this series is really trying to understand what are the causes and circumstances that enable some people to lead despite the difficult circumstances. there are some people who understand that leadership is not a gentle sport and that there are real differences in society that have to be dignified and real leaders need to understand how to overcome those obstacles. today to kind of explore what leadership means, we are delighted to have a remarkable guest, the founding director of the smithsonian national museum of african-american history and culture, lonnie bunch. before his appointment 15 years ago, to the inspiration of this museum, he served in the chicago historical society he led a number of really creative and innovative efforts to get the community engaged in the society. he is a prolific author and speaker, writing on topics ranging from the black experience in the military to the impact of funding and politics on culture and museums. he has traveled in continues to travel the world giving lectures and most important, he has drawn on his life experience to give us a gift of the national museum of african-american history and culture. before i have the opportunity to ask lonnie, questions, just wanted to acknowledge we are proud to name the series in the honor of bob and those of us dole, both of whom are proud partisans who over their careers have really overcome a lot of diversity. they have shown what we think is the spirit of this, which is the confidence and creativity to try and build a better country. so, let me kind of start the conversation with what i said a little while ago. you have really helped to create the story of this country. now 5 million people have personally experienced and tens of millions of more have benefited from. i want to start with not the story of the country, but the story of lonnie. what got you interested in history? mr. bunch: well, i grew up in a town in new jersey that was overwhelmingly italian. so, i grew up speaking sicilian. i still curse with the best of them. and i wanted to understand how i was treated in certain ways. there were certain people in the neighborhood who would treat me wonderfully. there were other people -- i remember playing basketball once in a backyard with these kids, and the mother came out to give everybody something to drink and she saw me and said i drink out of the hose. i wanted to understand why some people treated me fairly and certain people did not. i thought if i understood more about the history of this community, maybe that would help me. that ultimately got me excited about history. i wanted to understand not only who i and this town were, i wanted to understand america, and it was grappling with questions of race and fairness. history became my tool to understand america and it became my tool to help change in america. and that is what got me excited about history. mr. grumet: one of the imaginations people in leadership share is it is fundamentally about being goddamn stubborn. as i was looking into the history of the museum, our understanding is you had to break into your office on most days, literally with a crowbar. i have seen you say a number of times that the key to success is to make a way out of no way. give us a little sense -- it is easy to see the museum now as this glorious place, but what was it like when you were just getting started? did you ever think you would get here? mr. bunch: there was no doubt in my mind we would get it done. there was never any doubt about that. i was fortunate to be able to work with people at the smithsonian who really believed. and so, i knew we would pull it off. what i did not know is how we would pull it off. i think the greatest strength i had was a kind of nimbleness, to believe that we could pull this off but to figure out what are the political challenges, the other challenges, and work on each one. what there was never a moment i did not believe i could pull it off. that was never a moment i thought i could not do it. it was too important for america not to be successful. mr. grumet: i want to go down there little bit. i have this inspiration, desperation index on a day-to-day level, how we are doing. there was some hard moments. people think of museums as these refined institutions, but i know you had some really tough questions to answer. give us some insight into those hard ones and how you navigated them. mr. bunch: one of the hardest is this is a museum about race. race is the most difficult thing in america to talk about, to understand, to debate. so, what i had to realize right from the beginning is this had to be a museum that was not just about yesterday. it had to be a museum that used history to help us understand the world we are grappling with today. just trying to figure out what that really means. wouldn't it be easier just to be a place that looked back? but i really felt it was a valuable tool for the american public to understand itself. really tried to wrestle with how to be relevant, that was really essential. i guess it was really hard on so many levels. candidly, if we just had to build a building, that is hard enough. so was raising money. if you had to hire a staff, that is hard enough. for me, the key was i do not understand, even though i just spent six months writing a book about it. i don't understand how we really believed we could do this because the reality is when you start with a staff of two, when you have no idea where the museum would be, you have no collections, you have no money raised, all we had, however, was a belief that african-americans deserve this story to be told after 100 years. and i was committed to making sure it was not another 100 years before this story came forward. mr. grumet: one of the really interesting tensions i think the museum navigates beautifully is that part of this is just what you said, the african-american community deserves this. and a lot of the inspiration for this was to tell that story, honor that story. yet this is a museum for the whole country. how have you tried