Errand book tour. A conversation with secretary Lonnie G Bunche and scott kelly. Please welcome to the state interim director of the National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture, after spencer crew. Good evening. What a wonderful crowd, its terrific to see this hall filled with so many people and were glad to have you here. I thank you forthe introduction. Is my pleasure to be here and to welcome you into our building to welcome you here on behalf of all the staff and all of you connected with the nationalmuseum of africanAmerican History and culture. The third anniversary. Its a great day for the museum but its a great day that never would have happened without the help of all of you in this audience. Encouraging us as we went forward. Now, several months ago about 90 days ago, i was happily working as a professor at george masonuniversity. I thought i was going to finish my career there. But what happened was i got a phone call, a phone call from a then director of the National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture. A good friend and he told me something that made my heart sink and that was what he was about to be announced as the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. [applause] for me it couldnt have been more exciting. He asked me if i would serve as interim director of the museum as he went across the way to the mall. When i asked him to say do something, all you can do is say yes and thats what i did and its my honor to serve in this role. I hope to serve as a stabilizing force to staff and for all of you as we move forward with this museum and to make sure the momentum that then started by lonnie and by the terrific staff as a go forward you its been a terrific three years since we opened. And those three years its remarkable things have happened. Weve had 6. 5million visitors to the smithsonian , i often tell people we would have more except people wont go home. We, and you stand, you say. We love that i never behind so i dont know what to say about that. At the same time we had 10 million hits on our webpage over that time. We had 20, i say 21 books done by the scholars connected with the museum and were looking forward to continuing our fundraising with our debut fundraising campaign. This will happen to ensure that the quality of the events, the quality of things we do continue to move forward andwe continue to do the kinds of things that make you proudof us. During this critical time , it is our priority and my priority to continue to develop the outstanding programs that have been a part of the activities of this museum. Somehow for the new secretary we expect that will continue to go forward and we will continue to raise the standards you expect of us all along. This evening its a part of the ongoing effort to have great programming and to engage you with the things that are important about this museum and so is my pleasure to introduce bonnie bunche, as the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution share his book of fools errand. [applause] thank you doctor drew. A fools errand book tour is generously supported by toyota. Thank you to toyota. Please follow us on twitter, facebook and instagram at and an aa hc and join the conversation using hashtag reading creating and an aa hc. Now, please welcome this evenings special guest interviewer, an american journalist and author who was a horse correspondent and anchor for cbs news for almost 30 years. He is the author of the 2019 book truth worth telling and the correspondent for the cbs news magazine 60 minutes. Welcome scott kelly. [applause] thank you so much, so great to be here with you tonight. They were setting up a chair that youre sitting in earlier today and i was thinking no waytheyre going to get that many people in. Look at this crowd. Its unbelievable fantastic, thank you for being with us tonight. I particularly want the bank to members of the audience tonight. Lonnie bunches mother is with us this evening. [applause] and lonnies wife is with us this evening. And i want to pay particular notice to them because of course as we all know, behind every great man there is a surprise woman. The first time i came to this site with Lonnie Bunche, we were wearing hard hats. The floor that youre sitting on did not exist. It was an enormous hole in the ground and lonnie was Walking Around and he was saying this is going to be that and this is going to be over here and this is really goingto be spectacular and i didnt say this , but i said to myself in my head old boy. That is a whole lot of dreaming. But look at us now. Three years. Three years the museum has been open, 6 and a half alien visitors in its first three years. It is an unparalleled triumph. Thanks to the dreaming of Lonnie G Bunche. Ladies and gentlemen we have a very short film thats going to help me introduce lonnie to you. Lets have a look at this film about the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Creating this museum gives us a chance to make manifest the dreams of many generations. We call the lost dream. This is a milestone moment not only for the smithsonian but for the united states. The goal of the museum is to make america great, to provide opportunities for us to be made better by the day and for us to move towards the future where it will always matter. They will find that those ideals are only met through sacrifice and struggle. And a belief in a better day. [music] this place is more than a building. It is a dream come true. History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unveiled. And by knowing this other story, we better understand ourselves. I to an american. I want to get a shout out to lonnie. Its important to understand this project would not and could not have happenedwithout his drive , his energy and his optimism. 