i just realized that i did not introduce myself, so, ok let me , back up. my name is jodie allen, and i'm a visiting assistant professor here, at swanee, and i'm also working as a consultant on the slavery project. going back to the panel, i'm asking them to answer the question that's in our program , and that is does history matter to the future of the 15th amendment? and i'm going to ask them to ruminate on that a little bit, and then we will be opening up for q&a with the audience. okay? so i don't know who would like to start. ok, thank you. >> i think about history and it , reminds me of the african word sancofa. the african word, and it means you have to know your past to understand the present to plan for your future. so when it comes to the 15th amendment what we've learned today and i've learned a great , deal from these wonderful panelists, that we have to understand the intent behind the 15th amendment, the history that gave rise to it, the effect of it those people who opposed and the mechanisms that were put , in place as obstacles so we can better understand today the voter suppression we're dealing with the need for white , supremacy, the mechanisms to attempt to maintain white supremacy, and as we go forward into the future, by 2045, this country will be majority people of color and some of the mechanisms, political mechanisms, being put in place give me concerns about an apartheid state in which would you have the minority, european americans, who are still in political power, and have put a structure together to maintain a white supremacy despite what is happening all around us in this country. to be the beacon on the hill that this country claims it is supposed to be, to be that democracy requires that we have , fewer obstacles to the right to vote. we're one of seven nations that we're one of seven nations that takes away the right to vote for life because of the felony conviction. there are so many obstacles to overcome, and if we look at history we can see this is not the first go around. -- guiset another guys of the 21st century to voter suppression, into what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries. >> thank you. >> yes i would just add, will , history have an affect on the future of the 15th amendment? not, i am sorry to say considering the composition of , the supreme court. should it affect how the amendment is viewed and implemented, yes, but my pessimistic first answer is based on -- with a few exceptions, such as the judge here, many jurists, including members of the supreme court and others, have a very truncated view of the history of reconstruction. very limited view of what all those amendments were intended to they areh, and as i still trapped in jurisprudence and are still beholden to the old dunning school of reconstruction which saw it as kind of, you know, a big mistake fundamentally. and i think a very narrow vision of what was attempted, what was trying to be accomplished in the reconstruction era is still kind of dominant in much of the jurisprudence that we have including current or recent, that is to say, decision that is we've heard about today -- decisions that we've heard about. i hope that a more up-to-date view of history comes to dominate supreme court thinking about this, but so far there is not much evidence that that's been happening. >> so i will just add a word. there is one limited sense in which history is relevant to constitutional interpretation, so there are very occasional supreme court cases where somebody will be able to challenge a current practice based on an uncovering of the history behind that practice, so the supreme court in the 1980s struck down a particular gerrymandering of the crimes that would exclude you from voting in alabama, and the supreme court, i think, without dissent, said we've now seen the evidence that in 1901 when they -- when i say racial gerrymander, they excluded people from voting, not from murder, wifebeating, and they assumed murder is somebody whites do -- and the supreme court said you can't mandate the felony exclusion. other than that i'm pretty , skeptical of the idea that history will affect how people feel about contemporary issues. some have said that justices have a truncated view of reconstruction. i'm sure that's true but i ask myself, you know, if they had a semester to sit in on the professor's reconstruction class do you think it would change , anybody's vote on the constitutionality of race-based affirmative action? it's not inconceivable but it seems to me unlikely so think about confederate monuments. one thing we've learned from most people, fairly recently when these things were put up , and what their social meaning was. these were not adopted in 1866 to commemorate confederate par heroes. they were often put up, the one in charlottesville, actually photographed in the daily progress, the local newspaper, showing the ku klux klan demonstrating around the newly erected robert e. lee monument in the 1920s. do you think -- what percentage of the population do you think knowing that, would affect their view whether we should take down the con pedestrian rat monuments? i don't say no one would be affected by it but i'm very , skeptical that a large segment of the population. so i think about this a lot. i teach a class about constitutional history and my students are always kind of surprised at how bad -- how recently things were really bad. so, you know, we talk about the killing of civil rights workers in the 1960's, the lynching of and they are , surprised by that. i wondered if everybody took this history class how many people's views would it change about some contemporary issue like the constitutionality of race-based affirmative action? i just think answer not very andi just think answer not very many people. i don't think that's how people think. their views are not going to be influenced by learning some new bit of history so i guess i'm pretty skeptical about this and it's not just because as the professor says, they have a school interpretation of reconstruction. even if they had his view of reconstruction i doubt it would , change that many views. >> if i could try and add a little bit to this. i'm a little more less skeptical i would say, particularly after listening to hank's students. i think history is -- shouldn't just matter for the 15th amendment, it should matter for all the amendments. we should think about the war powers act, federal reserve or anything else. what history allows you to do is think critically. it allows you to think structurally, to understand that the world wasn't created overnight, that it developed. there was change over time. and it helps you to start thinking in terms of evidence. will it change the world overnight? maybe not, but like i was particularly struck by hank's students today and my own, once you ask a question and get out of their way students can find , incredible things these days by doing research the kind of , undergraduate research you can do, or that anyone can do quite frankly with their phone or anything else, is kind of revolutionary, but it helps to start thinking in a different way which is what history allows , us to do so that's why i would say yes, it matters. >> well, i am much more optimistic as well. history, , obviously history is about lessons. history is about opportunity. history is about changing the tide of history and learning how sometimes fate and sometimes circumstances led to who we became but more often, it was a question of who did what, about decision makers moving in a certain direction or not moving in a certain direction and i , think through the study of history, we can define those moments, where a single individual made a difference or a single individual