Good afternoon, everybody. I want to welcome everyone to this afternoons panel. Public history and public memory, talking about slavery at president ial plantations. Im jennifer morgan, im a professor of history at new york university, where i work on colonial History Office enslaved people. Im very excited to be part of this afternoons conversation. Though my role here is primarily to facilitate and to learn, the presenters here have all spent their careers working in public history and have been at the front lines of important efforts to situate the president ial plantations back into the history of slavery or to situate slavery back into the history of the president ial plantations. Im not entirely sure i went back and forth on how to say that. Im not entirely sure is the right way to say it, but what i think is the crucial thing to say is that we are considering the processes that have erased the obvious location of the enslaved in the histories of the presidencies and everyone here on this panel, and many of you in the audience, are involved in efforts that precisely do not assume that slavery is some sort of addition or addon to the president ial histories, but rather that the two are connected. To that end, im really excited to hear each of this afternoons speakers talk about the work that they are undergoing at the president ial plantations. Im going to introduce all of them to you now in the order in which they will speak. And we have planned the presentations to allow for significant time at the end for the panelists to both engage each other and the audience to ask questions. So, first, were going to hear oh, we switched it around so many times. Okay. First were going to hear from nancy stetts, who has been Education Programs manager at James Monroes highland since 2014. In this role, she hires and trains new interpreters, coordinates school and group tours and manages public programming. She created a slavery at highland program and provides training to equip staff with the ability to interpret slavery at highland through primary resources and individual biographies. Prior to her work there, she served as volunteer coordinator at the Imperial Center for the arts and sciences and tour supervisor and interpreter at monticello. She has a bs in middle grades education and an ma from Appalachian State university. Brandon dillard is manager of special programs at monticello. Hes been with the Thomas Jefferson foundation since 2010. He spent most of his time in front line interpretation. He also studies cultural anthropology at the university of virginia, as places of memory, identity and power. I also believe hes a bartender of some renowned. Has a bit of a cult following, according to my sources. Christian coates is director of education and visitor engagement at James Madisons montpelier, where he began in 2000 as the student education coordinator. He oversees a staff of 50 interpreters and has been at the forefront of montpeliers to build and maintain relationships most recently he was the project director for the mere distinguish of color exhibition, which uses descendants voices to convey the stories of their ancestors and connects the dots between 1787 and today to shine a light on slavery that still exists in the 21st century. Please join me in welcoming them and well start with nancy. Thank you. All right. Well, im really glad to be here with you all today. Its my first a. H. A. Conference. But i wanted to give you just kind of a sense of where we are at highland. I had the good fortune of starting my position four years ago when our executive director was at the beginning phases of her research, which would eventually reveal a whole different house the monroes lived in and help us reinterpret the structure we thought was their house. So ive had a front row seat for that whole process. When we first started, we were ash lawn highland. Now were highland, monroes original name, and we know that we have a president ial era guest house and a lot more archaeology to do, which is really fun. But just to give you a sense of how do we interpret slavery at highland . It is required on the guided tour that guides mention slavery both on a National Context as well as individual slaves by name. We have a slavery at highland kind of dropin station on fridays and saturdays, where you can see an interpreter in action there. They have a table full of primary resources and guests can come and just engage as long or as short a time as they wish. We attempted to have just a formal walking tour and found that guests didnt quite have that time budgeted, so by switching to a dropin station, were really able to multiply our engagement, which we were really happy about. We interpret slavery on the property through the structures that are there. Behind me, you can see a reconstructed slave quarter that was done in the 1980s. Here is anotheragele of that with the reconstructed quarter in the center, thanked by an ridgeal 1821 overseer house on the left and an original monroeera smokehouse on the right. Or kind of a service yard area. Highland was at its height a 3,500acre plantation right next to Thomas Jeffersons monticello. Their property still does border even today in 2018. You see a lot of green space there. There are that line of buildings you saw earlier. I think this is also symbolic of everything we still have left to discover at highland. Were very much in the infancy of archeological efforts there. We know from monroes letters and advertisement, there were a lot more buildings, a blacksmith shop, a grist mill, a saw quarters. Slave quarters. So my boss is quick to say thats an opportunity rather than a challenge for us to find. Stay tuned. We hope to be making those discoveries. In terms of the slaves who are at highland, we know from the 1810 census, they capture the s. N. A. S. N. A. S. N. A. Snapshot, theyre usually coming to both monticello and montpelier. A lot of times were trying to size up and compare what were the similarities and differences . Highland was on the smaller side but monroe is