11 years we have dreamed, toiled for this day. Today, a dream too long the bird is a dream no longer. We guarantee that as long as there is america, this museum will educate, engage and ensure a fuller story of our country will be told on the National Mall. Welcome home. In may the smithsonian named its newest secretary, Lonnie Bunche the third. What i hope is i can help the whole smithsonian be the place people look to not just to visit for answers to help them live their lives. And for me its about opening the smithsonian be the place that is the glue for america and that helps america grapple with who it is, helps us understand itself and its work. Ladies and gentlemen, the author of a fools errand and my dear friend, Lonnie G Bunche the third. [applause] sit down, we got work to do. Your cutting into lonnies time. Lonnie, what a terrific book. Ive been telling everyone that its really not a book about building this magnificent monument, the most magnificent monument of the 21st century if you ask me what its about overcoming adversity. About a team together, about the creativity involved and then mastering all of the obstacles that came along that you didnt see coming. So i just want to ask you first about something that was one of the founding principles that you mentioned in the book. You mentioned a man by the name of Quincy Jenkins who had lived in a shack that had once been a home to enslaved persons and Mister Jenkins told you, he said words that have shaped my career. If you are a historian, then your job better be to help people remember not just what they want to remember but what they need toremember. How did that inform the work that you did here at the museum . Quincy jenkins was a sharecropper who was the grandson of enslaved women who lived on a plantation his whole life outside of Georgetown South carolina and when i went to do research and interview him, he basically wasnt sure who i was, what i did but then at the end of the day the said its really important to make sure that you dont just give people what they think they want. But you give people what they really need and for me, what that meant was how do i make sure that everybody understands that they are shaped and in profound ways by the africanAmerican Experience and how do we make sure that the museum gives people things that not just commemorate and celebrate but challenges, prods, demands that they look in all the dark corners of the American Experience. Quincy jenkins taught me that. One of the things you told me several years ago when we get our first story about the museum for 60 minutes wasthat in your mind , this was never going to be if you will simply museum of slavery. I think it was important to realize that slavery essentially to understanding American Experience , africanAmerican Experience not the totality of the black experience that for me, i was trying to find the right tension, between resiliency , optimism, pain and understanding. I wanted this museum to be a place that would allow you to cry when you pondered the pain of slavery or segregation but i also wanted you to tap your toes, to Aretha Franklin or to somebody from the hiphop world i had no idea who it was. But the goal was simple, to say i wanted this museum to tell a full complex teacher, a picture that wasnt a simple answer but it had a lot of shades of gray, a lot of ambiguity life. You were living in chicago when this came around. And you work at all sure you wanted to take this job and theres a line in the book that i just love. The charge of conceptualizing and building a National Museum, one potentially on the National Mall was frightening enough but even more unsettling was the reality that this was a museum of no. What did you mean by that . This is a museum that started with nothing area it had one member of the staff besides myself. It had no collections. It had no idea that we would be where we are today. There was no money raised and candidly, there were very few people really believe this would happen. So my notion was i willing to take that leap to believe that we no matter how long it took, we can turn the know into a place that matter. Thought for a moment about the incredible beauty of the building itself, the architecture of the building itself. You were a lot of different plans to go over and people have decided that they knew what he museum should look like. This is my favorite from the book. The most original unsolicited idea was sent to our offices in 2008. As i sat at my desk, executive assistant Deborah Schreiber miller or as her role as linchpin of the museum and later chapters struggled to bring in a large package of architectural drawings. There were more than 100 pages that detailed what this person felt was the perfect structure. As we reviewed the material, i realized that this architect had developed a design of the building in the shape of a black power fist. That design apparently did not make a short list. But tell us how we did and