followed by a movement made a difference and , i'm hopeful that those days are not over. it is more challenging now because it's hard to discern and to teach discernment to students today. there is just so much swirling around and sometimes i think they are walking into this contradictory information and it's part of our job not to lean on them with a political philosophy or ideology or anything but just to straighten out and help them clear all the brush from the path to knowledge. and i think it works. the other thing i would say is, the students are hungry for that. and i think the american people are hungry for this. i don't think everybody wakes up -- first of all, no one is born an idiotogue. people come what they become through their association with people and with friends and with a pastor or a teacher or with, you know, a buddy, and sometimes, that can be a pretty lively, wonderful, intellectually challenging group, and sometimes it can be a sultry, you know, awful group that you wouldn't want your kids to be with, but we're all part of something larger than just ourselves. and so, it's our job as historians, and i would say as journalists and everybody, to create as many opportunities for the better outlook on life than the limited outlook, and the best way we can do it is to become knowledgeable ourselves and just share that knowledge know, to avoid the cliche that i'll never use, because i avoid cliches like the plague, you know, knowledge is power, and that's our job is to empower the next generation so they can find those paths to clarity and to truth. so -- >> i believe history is important, and i believe it will continue to inform us, but i do have a slight twist on the .nowledge is power comment for those of you -- you do not have to raise your hands, but for those of you who watch "game of thrones," there is a marvelous moment when a very bad character says to an even worse something,"i know and "knowledge is power," and the very bad character, who we'll just call little finger, finds himself surrounded by guards and the very, very bad , character who we'll call "turn "seize him," ."m around, cut his throat no, wait, step back, turn around, and she leans forward and she says, knowledge is knowledge. power is power. i am very optimistic. we've had an african-american president. we have three women on the united states supreme court, one of them says, "three down, to go." i am very optimistic, but, then again i was born in , bedford-stuyvesant, raised if worked on wall street for 33 years, served as a commissioner on the civilian complaint review board reviewing allegations of police misconduct, and worked for adelman before anybody had heard of that and the children's defense fund for two summers doing civil liberties litigation for children. i am very optimistic. >> going back to the question of supreme court and history, i think with the appointment of justice gorsuch, who, like his predecessor, justice scalia, claims to be an originalist, there will at least be an opportunity to educate the supreme court on the history of the 15th amendment. one of the things that's striking about originalism, i've been researching justice scalia is how much all goes back to the founding. 1789 is there all the time. you don't see the 1860s and 1870s very much in his discussions. -- ie had this opportunity can agree with michael that it persuadenecessarily votes, but at least the record can be made and people can hear those arguments and learn from them. >> we missed an opportunity to test michael's point with a scientific experiment because when justice gorsuch was an undergraduate at columbia i was teaching -- but he never took my course on the civil war reconstruction. if he had, we would have a test of the impact it made on his decision, but we will just have to see. thank you, everybody, for answering the question. now, i want to open it up to the audience to see what questions you have for the panel. >> you may have to ask another question. >> may i just raise one point while they are thinking? i will do like i do with my students. it looks like you really want to ask a question. but one point i wanted to make is i took about black suffragettes that i spoke about earlier today. i want to talk about in history how you have these conflicting interests. in 1898 in wilmington, north carolina, black politicians won a majority of offices. they were in positions of political power, and there was this underlining simmering , racial hatred, but it was triggered through this conflict with not just the white general population, but with white -- suffragettes, and one particular white suffragette wrote an editorial in which she said -- and it reads, if it requires lynching to protect a woman's dearest procession from drunken human beasts, i say lynch a thousand me grows -- negroes a week, end quote. there was a response in the black newspaper, there was an uprising, hundreds of blacks were killed, the duly elected politicians were chased out of office, black businesses were burnt, homes were burnt, and it was on the record the first political coup in the united states. you have a number of interests. you have the suffragettes. you have women who desire the right to vote, yet they can't see the interest of the african-americans. you have people who believe in democracy, yet they can't see that people who are duly elected have a right to determine some outcomes and they may or may not agree with them. i see so many of these dueling interests of that time period, not to the same extent but getting seriously deadly during this time period. can we as a democracy, as a country, have dueling interests without it ending in some deadly way? and as we're now in the 21st century and we feel so very much more sophisticated than we did a hundred or so years ago that these things couldn't possibly happen, yet i would have to beg the question, if we're going to learn from history, have we really learned the lessons, and how can we learn these lessons if most people don't even know this coup happened? if they don't even know in this country in this democracy, things like this can happen, so then how can we learn from our past to know more about what's going on in this time period of swirling, dueling interests, so that we can do better in the future? the 15th amendment, the 14th, or any other laws. >> pick up on that point. yes, yes. and eric, this may be a softball , question. one of the things that has impressed me, and i think has impressed everyone who has attended this symposium is the way in which each of you in your own particular fashion have made important, fundamental, even, historical questions accessible to a general audience. it seems to me that a part of the answer to the question posed at the start of this discussion requires us to think about the way in which that history is presented and its access -- accessibility. i happened to go home last night and there wasop, " review in "the new york times that was over 1000 pages. the reviewer, who was on balance really quite charitable towards the author and the book admitted -- the book, admitted that there is a whole lot more detail in there than most people would really care to read or to know about. this is not meant to be a cheap shot at the academic establishment. >> but you can bet that it will be on the bestseller list. >> of course, it will. public, as opposed to simply our students, get their history -- years ago, when he was president of the american historical association in his address talked about how it is time to reassemble the narrative. i am not sure we have yet managed to do that, but if we are to answer this question effectively, it seems to me a notof it has to do with just how history is understood but how it