funny in terms of numbers. When you look at his writing, one thing that really stood out to me is when he writes about how many slaves he has, you see a lot of approximate numbers. About 30. Between 30 and 40, a sufficient number, he says. About 60 or 7 o0. Soin so i think some of this is because he is an absentee owner at highland. He was living abroad or in different states in the United States, so hes relying on his overseers for that more daytoday information. Another way i think highland is kind of different or unique is that these are not inherited slaves that are living here. We see when monroes 16, in his fathers will he inherits his first slave, a negro boy raffle and my colt and saddle. For the rest of his life, he is actively buying and selling slaves, which would add very much of an uncertainty to being a slave at highland. And one of our colleagues in the field charted among monroes Different Properties how many people were there. Not only does he own highland, he owns land the university of virginia and eventually built on as well as a property in Loudoun County named oak hill. You see the lines there, theyre back and forth between properties all the time. And so we try to give the takeaway of being a slave at highland as uncertainty. Youve got the fact monroes gone, the fact there are multiple properties and that hes always buying and selling. Now, one thing we did become a lot more certain of with our 2016 announcement that we had found the foundations of the monroes original house is that the tree ring dating informed us that this white structure with the porch in front of you was actually an 1818 guest house built 19 years after monroes original house. Not the original house thought to be. And whats even better and informed our understanding about slavery in terms of this discovery is when you look at the written record, you can see monroe mentioning when hes updating his soninlaw in 1818 that the house is almost built, he says, this is done by a carpenter i bought of judge brooks last winter for 450 and george. So now we know who built that, and it was two enslaved men. Thats become a new part of our interpretation, a guest house built by peter and george. If you look at the paper records, you can identify who that carpenter was monroe mentioned, which turns out to be peter. Here he is in an oakville inventory. Peter mallory carpenter and then we see a george later on down in the inventory. So we can kind of piece together that monroe has brought these two men from Loudoun County down to build this guest house structure for him. So one way we would really like to and are excited about interpreting slavery at highland is through augmented reality, which will be coming soon. And we wanted to really people visually the landscape through this tour. To give you a sense, its kind of split. Part of it is centered in the year 1819, which is during monroes presidency. Since that guest house 1818 guest house is part of the scenery, we wanted to make sure it was a year after it was built so it made sense on the landscape. But we wanted to make sure that it was revealed how that guest house was built through the enslaved, since we knew it was through enslaved carpenters. Several of the scenes set in 1819 do involve conversations between the slaves on the property. So that became a really interesting process through our team of working to create this of who do you select to be slaves and what should they be talking about . So when we look at the historic record, we wanted to choose people that would have been in that historic core, would have probably seen the guest house being built and been aware of it, so we found that monroe had a cook named hannah, and so 1796, shes a young mother with three small boys. Fast forward a little over 20 years, shes approaching 1819 at the age of 50 when the tour is set. We also selected for her to be speaking to a blacksmith named nelson because he potentially could have had a role in that guest house of blacksmithing accessories for the shutters or something. You see his name highlighted, nelson, a blacksmith. Hes a young man at that point. I also wanted to point out with hannah, we recently found a document where its an inventory of items monroe is hoping madison will buy from him and mentioning a soup spoon currently in albemarle of hannah. That to me suggests she would be a person of importance around the property. Before you press play, im going to give you two sneak peek previews from our augmented reality tour of two conversations between the enslaved. The first is going to be a conversation between nelson and hannah, where theyll be talking about how they remember peter and george being down here and kind of wondering what was going on with them. I wonder how peter and george are doing back at oak hill. When mr. Monroe brought them down from Loudoun County last summer to build this house, all they talked about was missing their wives. It was so hard for them to be apart and never know when and for how long they can stay in the same place. I know theyre glad to be back together. So i wanted to really just underscore the fact that separating families would have been something that was no doubt not missed by the enslaved community, of noticing that was happening. Then there is a second one ill show you. Hannah then will go into a room and have a conversation with an enslaved spinner. We purposely chose not to give her a name just to really represent the many unnamed by their masters, slaves in American History, and the kind of irony and paradox is that monroe is one of those classic examples of a plantation in virginia where grain is the primary export. Just cant keep up with the cotton revolution that is coming. In the earlier scene, you can see monroe talking with an overseer about how highland is not making the profit it should. We see hannah and the spinner about their fear that maybe monroe will sell highland. He absolutely does do this. And ironically they independent up being sold to a cotton plantation in florida. We see that fear actually does