up with this magnificent building . I think the reality is when i saw that drawing of the black power fist i realize there are many things i could get through congress. I dont think i could get through that one but what happened was we realized once we got the spot on the mall that was a big deal. When we get the spot on the wall . Once we had, kinshasa, well was my Deputy Director. We spent a lot of time thinking what should this museum be . Only people came up to us. Should the museum look african. I wasnt sure whatthat meant. Should themuseum look like slavery . Lonnie could you do one thing . Could you make the building white . [laughter] so i said to i said, if you will stand in front of the New York Times and Washington Post and say the africanamerican museum has to be in a white building, then i will do it. [laughter] and he did one of those never mind. [laughter] now, tell us about the design, the bronzecolored panels that are called the corona. What is the root of that design, and how did the corona come about because to me thats what makes this building the eiffel tower, the great wall of china, the kind of thing where if youre standing on the corner looking at this building, i know where i am. I think that its a combination like any origin stor story, there are a bunch of different stories. The idea of this came from one of two places, either it came from conversations we had where we saw pictures of black women whose hands in prayer were at this angle. The architect argues that it comes from a piece that he saw. So im not sure where it came from, but im sure that how we got the corona because basically what happened was once we decided we would do this bronze corona, we realized that you couldnt have solid bronze, that you had to in some ways because solid bronze is too protective. The architect what we would do is use a computer and make holes. Well i paid too much money for holes. We went to new orleans and charleston and took pictures of the iron work that enslaved crafts people and thats whats on the entire building. The building is a homage to the fact that so much of america was built by people we will never know. Every time i see the building, i do see the africanAmerican Experience, but i see all those laborers that have been left out of history. [applause] in fact, the way we met was because of those laborers who had been left out of history. My great 60 minutes producer and i were working on a story about the 150th anniversary of the building of the capitol dome, and was go into the the research, we discovered of course that the dome was built by enslaved people, to a large degree. So we started to try to find a historian who knew about that history, and thats how we found lonnie bunch. So we did the interview for the story. We put the story on the air, and lonnie said, you know, by the way, im working on this other project [laughter] which resulted in two more sensational stories for 60 minutes. The building is beautiful, but it is worthless without a collection. And the collection in my view and from reading the book is almost the more difficult part. Let me just read another moment here from lonnies book. When i became the director of the museum, i had many concerns, many issues that caused me to worry, but nothing, not raising money, hiring staff, managing the bureaucracy of the institution, or dealing with the Museums Council caused me greater concern than the challenge of building a national collection. If there was one axiom that shaped the Museum Careers of curators of color, it was the belief in the objects that illustrate africanAmerican History and culture. Very few museums had significant artifacts and objects that explored race. Therefore, making the crafting of traditional exhibitions very difficult and usually unlikely. Well, now you have 30,000 artifacts 40,000. Okay. Not that im counting. I stand corrected. It is growing every day. There are 40,000 artifacts in this museum. How on earth did that happen . I think we had long conversations early on. Did we have to have artifacts . And we decided this is the smithsonian. People come to see the ruby slipper, the wright flier request flier, so we felt we had to find those collections. I was told a woman had a treasure trove of material and i went to her house and she basically said she had nothing and to get rid of me, she said well go look in the garage. I went into the garage, it was an amazing amount of material, and i never forgot, and i thought well, maybe and then one night i was actually doing something that i do a lot. I fell asleep in front of the television. And suddenly antiques road show was on. I had never seen it, and i thought what a great idea. So we then created our version of antiques road show. We called it saving africanamerican treasures, soundle much more scholarly than the antiques road show, but we did that and then we began to go around the country to help people preserve those 19th century photographs and then people began to bring out materials. And we thought first of all, lets give things to local museums, but if it was in the scholarly part really cool, it came back to d. C. Im amazed about what we were able to find. I will tell one story. I could tell a million of them. It was a story where we had received a call from a collector in philadelphia. And he said that he had material of Harriet Tubman, and i remember thinking nobody