is presented. -- that's an open question for anyone on the panel. >> it won't be a surprise that i obviously agree that we need to find ways to tell these stories. we need to tell this history. we need to tell it through the people who were affected, the people who benefited the people , who were hurt. it's one extra step in the research but it's a giant one and well worth it so there is no doubt, i agree with that. and that is sort of, how do you forgive the word, but how do you market history as vital to who we are? i do have a concern that goes deeper than that, and that is sort of what is our default knowledge about, about who we are as a people and how our government works? and i don't think there is any of us who will find this at all surprising that we have seen a deterioration in the knowledge of that ever since something as simple as civics died in junior high and high school. we just do not take civics. is there even a textbook out there published anymore that has that little cartoon on how a bill becomes a law? we remember that little guy with the cap carrying the bill to drop it in the hopper, right? ok. and i always thought when former justice sandra day o'connor was taking up the cause of civic literacy that she was on to something very strong. i think it would also match beautifully with this new movement across the country, in colleges and universities, toward developing news literacy programs. what is news? how to discern, how to read news and look and see, you know, if the national federation for left-handed vendors is the same organization as the left-handed vendors association, you know? because they are often very different and they are created just to make political people look like they are on your side. and we need, i think, a national campaign that would combine both those. because as much as i do think -- those of us here, we can convert everything we know into compelling stories about how history was changed or could be changed through the people, there has to be some default baseline on how our government works and which i think would go a great way toward reducing the cynicism toward government because once people come in with , a previous position to dislike their government, they are going to be very close minded to understanding how so much of what we find is important, -- important actually functions. -- oh.ess >> yes, i agree. we are one of the few professions in which the word "exhaustive" is seen as a compliment. in reconnecting it to the first question, when you make things relevant to students you've got , them in a heartbeat. if they see it as just a potpourri of interesting things that really aren't related to their daily lives, and this is beyond students, it's beyond, well beyond that, like i said, i think history is really a way of empowering yourself. i may understand something now more than i did yesterday, but whether it will change the world, i cannot promise that, but we all start, whether it's a scientist, an engineer, a medical research, with the basic question, and you've got to allow evidence to take you where it is going to take you, and sometimes it's going to take you in uncomfortable places, but i think many terms of a default we it is based on a lie. votera lie that there is fraud, and scientists agree that this kind of voter impersonation fraud doesn't exist. the secretary of state of kansas has spent five years of his life trying to find voter fraud and he found nine cases to prosecute. of in personidence voter fraud, and they passed a law to make it harder to vote. every state that republicans have had a majority in the legislature and the governorship has passed voter suppression legislation. north carolina has the most extreme example. in north carolina it is not only voter id requirements, but also eliminating same-day registration, eliminating automatic registration for 18-year-olds, cutting back early voting days because african-americans take advantage of voting the day before the election. that is happening not in one or two places and not just in the south. it is every state where the republican party has decided it is in their interest and they are in the majority. it is true about climate change, lying about the effects that repealing obamacare will have, that it will not deny anyone access to health care. it is about lying about tax reform, saying it isn't going to benefit the top 1% and then attacking the tax policy center which does nonpartisan evaluations and saying they are just making it up or saying the congressional budget office can't be trusted with regard to the numbers on obamacare repeal, even a that is a nonpartisan organization headed by a republican. we don't believe in the same facts anymore. if people don't believe in facts it does not matter how accessible historians make their work. problem, more basic which is people are not living in the same world anymore, and that is a really hard problem to solve. if we don't solve it, we are in all sorts of trouble. >> there may have been voter fraud, but until we have a deposition from vladimir putin, perhaps we won't know. [laughter] prof. allen: one of the things i like to do -- and i really agree with that -- i think we really need to say people who are using voter suppression tactics as they did in the 20th and 19th and 18th century, they did so in many ways to stay in positions of power. but what i do as far as accessibility goes, i write plays. i look at it and i say, what venue can i use come what platform can i get my point across when it comes to history? my most recent play is "class," and it speaks to the anger of white working-class people who believe they have been cheated about -- cheated out of their american dream. constitution and an african-american context, that they would read the constitution, feel inclined to do so. as educators we probably stand on our heads to get our point across to our students. that is part of what we do. but i do agree that sometimes we are not in the same universe. but that is even in the classroom. there are people in our classrooms who are not thinking in the same way. they feel they have the right to think the way they think. we put the information out there and just have to trust that some people are going to get it and other people may not. but i think that is part of our job. i look at legal history, but as an educator i think we are just supposed but the information out there and hope that it catches. >> i would just add that this isn't something that is new. when i was looking in 1942, i read that a lot of educators were upset over the fact we don't know our history. the reason we are involved in this worldwide conflagration is because we don't know our civics and they are not teaching it and the statistics about how many people were graduating from four-year colleges without any civics or history was alarming, so we've got to fix that for the greatest generation. so i have a feeling that 70 years from now we are going to be saying, people don't know anything. but we can't give up. with got to find new, better ways to relate that -- to relay that. but on the other hand, we give them a lot of shock and junk. it is hard to distinguish between real evidence and what you really want to hear. that is kind of a human condition. i don't know of any way to get past that right now. aboutonder how we think public history. while most people -- i know since i became a historian, one of the first things people asked me when they know what i do, they say, i hated history. most of us, most people aren't going to end up in our classrooms. for they are going to take the classes they have to take if or as an't test out result of ap. so most people in this country get their history from, if you are lucky, good