to balance the need to make this something special for the african-american community, but not have that alienate others? mr. bunch: to be honest, the most important thing we did was to say this is the story about america's identity through an african-american lens. i did not want -- i had seen a lot of wonderfully important ethnic museums, but they were really about their community first and foremost. i felt the story of black america was too important to be in the hands of one community, that it really was the story that profoundly shaped the notion -- nation. so what i did was i sat down from the beginning and said to staff, every exhibition we do, i want to see a line where you tell me here is where this illuminates the african-american experience and here is where it illuminates the american experience, so we could make sure that everything you did, no one could say this is a story by black people, for black people. but rather recognizing that being on the mall, being part of the smithsonian, gives you an opportunity to engage audiences that will not wrestle with these questions and work -- in chicago, new york or l.a. i wanted to take advantage of the smithsonian and i wanted to do something that mattered. i wanted to not craft a museum that would be this wonderful notion about yesterday, but a museum that would force us to grapple with race today, as well as looking back. mr. grumet: i want to talk a little bit more about the museum and your own history. you are an american historian and an african-american historian, but you have done lots of work on the american presidency. in this context of leadership, when you are focused on the american presidency, what drew you to that and what lessons can we take from it? mr. bunch: i was the associate director in charge of all the curators at the museum of american history. and i was called before congress, and the question that one member of congress asked me was, can somebody african-american be in charge of america's history. and i was so offended by that notion that i could only -- i realized what i wanted to do was to make sure i understood the fullness of the american experience and i can bring that to bear. the opportunity to do an exhibition on the american presidency, an exhibition wishes -- which is still up, was an amazing opportunity because it allowed me to think about america writ large. there is nothing more quintessentially american than understanding how presidents get to shape a country, how countries shape the president. for me, that reminded me all the ways in which to say this is a story that an american historian who happens to be black can tell. mr. grumet: at the time, what was -- mr. bunch: i will tell you the story because it sounds wonderful, a glorious burden. we were struggling to figure out the name. the researcher said find something jefferson said. you can always count on jefferson. he comes back and says jefferson said the american presidency is a glorious burden. i remember calling the secretary of the smithsonian saying we got the title. at 10:00 that night, the kid calls me and says i screwed up, jefferson did not say that. [laughter] and so, he is on the phone crying, i am crying. and so i decided that we would go and tell the truth. but i think the notion of the burden of being president was much like the burden of being a museum director, but it was also glorious. because the challenge to be able to do something that matters, that gets to shape the way a country views itself, that is what a good president does, that is what a good leader does. mr. grumet: all of us have mentors in our lives who have had a unique impact on the trajectory of our careers and who we are. are there some people you would like to reflect on? mr. bunch: everybody who told me i could not do something was a mentor. i think in a way like many of us, i was shaped by my parents. i was told you never let anyone define who you are. as he used to put it, if you are african-american you have to be twice as good to get half as far. this notion of always pursuing excellence no matter what it was was something that was ingrained in me from being a child. and then i think the other thing that really was -- while i had wonderful professors, what i really wanted more than anything else was looking at pictures of african-americans, dealing with segregation, dealing with slavery. and i realized that those were the people who meant toward me. i wanted to make sure that their stories were told and their names were remembered and that their lives mattered. so for me it was more about, how do i make sure the people that are anonymous, the people that are nameless, how do i make sure that they are told and explored and understood. that is what motivated me more than anything else. mr. grumet: a couple more questions about the creation of this remarkable museum. you mentioned you had to raise over half $1 billion. i know that is difficult. mr. bunch: yeah, that is an understatement. mr. grumet: obviously you had some partners, but what was the process and when did you believe you actually had the momentum to build something this glorious? mr. bunch: i will tell you, one of the great lessons with the secretary of the smithsonian said to me, it was so helpful in this process, when i was asked to come back before i took the job, i was asked to go to a board meeting to talk about fundraising. i walk through this board meeting and they put me next to oprah winfrey and bob johnson, the ceo of american express and time warner, and i am terrified. what am i doing? i am this kid from jersey in this room. the secretary of the smithsonian saw how nervous i was and the next day he said to me, you have to remember something, that you are in the room with the people that can raise all this money, the most important people in the world, they are at the top of their game. but you are the top of your game. and they want to be with you. and that really made it easier for me to feel come to both fundraising. i realized that people give to people. people