trying to carry this forward. I really do believe that there is some imperative in making sure there is a way of representing the witchcraft episode in terms of this history that can be engaging and also educational and can keep , the memory going for future generations. Thank you very much. [applause] do we have time for a couple of questions . Absolutely. Dr. Foote yes . I was wondering, we have heard a lot of this taste for the salem halloween celebrations and the like. But it seems to me there is an element that is similar to what has become of the memorializing of stonewall in new york. There was a culture of oppression and an event that was an attack on people by a repressive culture, and the response has been a parade of inyourface defiance. In a sense, we in salem are seeing a parade of defiance of sinning and witchcraft in the face of a puritan attack on decency and morals. So i was wondering if there is any kind of way in which the etc. , couldenings, be considered a sort of recognition . Dr. Foote i do not know if i would draw a parallel to stonewall. Stonewall is important. The idea of inyourface protests is a way of raising the issues there. In working on his lecture i , could not think of any city quite like salem that has gained so much from developing. I dont think it is possible to change that because it is so important to the tourism agency. I think it is almost the need to follow a separate path, like the discussion today of Peabody Essex institute or some other way. You cant displace that tourism to try and find another path that allows people to learn more about the event. It is a good possible comparison. Lets see, there was another. The parallel i keep thinking of because of the work i do, the plantation museums across the antebellum south. There i think you do see sites whose tourism for the last 100 years has been based on this nostalgic, genteel image of the antebellum south. Unlike salem, they havent dealt with slavery at all. It is a really uncomfortable fit for many of these places where you end up seeing either sites seem to completely give themselves over to a history of slavery, or sites emerge now to talk about slavery, or it becomes this sort of alternative experience in that the antebellum culture piece and the slavery piece never really meet up. I am struck by your discussion of shrines, thinking mount vernon and monticello these , early sites were created as literally shrines to enslavers. That is where i keep going. Dr. Foote those are really good examples. I could have brought up some examples that deal with the very contested legacy of slavery. Theres a lot of the same tensions there. I think youre absolutely right in watching what is happening with these plantation narratives and so on. My only hope is that what is beginning to happen is these counter narratives, that people are using those plantation museums to posit a different sort of narrative. It is not happening all over. But it is happening at a few of the ones in louisiana and so forth. It does not affect places Like Washington and jefferson. Theyre still has been only a modest change in that. You see there is a real reluctance to engage. That is not what people come there as i was doing my research with visitors and their comments they make and they want , to come to be scarlett ohara. [laughter] they dont want to go there to be manny. That is not the experience they want. That is part of what we are dealing with in salem. They want to come for the revelry, not for the more somber aspects of the history. Dr. Foote we could look more generally at africanAmerican History. The examples i gave from the race riots and so forth, for the most part people dont want to talk about that episode. That was a brutal period. There are only a couple around the country where there is any note. Rosewood, tulsa. People dont want to be reminded that their city did this, that there were people involved. Thank you very much. What if a site has been sanctified but people are not , treating it that way . That is what is happening to our witch trials memorial. Dr. Foote you need to set some rules. Likely the salem foundations steward of our memorial. [inaudible] dr. Foote that is an interesting point because in a lot of these sites, the behavior is patrolled. They say this is acceptable and this is it. You cant do that here. Whether there is photography allowed or not. I think it is partly because this has become such a profane area that it is hard to enforce that now. I think the site for the memorial at the cemetery is very striking. I made a special trip to see that when it was finally dedicated. It is a very appropriate site i think and a wonderful design that is contemplative. But because it is they are in the middle of town and because there is no way to market off it offtrol to mark and control that behavior, i think it is a constant problem. You are right, the graveyard has become it is not a good situation. Maybe addressing some of those issues is necessary. For example the cemetery is , closed off. Or it is only open at a particular time. It does set the tone for the interpretation. Other questions before we finish . Do we need a microphone . Here it comes. Thank you. I loved the talk. I was particularly struck when you were talking about gettysburg. A friend of mine used to work for the National Park service. Weve had several discussions about this. I