museums, but otherwise hollywood. these we use possibilities of affecting hollywood or museums or how we teach public history? do we respect public history enough to elevate it, or is it not scholarly enough? i think one of the things we are saying here is that the scholarly is not always what is affecting regular people in the public. >> i am going to take a slightly more optimistic view then mike here and some others. public history is a good example. opinion polls show many people don't know much about our history or civics. the same thing was true in the progressive era. it is always the case that your average person can't answer. many -- can't answer many basic questions about this. nonetheless there is actually a great deal of interest in , much ofn the country it expressed through attendance at museums, the new museum of african american history and culture has been swamped by people. you can't get in. far more people have come to it than they anticipated in even the most optimistic projections. attendance at other historical societies, museums is very high. more to the point maybe, the presentation of history at these places is very good and up-to-date. it has really improved over the past generation, partly because scholarly historians, exhaustive historians, have gotten involved and begun to view public history is something that is important, not just a side issue as you suggest and value. i have worked with museum exhibitions. many of my colleagues have done that. the new york historical society, chicago historical society coming gettysburg. i think those americans who do go to these places, national park sites all over the place, are getting a much more sophisticated and much more bittersweet picture of the american past without trying to just press everybody -- just depress everybody, showing the many great problems with faced, as well as the achievements of american society. that is not going to translate into the supreme court decision or any particular political ofition, but i am an enough a historian that i think it is valuable when citizens in a democracy have a better sense of history than they used to, and that the history that, for a generation or two, has been who reallyhistorians have challenged the old narratives is now very widespread. eye and impressed by how good many american history textbooks are now that are used in colleges and high schools. they are very candid about the history of slavery, the history of segregation, the history of labor conflict, and other things which used to be really ignored or downplayed in textbooks. what the practical consequences of that bar is impossible to say, but i am actually more upbeat about the level of knowledge of history in the country despite many examples to the contrary, i will certainly admit. i concur, and i am old enough to remember when the country was mesmerized by a tv program called "roots." i am impressed with the work of ken burns on the civil war and jazz,m and baseball and and i am also very impressed -- and i want to make this point very forcefully if i can -- with the work you have seen by his the historians on this panel in telling global stories through the experiences of individuals. one man murdered in front of his and child. one person who goes through the and it leavingh a city, leaving a part of the country. that story, those stories you hear individually, you hear the phrase cold case, but it is really about a person. the statute of limitations on murder, when i first started teaching as an adjunct at brooklyn law school, i always showed the film "judgment at nuremberg" about judging the role of law years and judges in what i refer to as a criminal enterprise, a murder incorporated state. tose are important things show, and you show them both the global level, but also through the personal stories of the people who are going through it. arehistorians you have here very adept at telling the individual story to make the global point. i think that is what is incredibly powerful. i am very optimistic, although i'm not sure the historians realize what good work they are doing. i think they should be commended for that. i really do. prof. browne-marshall: going books atm thinking on the college level. this regionalism pops up where we have texas that has changed its textbooks that decided that slavery was a working condition of immigrants. believe,in arizona i where the school board said they are no longer going to allow certain classes to be taught about what happened to native americans. the censorship is there, the retelling of history, the decision that we are not going to look at the painful part. maybe that is why this country remains so immature when it comes to race. every country has something deep-seated in the fabric. it could be religion, color, anything else. in this country, the original sin is race and the oppression of people of color, but this country refuses to take a mature look. may be a truth and reconciliation commission that should have happened. it is something that we should for granted that people will look at history as it is. they don't want to be called out and feel the pain of it. those people have a stance in the writing of the history books in their position in sanitizing things, leading to some people not knowing, if they wanted to know about history, not knowing what really happened. prof. allen: think there is someone with a question in this section. >> i think this whole conference has begun to answer the question for me -- i am a high school teacher, and high school american history teacher. i also teach a class on social justice. i also have to believe that knowledge can bring power. just watching my students who have grown up really as we all do in a bubble, and i think that their reality is the reality that everybody seems to share. so when they become aware that the reality they have lived is not the reality that a lot of other people in this country live and have lived, i am optimistic based on what i see from my students. much that ien me so am excited about taking back to my classroom. i just wanted to know, as somebody who really teaches maybe a broader spectrum of kids then college professors do, and i think high school teachers have that. we reach a lot of kids. what advice do you have for those of us teaching american , andry to 17-year-old kids what can teachers do to engender in our students this respect for difference and this appreciation for history, which in the end leads you to really be a good citizen? i guess i am just looking for something to help us high school folks. prof. klibanoff: i have probably taught fewer years than everyone else here, i am not a trained academic, but i think of a lot of different things. -- sometimesnts even against my better instincts, i find i have to just trust the students and trust them to reach that moment where the light bulb goes off and to be patient with them, and then be ready to pounce when they are ready. i am asked a question and i will wait a long time. it is not that they don't know or don't have some curiosity or something that they want to ask. it is that it is just uncomfortable in that environment, is it the right time to raise my hand, what if i get it wrong? in this world we have built this culture where it is almost humiliating to be wrong. and they need to know they can be wrong. well, you don't know, take a stab. anyone who laughs is kicked out of the class. to me, probably the greatest gift i have had of a professional nature is the opportunity to have worked with jean roberts on "the race beat" and to write that book and explore that history, to dwell in the joy of the counter narratives. of how closeawe we came in that election in 1948 -- again, very few people expected harry