has anything of Harriet Tubman but he said come to philadelphia because at the very least i will buy you a philadelphia cheese steak. I thought okay, thats not a bad deal. A bunch of us go. We went and this guy was a huge former penn state Football Player 63, huge, he pulled out pictures of Harriet Tubmans funeral that no one had ever seen. We were stunned. I said oh my goodness. When i said that, he got excited and he punched me. It hurt. [laughter] he pulled out 33 things and punched me every time. Right in the shoulder oh, it hurt, it hurt. And then he pulled out sort of this hymnal all the spirituals that Harriet Tubman would swing, steal away jesus, swing low sweet chariot and suddenly we are crying, im crying from the pain. [laughter] we realized we couldnt afford to buy this stuff. It was priceless. I finally said what is this going to cost . What is it going to take for us to get this material . And he basically said you can take it now. The generosity of people are what allowed us to build a collection. Once we knew we could find things like Harriet Tubman and then i knew we could find other things. Overwhelming of the 40,000 artifacts we found, 70 were from basements, trunks and attics of peoples homes. We changed the way you think about collecting, and because of peoples belief in the smithsonian, that they could trust smithsonian, we found the collection you see in this building tell us about the thing that has so much resonance for me and that is nat turners bible. What a remarkable thing to have existed. So i was giving a speech in a in a plantation in South Carolina and an archaeologist told me i could find you nat turner material. I said no. He calls me every day for six months. Finally i said lets go. He showed me some sites where the insurrection occurred when turner was captured he had a sword that was in the county courthouse and he had a bible. A bible that was given to a family that lost the largest amount of people during the insurrection, and they kept it for years. It was sort of a souvenir for them. Well, i went on television, radio, talking about wouldnt it be great if we had something from nat turner, and this woman called us and our senior curator went down and we had this great bible, but then we had to figure out is it the real thing . We did all this research. Thats the great strength of the smithsonian, People Research the age of the paper, when the bible came from massachusetts, and then we found an image of a piece from the 1880s. We digitized it and the water spots matched. So we knew we had nat turners bible. So for us, once we were able to get Harriet Tubman, nat turner, we few we could find the stuff of history that would matter for people. Now, the price tag of all of this was about half a billion dollars, 500 Million Dollars. The federal government covered half of that. The rest of it you had to come up with. I love this theres so many stories about the generous people who gave their priceless family heirlooms to the collection, and then the generous people who wrote multiMillion Dollars checks to make this happen. And one of them, no surprise to anyone, was oprah winfrey. Let me read this to you. Over time, she became the largest she became the largest financial supporter of the museum. One of my favorite oprah moments occurred when she called in from california during a Council Meeting in 2015, as we neared an important fundraising milestone, there was a discussion as to how we would close the gap. Oprah, who had already committed more than 12 Million Dollars said she liked round numbers so she increased her gift another 8 million. Tell us a little bit about not just oprah, but all of the people who wrote checks and companies that wrote checks to make this reality. Let me be really clear, i love oprah. [laughter] everybody does. [applause] one of the reasons we were so successful fundraising is a Gifted Development staff, who did the work, who knew how to reach out to people, but what we also had was a great story. The story was how often do you get a chance to build a National Museum . Especially one that explores issues that have divided us as a people. And here is your chance to do something that means that as long as theres an america, this museum will be on the National Mall. That was really part of the appeal. But we decided that we had to get money from corporations. We spent a lot of time going to corporations and foundations, but one of the great successes came because of 60 minutes. We had done a 60 minutes piece that aired on a sunday. On that monday, i was in new york going to a foundation, and i wasnt sure how they were going to react, whether they would be interested in us, and when i walked in, they said oh, you were on 60 minutes last night. I said yes. Well, how much do you need . [laughter] come on 60 minutes. [laughter] and so in a way, while there were a lot of big corporations and rich people that gave money that was crucial, for me, the most important part was creating a membership campaign. We were told very early on that why would you create a membership . You dont have a building, and when you have a building, its free. What people didnt realize is that a membership was really about ownership. It was about contributing to something special. And so the fact that thousands of people, over 150,000 people became members, for 25, 50, 100, and that really was instrumental in us