become real in what actually happened nine years later. You have to move to the next slide. Okay. All i know is wool. Washing, carding, spinning, weaving, here the women and the men have terrible conditions in those cotton fields down south, and its a lot rougher than here. Lord, i hope mr. Monroe does not sell us south. Its worry enough never knowing when hes going to wrench you out or send you to work to oak hill on one of his projects. Hush. I hear someone coming. And just in case its not obvious, when you do take the tour, youll see the scenes on an actual background, it wont be black like that, but we chose intentionally to do illustrations instead of live actors. We thought that really allowed for more scope for the imagines, whereas when you see an actor you know youre looking at an actor, where we thought you could let your mind explore more with the illustrations. But we very much hope that you will come see us at highland this year and im eager to take your questions following all the presentations. [ applause ] something that i omitted from my bio notes is that i also have a degree in philosophy, which i got 12 years ago. Which is why i was a bartender for 20 years. I dont know how jennifer heard that i was a bartender. I have sources. I thought that joke would go around. Yall know what im talking about, the philosophy firm is never hiring. I found myself at monticello eight years ago now and i really have spent many of those years interpreting, talking about slavery. I was ban tending in the evenings and working as a tour guide during the day. Ive talked to thousands of people about the institution of slavery and what that means, Thomas Jefferson, monticello, and the vast majority of those people are museumgoers, which in america fits a very specific demographic. Its not a Diverse Group of people. Its middle aged affluent white people. Their ideas about what slavery is and why theyre visiting the Historic Site theyre visiting is very different. I know everyone in this room has a clear understanding of what academic history means and what the difference between academic history and history is and memory and history are, and theyre not the same thing. The average visitor to monticello is not thinking about that difference. It says nothing about their intelect. If youre trained in engineering, the last time you might have taken a social sois class might have been in high school. Im sure most of yall were good at that class, but that probably isnt the case for mathematicallyminded people, right . Just another class to go through. Monticello is a beautiful place. By have been operating and providing tours for the public since 1923, which is a long time. The century since we have been offering tours, the message has change changed a lot and the tour has changed. And i think that something that jen said early in the introduction here in terms of the processes that erased slavery, you know, when people do visit a president ial home, theyre there for a very specific reason, often. Which is about this idea of heritage. Its this idea of memory and what that means as our identity as americans. And i like to show this picture as a way to talk about Thomas Jefferson, because i think it really underscores the point. Right . We talk about not putting historical figures up on a pedestal at our Historic Sites. Instead of celebrating memory, we really want to talk about history as a nuanced idea. But thats the biggest pedestal ive ever seen, right . And we can get into a conversation about how weve blasted four dead white guys on the most sacred site for several American Indian nations in the west, which is also something we should probably recognize, but when youre having a conversation at monticello about how great Thomas Jefferson was as the guy who invented america, its pretty hard to then move into a conversation about slavery. This is a memorial in tanzania because there isnt a National Memorial to slavery in the United States of america. There are many memorials, but in terms of actually recognizing that institution as a people, were pretty far off from that. So having conversations with folks day in and day out at monticello, it leads to a lot of very interesting conversations that are illuminating in a lot of ways. Some people really understand the institution, they really want to get into the depth of the jeffersons involvement, they want to talk about the individuals who were enslaved there and what their lives were like. Some people come to monticello and dont know whether theyre at Thomas Jeffersons house or Thomas Edisons house. And im serious. They want to talk about how they wrote the constitution. Sorry, christian. They havent studied it in a long time. Thats fine. Most of all, people come and see this beautiful Botanical Garden on this beautiful landscape and its hard to imagine that as a living, breathing plantation where people were held in bondage by jefferson and ran off families. We have been working to talk about slavery more. We started offering slavery at monticello tours in 1993. This is the 25th commemorative year of offering those tours. We started archeological explorations specifically starting in the 1950s. Its been an ongoing process for a very long time. In the 1980s, slavery became part of the exhibitions and in the 90s, part of the interpretation. That interpretation has changed a lot. Several people in this room have talked about how that interpretation has come to the for and helping us understand Thomas Jefferson better as a person means we have to understand the institution of slavery and the lives of people he held in bondage with who he was so entangled. The last picture i showed you was an image of mulberry row, its the main street of the plantation. This image was taken maybe five years ago. And you can see the beauty of the mulberry trees, but this was a vibrant street. There were many buildings up and down it. It was dynamic in jeffersons life. A lot of it changed throughout those years, but he held 607 people in bondage through the course of his life, over 400 of