truman to win -- but let's say he had lost and do we -- and dewey had won. how much different would history have been? that all comes down to who his running mate was. -- a war in -- girl warren earl warren. -- if he had been vice president, there is no way to you would have been chief justice. despite the other things we were talking about, drove despiteision -- warren, the other things we were talking about, drove that decision because he said there could not be a divided decision on brown v. board of education. that is one person acting in the greatest interest of this country. he would not have been there if there had not been an unexpected turn in that election. students get charged when they are allowed to offer the if?ding time doing, what you can't spend too much time doing that because you have to get to what actually happened. but they get sparked by little things and we have to pounce on those. that is just one small idea. this is almost a trivial suggestion. i am sure you have been teaching history for a long time and you already do these things. i would think showing videos like "the eye on the prize" video so they can advertise with high school students asked to do something -- they can empathize with high school student's to do something morally courageous. there's a fantastic ken burns documentary on jack jackson, who blacklisted from boxing and thrown in jail after marrying a white woman. these stories are really memorizing -- are really mesmerizing, and i think students get drawn into this. facing history is about this. putting students in a position where they have to make moral choices that historical actors had to make -- would you be willing to hide jews in nazi germany? what is your position on colin kaepernick? would you take a knee during the national anthem while everyone is looking at you because you think it is a courageous thing to do? judges confronted with fugitive slave cases. do you just go along because you took an oath of office and follow the law? i think those are things kids could really resonate with. i don't teach high school, so i don't want to give you any advice except to say thank you. i do teach a lot of freshmen because i like those first year students. the first thing i try to remind myself is how little i knew. before i start getting too uppity about it, i remember just how arrogant i was and i do nothing -- i knew nothing. gradf my professors in school told me you can never reach anybody while you are too busy condescending to them. teach a class at the university of kentucky for freshmen on modern kentucky. i tell them the first day, you have a final exam question that is one of the three biggest questions facing the state. how did we get here and what you want to do about it? let's spend the whole semester thinking about context and solutions. the essays i get from 18 and 19-year-old kids far surpasses anything i read from our legislature. [laughter] that campbell: and i need -- and i mean that. i alsorowne-marshall: like to have my students -- and these are sophomores -- go to the jewish museum, go watch the court cases, actually go into the community. one thing i am going to have them do after all that is happening with the statues, go to the statues we passed every day in all of the little parks. who were these people? who were these men? what did they do? go research their names. i tell them, there was a time in which african-americans would be ,illed for reading or maimed and here you have in your hand a phone is filled with the libraries of the world to access , and all you do is text. [laughter] secretly text, but i can see you. history isns me is right there in front of them, and it was pointed out that these are very practical ways that they are a part of history when walking by that statute. would they tear it down? put them in the debate. and also do -- and i know many of you probably already do -- current issues in the news. have them actually discussed some of the issues taking place. the supreme court issues, but also the other issues taking place. there are so many more dilemmas going around. people like hank, who write about these things, they become history later. the news makes it history before it is history. ,> i teach law students mostly but when i start talking about voting rights, i have them do the old louisiana literacy tests. it is three pages long, about 10 minutes. you can't get any wrong. they barely make it through the first page and all get something wrong. they are all very well educated students. a kind of brings it home. prof. allen: one thing i would like to put out here -- and i am not sure that institutions of higher education are being fair to teachers. i don't know that we are fully educating people going out there to educate. and i say that because on most campuses -- and not all, at least the ones that i have been on -- learning about people who are different from you is an elective. it is not a requirement. so you have teachers who are leaving colleges and they are not prepared to talk about african american, women's history, native american history , but we expect them to be able to challenge their students, educate their students, and understand how to have the tough conversations. , justs a lot of work figuring out how to have the tough conversations. if you think things are going to go off wire, then you avoid them. so we have to train the teachers to teach the students. we need to do a better job at that, i think. >> [indiscernible] [laughter] i feelrowne-marshall: like you have a question sir. what is the question you want to ask? i am a federal prosecutor, and i have been pretty active in state and federal criminal defense practice. i notice a vast difference between the deniers we get -- denier we get. the use the voter registration rolls, and in the state court to use the tennessee drivers license roles. 'sdon't know what judge kuntz experience is in new york, but it is a remarkable difference. perspective -- 60 prospective jurors, i'm a have five or six african-americans on the panel. in state courts it is much more representative using the drivers license. what do they do in the eastern district of new york? judge kuntz: the eastern district of new york covers brooklyn, queens, staten island, nassau, and suffolk counties. we have a much broader range than our state court equivalent. for example, and the kings county supreme court, which is -- don't ask me why new york holds our trial court there -- if you are a plaintiff lawyer and believe you are to have a working class, largely minority jury for the purposes of the case, you will do anything to destroy diversity jurisdictions if that is going to get you in the federal court where you may have people who are representatives from the east end of long island. agoe was a movement years to split the eastern district in two. we have a courthouse facility in isolate. -- in central islip. the powers that be decided not to make the eastern district two districts because he would have wound up with a situation where given segregated housing patterns, you would've had very segregated juries in criminal cases in brooklyn. the bottom line is, we have people who live in brooklyn who complain about having to go to central islip for jury duty, and in nassau to come all the way to brooklyn to serve on juries. that was decided not by the judges, but the political forces who did not want to have an exacerbated problem. so that is the answer. is your source of information in the eastern district for assembling the list of jurors? judge kuntz: we use voter registration, drivers license, a utility bill. we are very aggressive about pulling people in, and we are very stingy about granting exemptions. lawyers serve, people who have small