raising all this money. So it was big money from oprah. But it was money from so many people who believed in what this museum could be, thats what made it work. The second story that we did for 60 minutes had to do with your global search to find artifacts from a slave ship. Now, as you so often say, slavery was the first global business, and there were hundreds of slave ships, and i remember you telling me at the time that you thought well, that wont be a problem because, you know, theres so many slave ships. Theres got to be lots of artifacts, is you started calling around to people to find them. So you started calling around to people to find them. You and i ended up in mozambique on the trail of a slave ship called the south jose, but your initial optimism was not well founded lets put it this way. Im surprised sometimes we pulled this off because i made so many mistakes in that i really thought how hard could it be to find pieces of a slave ship . We initially tracked one down that sank off the coast of cuba. We spent two years negotiating with the castros trying to dive off the coast of cuba. Now that was not going to happen. So then i was very fortunate, there were many people that we knew throughout the world, and a colleague from saf called and said if south africa called said if you can come help us, we think we found this slave ship. When we found it, did the research, brought up pieces you could see in the galleries. It was sunken . It was sunken off the coast of capetown in south africa. What was so powerful was 60 minutes came with us to mozambique. So we went to a home and sat down and talked to a chief. The chief did something that was so moving. He said i give you a gift. It was a vessel wrapped in shells that was when i opened it, it was just full of dirt. And im trying to figure out what kind of gift is this because im from jersey. Im like whats the story here . And so when he looked at me and he said his ancestors have asked that i take this soil, take to it the site of the wreck and sprinkle it over the site of the wreck so for the First Time Since 1794, my people can sleep in their own land. That to me was one of the most special moments of this entire endeavor because what it taught me is that the slave trade was not something that happened hundreds of years ago. Its something that still shapes people to this very day, and that to me was one of the greatless sons of this process. Great lessons of this process. Ladies and gentlemen, at the end of our conversation, we will take some of your questions. When you came in, you were given cards to write a question on, if you cared to. So what i would like you to do over the next few minutes, after youve written your question on the card, lets pass those to the outside of the room, all the way to the end, pass them down to the end of your row, and well have people come along and pick those up. We will have a look at the questions, and if none of the words are too big, they will give them to me, and i will read them. Oh, look at this. Heres something thats topical. President trumps first visit to the museum. Thanks. Hey, you wrote this. I didnt. [laughter] before President Trump arrived, i was confronted by several of his senior staff who expressed concern that the president was in a foul mood and he did not want to see anything difficult. Waiting along with secretary of smithsonian, i wondered what kind of tour i should provide. I decided that i would begin the visit in the area that it explores the slave trade. [applause] how did that go . Well, you know, i think the reality is that the great strength of this museum is that we get to educate everybody and that clearly understanding slavery and the slave trade was something that the president didnt know much about. What i find fascinating, though, is that as he went through the museum, he began to engage a little more, and it convinced me that we could really help anybody and everybody understand history better. And candidly as a result of that, President Trump became almost a a supporter of the museum, and so i think i said almost. Lets not go crazy here. Okay . [laughter] but the point is, that it told me about the power of what this museum can do, that it can educate and challenge just about everybody. And so my hope is that he will come back and learn some more. But these have been difficult days over the last few years, particularly with regard to race relations. We have been reminded of ugly, ugly history and the fact that that history is alive in some people, and i wonder what is the role of the museum . Can a museum be an instrument of healing the country . I think when we created this museum, we knew that there was no post racial america. We knew that there was hatred and pain and racism, and in fact, we got it here. You know people sent us death threats. People told us we shouldnt build this museum, and we knew that this museum had to be more than a monument to the past, that it had to be a place that forced people to confront the past, but also contextualized the world we live in today, so people understand what confederate monuments meant, that they were less about the confederacy about more about the struggle to maintain segregation. We wanted to make sure this museum could be a place to provide reconciliation and healing but you cant do that unless you grapple with tun varnish eed truth unvarnishe truth. We felt that