see a lot of similarities between gettysburg and salem. These places have this one huge horrible event happen in the town that really sort of changed the course of American History and the course of that towns history and how people think about the town and how the town things about itself. I think the one thing and again, these are two places that seem to me maybe in a different way make their living off of people who come to the city because of that event. That despite a wonderful college, gettysburg would dry up and blow away if it were not for the battlefield. I think about that, but the one way that gettysburg treats itself differently the first time i went to gettysburg, i was struck because even before i got to the national cemetery, i felt like i had been on a cemetery the whole day. You have the monuments and memorials throughout the city. There are more than 1000 of them. Even as you enter the town, they are everywhere. It puts you in this mood as you enter the city, reverence and respect of hallowed ground. Unfortunately i think it is a thing that is lacking in salem. Dr. Foote in gettysburg, you can go on haunted tours. You can they have these events. Out there on the battlefield, i have seen visitors policing other visitors. They think this is inappropriate. You are supposed to be on the pads you are not allowed in. Certain areas and not in other areas and people are conscious , of that. There has not been a problem of vandalism at gettysburg and people are very respectful when they are out there in the battlefield. But in the town or elsewhere, otheran have a entertainment. It is a very close comparison but it is treated very differently. Within several months of the announcement, someone showed up and asked for permission to dig in their backyard. At which point, the resident said i am sorry you cannot do that. The person said, i will just go next door to the City Property and dig there. He was told, no you wont do that, no as long as there is a police force in salem. For reasons it is hard to fathom, we have an uphill battle. Dr. Foote i have seen some sites that i visited where they are guarded. There is controversy. Sites in hungary and germany that are guarded because of the friction over the memorialization. I would hate to see that happen here. Maybe one more question. I would like to ask you, you were talking about the removal of the statues of Jefferson Davis and robert e. Lee from new orleans. The thing about that, it seems to be the city of new orleans, because it is heavily africanamerican city, they could do more to promote African American people who have really made a difference in new orleans. My concern is we could go to every major Southern City and statues of robert e. Lee at stonewall jackson, but what is that really going to countless . They were people who fought for a cause. The culture of slavery predates them a long time before. Robert e. Lee was considered a model student and teacher at west point. I just wonder how we address this whole issue. Foote i think it has been tremendous change in terms of recognizing africanAmerican History, and to some degree, the slave past. One of the things i wrote about ground was how little was done in that area because we were not recognizing those great individuals. That has changed substantially over the last 20 years. We are seeing sites dedicated to the heroes and cause of the civil rights movement. I think the battle for Martin Luther king was incredibly important in terms of setting precedent for the United States. Now many names and buildings and a number of institutions. It has started but it has not , gone far enough. My hope is that it will continue long into the future to recognize in more record in more representation who contributed to the growth of the United States. Thank you all. [applause] i just have a few closing thoughts. I am full of gratitude. I am full of gratitude to my fellow committee members. Shelby heights, meredith george, beth behringer, and all of my , bradful colleagues austin, pat baker, and all of the brilliant presenters. I am full of gratitude to all of you. I think that the spirit and energy and curiosity and concern was very evident throughout this day. I think it was a wonderful day for all of us. A nice, respectful day to pay tribute to the victims of 1692. Always want to go forward because you are always supposed to end with a Going Forward we do have an event scheduled, sponsored by salem state in collaboration with salem maritime National Park, on july 20. The whole proctors legs team will be there. It will be a forum on the whole process, discovery and commemoration. That will be a nice corollary to this event. Also let me tell you about the salem awards event tomorrow. It will mark their 25th anniversary on charter street from 12 00 until 3 00. [inaudible] [laughter] ok. A lot to think about, and i look forward to seeing you all at future events, and thank you for coming. [applause] we have a facebook question from peter, are there any resources on the people who died in detroit . The free press did a piece of you can be featured during our next life program, join the program on facebook. And on twitter. Announcer the Smithsonian Institution was originally housed in a redstone building on the National Mall known as the council. Up next, a behind the scenes tour to a space of that is not open to the public with steve berry