businesses serve. we are very inclusive, we don't let people out -- and by the way the judges conduct this in federal courts. would be amazed at how much more effective that is. i hated it when i was a lawyer. i love it now that i am a judge. [laughter] >> i wonder why the ministry of office of the courts would permit the middle district of tennessee to use voter registration, and your district has a much wider reach with those other sources. judge kuntz: that is a very good question to ask them. [laughter] >> thank you. to want to: encourage you, no one here is going to make fun of or laugh at i know someone said students are afraid of that, but it will not happen here. there are not many other opportunities to have this opportunity to ask questions. so please ask questions. go ahead. morning, the doctor will come knock on my desk and say, should we do it again, and what should we do it on? selfishly, before he puts me on the spot, i am going to ask you all, what amendment with you have the symposium do in 2018? what amendment would history matter to in 2018? >> i wouldn't do an amendment, i would do an article. article v. have a constitutional convention. there are two ways to amend the constitution. one is congress proposes an amendment and it goes to super majority, and it goes to the states for a super majority. the other is to have the states to call a convention. we are not too many states away from having the convention, even though no one is paying attention to that. something like 30 states have already called for the convention, which can then propose amendments and would be voted on by the states. that could be a profound change to how we conduct business in the united states. i think it is worth studying. prof. klibanoff: i think you should go for the 19th amendment. the women's suffrage amendment. the anniversary of that is coming up soon not in 2018, but , soon after that. there is a lot to talk about related to that. that is my two cents. prof. browne-marshall: he stole my thunder regarding the 19th amendment, but then i would have as a backup the 25th amendment, the amendment on the removal of the president due to a disability. [laughter] and whether or not that includes -- of course it was drafted with a physical disability in mind -- but i have been asked and other people have been asked as well, maybe some people on this panel, whether or not a psychological or emotional disability is covered by the 25th amendment. in all seriousness, yes, the 25th amendment. >> i might just do the first one. i think we are going to have more free speech issues on what exactly is free speech. i think there is a great deal of confusion about that. attacksseen kind of on the press, and nbc just yesterday. so i wonder if maybe a discussion about what the first amendment really means in the 21st century might not be worthwhile. >> you know, i certainly like the idea of the first amendment. i think it offers a great wide range of opportunities. but you heard what i said last night. i was being a little funny, but not. first of all, i would go for that which around that amendment which the greatest numbers of myths have gathered. where there can be effective debunking of myths. i would also like to know more about the second amendment. i just feel like it is something that people on one side of the issue feel very strongly about and seem knowledgeable about. though i don't know because i am not. people on the other side don't even want to talk about it. i think that could be a good lively discussion. whether here or somewhere else. judge kuntz: the second amendment. will people be allowed to bring firearms to the university? [laughter] judge kuntz: my marshals will be here too. [laughter] >> we are a private institution. judge kuntz: think there's a question. i appreciate everything you all have done about history and tying it into voting rights. it has made me appreciate even more the right to vote. i am concerned about the right to vote for everyone going forward. as a lawyer, what would you suggest i become involved in to assist in making that a broader right? >> i am pessimistic about the supreme court over the next five to 10 years being the leader in protecting voter rights. and i think this is going to be a battle that is probably going to have to be fought state by state. sometimes that means using state constitutions which has proven , to be effective in some states. there are affirmative rights to vote in certain state constitutions. some of it is going to be legislative and regulatory. as lobbying for certain laws or for the repeal of certain laws or for election officials to do certain things. sometimes, shining the light of publicity as to certain practices for example, an , alabama when it came out they were closing a bunch of dmv offices where people need to go to get their ids, the decision was reversed. being politically active is a way to help the right to vote and not just thinking of the litigation strategy. >> all of that is true. but it is a sad fact that many, many people who have the right to vote do not vote. far more people choose not to vote than have their vote suppressed by law or right now. to me, one important effort would be to encourage people to vote. to get out the vote. i think a lot of people whose votes don't realize -- the more people who vote, the less likely it is you are going to get voter suppression laws. i have urged people without success. know whatever listens to what i say. use it or lose it. the very people who are most likely to have their vote interfered with are the ones who don't vote. i think if they are alarmed about the prospect of losing the right to vote, they are more likely to come out. i don't care who they vote for. that is their business. that is their prerogative. as long as -- what percentage of the population is likely to vote in the 2018 elections? judging from past off term elections, well under 50%. that is a big gap that could be closed, i think, if more robust efforts to get people to vote and encourage them to vote are out there. >> i would add to that, it is harder and harder to be an informed voter. it is harder because when it comes to those local elections that might be closest to you, unfortunately, the freefall of your mainstream media, your local newspaper, means that fewer and fewer daily newspapers are covering local elections. i pay attention. i used to be managing editor at my local paper. i paid attention to all these things, and i have seen scads of yard signs all over my neighborhood and i have no idea who these people are. there is no way you will find it not only in print, but you won't find it online. the league of women voters is not what it used to be when it comes to reaching you at that level. somewhere along the way, i am looking for somebody to come along and start that grassroots information campaign just to let you know who they are. i don't mean the two inch bio or somebody went to college. though i would take that in some cases against what we have. the burden has shifted to the voter much more to become more fully informed. not a bad thing to do. but that is going to make it harder for any of us to persuade people to become voters who historically have not been. >> i have a couple quick thoughts in response to that. jason kander, who was the losing democratic senator in missouri the last time around, he started an organization that is specifically focused on protecting the right to vote. it is addressed toward ending the voter suppression that is going on. i don't know exactly what sort of work they are doing that it might be worth looking into that. this could sound partisan, but i don't think it is partisan, the most important thing is to support a political party that supports