was crucially important for this museum. In terms of the obstacles that you had to overcome, there is an anecdote about a congressman here who was generally a great supporter of the smithsonian but he began to have second thoughts about all of this. He expressed reservations to the secretary of the smithsonian about the museums existence just prior to the Ground Breaking in 2012. I was concerned, so i immediately made my way to his office. Clearly uncomfortable, the congressman applauded my efforts, but stated quite strongly that he did not believe that there should be a black museum for black people on the National Mall. He talked about his belief that segregation was wrong, but then revealed that he was interested in supporting an idea for a museum of the American People that was being floated as a response to the creation of the museum of africanAmerican History and culture. What did you tell him . Well, he said i dont believe there should be a museum by black people for black people. I said me too. I said this is a museum that uses africanamerican culture, let us understands what it means to be an american. That this is a broader story that if you think this is a story just about black people, you dont know your history. If you think this is a story that is just about yesterday, you dont know your history. And so once i told him that, he basically said okay, i guess im a supporter again because it was really crucial to say to him think about this museum in a different way than you would normally do, and i think candidly that has been one of the great strengths of the museum, that it says it is a story for us all and that we all can find ourselves, our history, our understanding of america in this building. You know, lonnie, one of the things that has always struck me as a powerful image is the location of the museum next to the washington monument. We have this monument to our great first president , but a president who was a slave owner. And now we have this in the shadow of that monument. What do we make of that juxtaposition . What do you make of that juxtaposition . It is about time. [laughter] [applause] i think getting the site on the mall was so crucial. I mean, you know, normally when Congress Told the smithsonian to build a building, they say build it in a certain place. Because this was going to be the last museum on the mall, and maybe the africanamerican museum, there was a great hesitation to say this has to be on the mall. There was a discussion about could it be in the old arts and Industries Building . Or could it be in sites off the mall that i dont know where they are . So for us the big challenge was getting on the mall. There was a great deal of opposition. I remember once getting a there was a group that was called the friends of the mall, which meant they werent the friends of us. [laughter] and they sent a letter once saying that you cant build this museum on this spot because it would kill grass. So we sent them a picture. The grass was already dead. [laughter] but i think for us it was crucially important to really help the regents who had to make that decision see how important it was for this museum to be on the National Mall, how this was a story that was that almost made complete the story what else was on the mall, the lincoln memorial, the washington monument. I think the greatest moment candidly wasnt Ground Breaking, maybe even wasnt when we opened, it was the day we convinced the regents to say on this spot there will be a museum that america can never ignore. [applause] in fact you say in the book that there was a time that the smithsonian didnt want to build the building. They thought it would be adequate to have a wing of the National Museum of American History devoted to africanAmerican History, just a wing in the building. I think the smithsonian was very ambivalent, going back 25, 30 years, should there be this museum . What does it mean for the rest of the smithsonian . And it was only because really of the efforts of people like john lewis, who kept bringing this up, every year, saying you have got to pass this legislation. And what was important for us was to say that the story of the africanAmerican Experience is bigger than a wing. Its bigger than an exhibition. It deserves its own museum. But i have to be honest, when i came back, there were a lot of people within the smithsonian themselves who said this shouldnt happen. I remember going to a meeting very early on with other museum directors, and one of them said weve got to worry about what lonnie and others are doing because that building they are raising money that is going to hurt the smithsonian. And we had to say i thought we were part of the smithsonian. For me the best example is something very small. On the smithsonian id card, it has the initials of the museum nasm, National Aerospace museum. When i came back, they said you dont have initials on yours. You are not a museum. And i said wait a minute. Thats disrespectful. And they said you are not anything because you dont have words on your card. So what i had to do was actually go in a meeting with Senior Leadership of the smithsonian and say you are going to put the initials on this card because for me that was a symbol that this was an equal part of the smithsonian. So so much of what we did early on was to fight for respect, to fight that this was an equal museum, and as i said, i