any institution could help students understand the arc of our nation s history, it could be the one that i was at. but in order to do that, you had to look at things critically. you had to look at the full history. and you had to understand how decisions were made in the past in order to make decisions better for the future. so we i think very much looked upon an opportunity not to just educate our students but to educate the broader university community that we were a part of. mayor william bell, i appreciate you being on and ken ruscio as well. it s an important discussion. i appreciate it. up next, my panel s take on this. should the statues stay or go? we ll be right back. brewed only in golden, colorado. .and nowhere else. ever. coors banquet. that s how it s done.
the full history told, we wanted to put them in a museum where we could provide some context and some explanation about what they were and what purpose they served in a previous time. mayor bell, i think that ken raises such an interesting point. i don t think a lot of people understand and, frankly, i ve just been learning this. when i grew up and visited my relatives in mississippi and we d go to towns and saw statues, i assumed they were built to honor those who had died there fighting for the confederacy but in many cases these were made a hundred years later at a time when the civil rights movement in part to intimidate. exactly. and what people have to understand about birmingham, birmingham is not a civil war city. we were created in 1871, which was after the civil war. we are a civil rights city that stood for equality and human rights for everyone. and so we have no direct correlation to the civil war history.
was going to deliver infrastructure. no. on his first day, he was going to build a great, beautiful wall. no. i don t think the wall should be built but he hasn t accomplished it and so when you have to distract people from that one glaring weakness that you have in your administration, a weakness, by the way, that will lose swing voters and maybe part of his base, you ve got to force the conversation to your sweet spot and his sweet spot is statues andvil burning the american flag is a tried and true issue which is upsetting to many americans but also used by politicians to divide. it s true if you look at the most recent polling that overall support from republicans may still be there for trump but there are still in the mondmout poll and cnn poll and cbs poll, people are frustrated, to steve
presidency which is very dangerous when people start to look at the office of the presidency and no longer respect the moral high ground that it used to represent. one thing that is interesting about the statues and my dad s family comes from mississippi and in his town there s a statue of robert e. lee outside the courthouse. they were put up not to remember and honor the history of the confederacy. they were put up to rewrite the history of the confederacy, to make it some grand, you know, adventure, some grand battle full of honor that it just was not. so it s not a remembrance of history. it s a rewriting of history. and many of these statues were put off to coincide with a surging of the ku klux klan. many of them were put up during the civil rights movement. they were put up to sow fear. but just to the point of what is happening in the republican party right now, this is a party that is in crisis and couldn t happen at a worst time. they are 15 months away from a midterm ele
relationship with the president. according to sources at the white house and 21st century fox, rupert murdoch speaks with the president several times a week. this letter comes after business leaders fled trump s business councils, prompting the president to disband them. president trump taking a firm stand against the removal of confederate monuments, calling it foolish and sad and an assault on our history and american culture. the president lamenting effort to take down our beautiful statues and monuments and the damage being done. several cities have removed or plan to remove monuments honoring confederate leaders. last night lexington, kentucky s, city council unanimously passed a resolution to remove two confederate tributes. overnight, a statue of former chief justice roger tanney was removed from the grounds of the maryland state house. he delivered the majority opinion in the 1857 dred scott indicate which found slaves were not citizens of the united states.