expanding suffrage rather than the party that supports contracting suffrage. when the democrats were in control in north carolina, they automatically registered 18-year-olds to vote. voterad same-day registration so you didn't have to plan months in advance. they expanded opportunities for early voting days. they expanded the number of polling places. we should change from tuesday voting to weekend voting which , is what countries that want people to vote do. one of the political parties supports that and one of the political parties calculates the best way to win is to contract the pool of voters. these things are connected. if merrick garland were the fifth justice on the supreme court, the supreme court would be striking down voter suppression. justices have been striking down voter suppression. if more democrats had voted in the 2016 election, merrick garland would be on the court, not neil gorsuch. the other is to do campaign finance reform. this will be an alarmist position. voting only matters if you think the system is still roughly responsive to democratic impulses. i think most political scientists in the last five or 10 years are reaching the conclusion there is no correlation between what average voters prefer and the output of legislation. the only thing there is any responsiveness to is large donors. there are a lot of examples of this. i will just give you a couple. 90% to 95% of americans supported expanded background checks after the sandy hook massacre. it could not get out of the senate. if the united states senate will not respond to what 95% of voters want, we don't have a very representative system of democracy. the republican tax reform plan includes repealing the estate tax, something that benefits the top 0.2% of the population. i am pretty sure if you took an opinion poll, you would find fewer than 20% support that. that might very well pass. the right to vote doesn't matter if the system is not responsive. now the evidence is the system responds to the tens of millions of dollars that the koch brothers spend in every election cycle, not to the preferences of ordinary voters. if we don't figure out a way to solve that problem, we have got real difficulties, and it is a difficult problem to solve. it is impossible when the supreme court thinks there is a first amendment right to spend as much money as you want on politics. you're not going to have a very representative system of democracy if money is the only the tune, andls it has moved pretty far in that direction i'm sorry to be so pessimistic. >> forget about the american revolution. let's go back to monarchy. prof. klarman: the founders said, as you know it was crazy , to let ordinary people choose the president and one reason why a was crazy is because they would be seduced by some demagogue who promised to make their country great again. [laughter] >> that could never happen, though. prof. klarman: it just took 225 years. prof. browne-marshall: i just want to very quickly -- this is my most recent book, "the voting rights war, the naacp, and the ongoing struggle for justice." when the naacp brought its first case which was the supreme court -- case of gwen v. that was decided in 1915, it was their first supreme court victory. when they were pushing the vote and you have heard all day how difficult it was to vote and have few african-americans could vote, it was not a spiritual experience. for some reason, people have, i guess because of barack obama, and you want that from your voting experience, then it is going to be difficult to replicate that. we have to look at voting as what citizens do, as what people have said they need to do in order to have on the representatives who have their values. i think we need to get away from thinking of voting as a spiritual experience. the price paid that we heard today from hank and others, just from voting, we should just not just organize ourselves, we should organize our communities around the civic and need to vote, not for the spiritual experience, but because it is what we need to do. our democracy requires us to take a role in it. people did this who were marginalized and had their lives on the line. voting is the baseline, and from there, we should be able to be organized or organize our communities around candidates who represent our values. put money in their campaigns, if you have some. work for their campaigns. write op-eds. but be a part of the political process, as best you can. the suffragettes did it and they did not even have the right to vote. the naacp did it and they were marginalized. these people did it under such dire circumstances and yet i don't understand why we need the spiritual experience before we enter the fray. prof. allen: i am wondering about the people who have served their time in jail and still they lose the vote. i am wondering what we can or should be doing about this group of people. i believe in some areas, they do get the vote back after. but still i believe in the majority of places, if you commit a crime, even if you serve your time, you are no longer eligible to vote. what can and should we be doing about that? >> this is just another illustration of an issue that has partisan implications. that is why we can't agree on what the solution is. obviously people should not lose the right to vote after their prison sentences are done. the reason why we don't do anything about it is because it is disproportionately affecting african-american and african americans in states like florida and alabama where it is a significant percentage of the black vote that is affected. that is why we are not doing anything about it. you elect a democratic governor of virginia and he decides to pardon everybody all at once and the virginia supreme court says, no, you can't do that. you can't pardon 200,000 felons. that is not the way the power is supposed to operate. he has to do it one by one. he has to sign 200,000 pardons rather than do it by one fell swoop. he said the expectation is if you do this, it will benefit the democratic party, so the republicans will not supported. -- will not support it. any change in the voter mechanism today that has partisan implications will be supported by one party, and opposed by the other. if it has racial implications, you know it will benefit democrats. if you make the change in one direction, republicans will resist it. >> let us not forget, you're right of course that these laws, particularly the florida one was put into place by democrats. in other words the democrats , can't get on their high horse and complain about the republicans putting these in. this has been on my mind since the 2000 election when people blamed certain number of votes ralph nader in florida. fourbut the democrats had already disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of their own voters in florida. they had been afraid to change it for fear of alienating many white voters. it is not just the distant past. democrats had control of florida after most blacks were voting for democrats, and they didn't change that law. i respondman: can quickly? prof. foner: just trying to be less partisan. prof. klarman: i am not invested in defending the democratic party as the openly white party, which it was for 100 years after the civil war. i am not trying to defend those democrats. there is another point that is important to make which is democrats, when they get control also do things to and if it -- things that benefit themselves. many democrats and north carolina had control of big government, they expanded suffrage, same-day registration, they and franchised-year-olds. registered 18-year-olds. democrats have done their share of gerrymandering. one party tries to expand the suffrage and the other party tries