made sure they called a Deputy Director and a director of a museum, not of a project, and that was crucial. [applause] we mentioned one republican president , but the contribution of george w. Bush should not be overlooked. I cant say enough about george w. Bush. I was very friendly i got to know laura bush very well before i knew him. And laura bush used to ask me to give her books to read. So i gave her james baldwin, and she read them, and i said im impressed. So i got to know her and the president , and george bush is so crucial because when people were saying this museum should not be on the mall, he came out and strongly said of course this museum must be on the National Mall. And that helped us when we went to congress, when we went fighting for money, so im always grateful for george bush, which is why it was crucial for me at the opening of the museum to have both president bush and president obama because they were crucial to this. [applause] and then at the opening of the museum, the first africanamerican president. What a remarkable intersection of history. [applause] so i knew obama from chicago, and he would say to me, in these exact words, are you going to get this done so the brother can cut the ribbon . [laughter] that should have been in the book. What helped though is then i would go in construction meetings, people would say were going to be delayed. And i would say i was talking to the president and he kind of thought we needed to move a little faster. That helped a lot, really a lot. Theres no doubt for me it was very special having this open during the tenure of president obama. He was supportive of it. He was a symbol of what we expected america to be. And candidly, that day three years ago today, was i would argue america at its best. Here was a time when you had people crossing [applause] they crossed racial lines. They crossed political lines. They crossed economic lines. You all remember that picture of michelle hugging bush. That it was an america that said change is possible. All things are possible when we come together as a country. So i look back sometimes with great longing for that day because that reminds us of the best of what america can be. You know, as i was reading the book, lonnie, there was something in there that completely surprised me. There were a lot of surprises, but this goes to the heart of who is lonnie bunch, i think, and the way you viewed this project. You write about walking through here alone, after it was all set and ready to open. I walked through all 81700 square feet of the inaugural exhibitions, saying my farewells and marvelling at what we had created. I revelled in the 496 cases needed to house the collection, the 160 media presentations, the 3500 photographs and images. But more than anything else, i simply said goodbye. Why goodbye . You were opening this museum. Why not hello . Because one of the things i know is that an exhibition comes alive when the people come in it. It is no longer what i wanted, what i hoped, even all the smart ideas we put forward. It was all the peoples. So it had been a tradition of me always saying good bye and letting go. But i think this one was harder for me to let go because i realized something. We wanted to do this museum as a gift to america. But i also realized it was a gift to me. Normally when i said goodbye to an exhibition, i was done, but suddenly i had walked through this, and i saw when we went through the discussion of slavery, i saw my own enslaved ancestors. I saw candace bunch and jane dunn, i could understand their lives better. When i looked at the migration of blacks from the south to the north, i saw my grandparents and could understand their lives a little better, or when i stood in front of the baxter street terrace apartment, i remembered how my parents told me how they had to struggle to find decent housing in a segregated place. It really became not just about history. It became a way for me to understand my own family and understand myself in ways i never would have expected. Id like to test the patience of the audience for just a moment to talk about a slightly different no, a hugely different book and explain to you, lonnie, how i came to realize only recently just how very much the museum means to me and to people like me. I grew up in texas. I have a place in texas. Nobody loves texas more than i do. But the history of texas and slavery is horrific. Texas is the only country on earth as you all recall, it was a nation for a few years. It is the only nation on earth to codify slavery in its constitution, and recently i was reading this history, and i asked myself, why am i just finding out about this now . Was i sick that day . Well, i searched the country, and i found in a bookstore in detroit, my middle school Texas History book. It was written in 1962, and mr. Secretary, i would like you to look in the index, look up slavery and tell us what it says in the index. It is not there. It is not there. Wow, thats pretty amazing. Its not there. And so for generations of americans, we have had a wholly inadequate education, about not the africanAmerican Experience [applause] not just about the africanAmerican Experience, but as this museum shows, the inseparable nature of the africanAmerican Experience, with the entire American Experience. It is the American Experience. And thats what this museum means to me. [applause] now