to advantage itself by contracting the suffrage. that does not strike me as morally equivalent positions. prof. hasen: i would say on the question of felon disenfranchisement, it is a state-by-state battle. things have gotten better because of political action. felons is a group are not politically strong and able to get change. they have allies. with charlie crist who was still a republican at the time, who pushed in florida to make it much easier to restore voting rights. it is warfare when it comes to protecting voting rights. every state is a different story. the courts are not going to do it. the supreme court shut that door in the 1970's. i have no belief and they will reopen it. although there is an original ist argument under the reconstruction amendment that it should be unconstitutional. i think there is room for many states for improvement in the process. prof. foner: the second section -- i will act as if i was a lawyer -- the second section of the 14th amendment does anticipated the possibility of disenfranchisement for committing a crime. people do not lose representation for that. that would be a hard argument to make. prof. browne-marshall: but the part that is being -- judge kuntz: that would be a hard argument to win. [laughter] prof. browne-marshall: -- but i think the part that is missing is the states decide the qualifications for voters. states can decide the good character is a qualification to vote. if one is arrested and has a felony conviction, they don't have good character and therefore the state, if it is not done with racial animus on its face the state can say , anyone with bad character is denied the right to vote and therefore we are going to deny the felons the right to vote. i want to circle around the 3/5 rule. the other part of the criminal justice issue in this massive incarceration that was triggered by the 13th amendment that slavery is abolished except as punishment for a crime. the fact is we have people in gerrymandered districts for prisons. prisons are located in these little towns where there used to be an industry and that industry has moved overseas or to the southwest or wherever and now the prison is the industry and the prison industrial complex where the criminals are the product and it sustains the , village or the small town. people work there. they have schools there. they have children. the gardeners, the barber, the dry cleaner, everybody has an existence tangential to the prison, and unfortunately, no one is looking at the prisoners as far as their interests go. the politician is not representing the interest of those who are imprisoned. it goes back to the 3/5 rule, basically, they are using the bodies of the prisoners in order to count the population and therefore have more state and local and federal funding and political power. those people are not going to be inclined to change the criminal justice laws because they are benefiting politically from those criminal justice laws. prof. foner: in new york state, the legislature is proportioned on the population, but the prison population is counted as residents of the district. that's the district where they are a prisoner in not where they , came from. can you declare that unconstitutional, judge? [laughter] judge kuntz: i could. [laughter] prof. browne-marshall: and new york did work toward ending prison gerrymandering through the legislature, but it still is rampant around the country. it is too beneficial for people to lose. it is another part of the convict lease system this need , for the imprisoned to benefit financially, politically, etc. of white people for the most part. the last part that we have to look at, what we can do going back to that question, what we can do regarding felony disenfranchisement. that means that we have two say to our legislative bodies, this is not what we want. we do believe people who have served their time should be able to have their rights back. there are only seven countries where a person's rights are taken away for life based on a felony conviction. judge kuntz: i would like to make an observation. i know we are running out of time. i find it interesting that as we have an increasing movement towards sanctuary cities, perhaps sanctuary states, the notion that perhaps the equivalent of personal liberty laws which were in place before the civil war and serves as the bulwark, to some extent, for the chief justice in according freedom to individuals, you might find in the near future that some of those federalist protections and some of those powers accorded to the state might serve to protect against some of the concerns that people who are engaged in politics they -- politics today might have. you can't rule out moving to limit the powers of states to take a position from federal governments, because there may be implications that progressives find they do not like in the near future. prof. allen: we have time for one more question. >> are there any practical remaining variances between states in the ability of serving or deployed military to vote? i am asking whether in the present day, there are any state-by-state important variances in the ability of serving military, deployed military, to cast their votes? >> there is federal legislation that protects overseas military voters. >> in all elections? >> in federal elections. it was actually the last bipartisan voting action that congress took. i think it was john cornyn and chuck schumer who were the ones who were behind that. the move act, which was i'm thinking maybe 10 years ago that came into play. overseas military voters have tremendous hurdles. now the hurdles are going to be even greater because there is a lot of concern about using email and faxes and the internet as means of transmitting your vote because of the problems of potential security with those methods. people at the battlefield have a real logistical issues aside from all the other issues they face. prof. allen: let me take this time now as we wrap up to thank the panel members -- i should say the roundtable participants -- for your wonderful, continued sharing of your knowledge and wisdom with all of us. i want to thank also the audience for being here. i am going to turn it over to -- does anyone? ok. mr. mccardell: i echo those words of thanks, both to those of our scholars who have spent your day and expertise with us and also to all of you for being , a part of this symposium. those of you who are familiar with suwannee know the expression that if something happens here once, it is a scandal. if it happens twice, it is a tradition. this is the second annual symposium, so i think we have now effectively made the transition from the scandalous to the traditional. i hope this means we will have a chance to gather again this time next year. to pick one of those amendments and to continue the discussion at the same high level of engagement that you all have given one another and all of us. please join me, audience, and thanking our scholars today. [applause] so i believe we are adjourned, and thank you all for coming. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: interested in american history tv? visit our website, c-span.org/history. you can preview upcoming programs and watch college lectures, museum tours, archival films, and more. american history tv on c-span.org/history. in 2010, the lillian crist -- liljenquist family of virginia donated their civil war for those -- photographs to a museum. we learned the story behind the collection. >> this is the very first photograph that we bought in maryland right here. the soldier cradling his weapon and had a solemn look on his face. that's always one of my favorites. there's -- the photograph that we used on the library of congress website for our