i promised we would read questions, and here they come. Now were going to get to some good questions. Thank you very much. All right. This card says, congratulations. Thank you. What is your vision for the museum and the smithsonian in 2050 . If im still here, weve got a real problem. [laughter] what i hope is that for this museum, it will continue to be the place that contextualises whatever the issues are, whatever the current statutes are, or the moments like cities in baltimore, that it should help people grapple with those, but for the smithsonian, what i hope the smithsonian has learned from this museum, that the smithsonian would be a place that realizes that it has to engage younger o eer audiences audiences, and it has to be bolder in exploring things that help people find tools to live their lives. What i hope is everybody will come to the smithsonian, that it will still be visited, but it will be valued, that people will say i come to the smithsonian because it helps me figure out how to live my life better. I want it to be a place that matters in profound ways and i also want to make sure that the carousel is still there because my grand kids and their grand kids will want to get on the carousel. [applause] heres a tough one, but you are qualified to answer this. You created the first green museum on the mall. By this the questioner means that this building that were in meets the highest standards of environmental regulations. What can you do now with all of the museums of the smithsonian now that we are facing Climate Change . I think that its crucially important that the smithsonian even in its Old Buildings do everything it can to be carbon neutral, to be sustainable, and one of the things im proudest of is that the smithsonian is already going down that road, to make sure that when we do refurbishing of Old Buildings, that we replace outdated hvacs. See what i have learned . I didnt learn that in graduate school, and that you basically demand that the smithsonian contribute to making a country better, and one of the ways is by being much more sustainable. Was albiens 1879 a fools errand inspiration for the title of your book . Absolutely. He was an abolitionist who had gone into the south during reconstruction and thought he could help bring the country back together, ensure fairness for the Africanamerican Community and he failed miserably. Reconstruction was ended. Thanks to violence he was chased out. And he talked about a fools errand being an attempt to make a country better, but yet for me what he was also saying is that even if you fail, the attempt can make a country better. And so my notion was that i didnt think wed fail, but i wasnt sure, but the notion was that our job more than anything else was to take that fools errand, to do what people believe we couldnt do in order to make a country better, and thats where the title came from. [applause] on that point, one of the stories that lonnie relates in a fools errand is that there was a point this goes to your management style. There was a point there was a consultant. There was a highpriced washington consultant that they hired who wanted to get the senior staff together and discuss how they would manage failing to build the museum, and you wouldnt let them talk to them. [laughter] no, i mean, you know, i understand analysis and all of that, but there was no way we were going to fail. So i wasnt going to have that conversation. I didnt want to figure out what the options if we failed. [applause] i wanted everybody to look into history and see the faces of people who didnt give up, who didnt quit, when they should have. I wanted them to look at people and say here are people that believed in an america that didnt believe in them. Youre not going to fail. Youre going to be able to dip into that reservoir, so yeah, no, he was really upset with me, and im really kind of easy going, but he was gone. [laughter] no place for people who cant dream big. Thats right. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Thank you for your exemplary penmanship [laughter] and thank you for having me here. I will say good night and leave you in the hands of secretary bunch and his final thoughts for the evening. [applause] first of all, let me thank you scott. It means a lot to me who knew the day i walked into that room to be interviewed by you that it would develop into a wonderful friendship. I really appreciate that. And i think as you know, i get to stand in front, but its a whole lot of people that make this work. Where are you . Come here, come here. [applause] has done so much for tonight and the other stops on my book tour. Please thank her because shes an example. Thank you. [applause] and let me thank all of you because candidly, this museum would not exist without you. Without your support, without your prodding to make us be the best we could be. That in essence, we are here because of you. And my only hope is that you will always support this museum, regardless of who is sitting in the chair, but that you recognize that this is a chance to say never again will we forget. This is a chance to say our job more than anything else is to remember all those people who often get forgotten. Our job is simply to say their lives matter, and in fact, we are better if we understand who they were. So thank you for being here. And thank you for all the years of support. [applause]