care about a good story. and i thought the smithsonian brand, that this was an important story to tell. but there is no doubt that fundraising is simply a grind. it is doing it every day, it is going to people, getting comfortable with people saying no. it was so hard. i will tell you one story without names that really almost broke me. and that is one of our board members said to me, you need to go see corporation x. i went up to see them and the foundation people said we would love to support you, but this is beyond what i can do. so, i gave up and forgot about it. then i got a call saying you need to come up and see the ceo. i get up early, catch the 6:00 a.m. train, and i go to see this individual. and when i walk in, he said to me, his exact words were, i am not really interested in supporting you at all, but i do this as a favor to my boss. so basically you can now go back to washington. and i remember thinking, if that had happened very early in this process, it was all over. instead it just may be angry and i vowed i would never let anybody not support this museum. so, i think it was really about thinking about, how do you make this an american story so that everybody can get excited about it. that was key to the fundraising. the other thing was the smithsonian. you have to love what the smithsonian can beat because when they are at its best, there is nothing like it. when the smithsonian is bad it is still pretty good. mr. grumet: wish we all had that benefit. when you talk about the aspects that were really challenging, one thing you mentioned is curating and acquiring the collection. i would have thought that was the fun part. how did you do that? again, there are tens of thousands of objects. mr. bunch: we started with zero collections. the goal was, even if we went through the entire smithsonian and said let's take this and let's take that, that would still only give us 20% of what we need. i said let's not even do that. i did not want this to be the place were all african-american things resided. i wanted to be spread throughout the smithsonian, which meant we had to build a collection. there was a lot of debate in the early days, do you need to be yield -- to build a collection. at the smith noni and, if you -- at the smithsonian if you don't have a collection, you fail. so how do you find the stuff? early in my career i was sitting with an elderly woman looking for collections about the history of california. she kept telling me she had nothing, don't bother me, basically. she said, well, look in the garage. if there is anything in the garage you can take it, but then leave me alone. the garage was a treasure trove of stuff. and i never forgot. i thought, i wonder if most of what we are looking for are still in the basements and garages of people's homes. i watched antique roadshow and stole the idea and basically said what we are going to do is go around the country and help people bring out their stuff. but we will not tell them how valuable it is. we will bring people to help you conserve grandma's pulled shawl -- old shawl or that photograph. the first response was to give it to local museums. if it was really cool, it came back to the smithsonian. it allowed us to collect over 40,000 artifacts that allowed us to tell this amazing story. it was the fun part of it, but was the part that worried me more than anything else. we can raise the money and build a building, but if we did not find the collections we would fail. that was my biggest fear. mr. grumet: the expanse of the collection, from a piece of a sunken slave ship to michael jackson's glove, is a pretty wild idea. were there any boundaries? mr. bunch: i am making this up as i go along. i describe it as going on a cruise the same time you are building the ship. while we did not know what the exhibitions would be on the collections would be, we had to do everything in the process. i spent the first two years interviewing people, doing focus groups, getting an understanding of what the public knew and did not know about african-american history. that allowed us to think in broad strokes what the exhibitions would be. we should do something on slavery, something on civil rights. not allowed us to look for certain kinds of collections. i have to be honest, even though i told everyone we could find the stuff, i was not sure. it really came home to me when i got a call from a collector in philadelphia who basically had heard we are looking for stuff. he called me and said he had material on harriet tubman. there was nothing on harriet tubman. i was like, i am not going to philadelphia. he said you have to come up and see it and if you come up i will buy you a cheesesteak. ok, all right. [laughter] so i go to philadelphia and this guy who has this is a former penn state football player. he is huge, big guy. he is huge. he pulls out a box and photographs of harriet tubman's funeral no one had ever seen. he would get excited and he would punch me. and it hurt. and so, he pulled out 35 objects and punched me every time he pulled out an object. then he pulled out this amazing shawl that had been given to harriet tubman by queen victoria. there is a famous picture of her wrapped in that shawl three days before she died. i am crying, i think from the joy, not so much the pain. when i realized at that moment, we could find material that can help us tell amazing stories. it was that trip to philadelphia that may be believe we could find the collections that we ultimately did. mr. grumet: so, you have found amazing things. are there still aspects of the african-american story you think are overlooked and you have not been able to represent? mr. bunch: first of all, what is important to say is while i helped shape with the collections work, there were so many things that i thought were not that important that it turned out to be the most important stuff in the museum. for example, chuck berry's candy apple red cadillac. i had no interest in it. i called chuck berry and said i want the guitar you wrote early songs on. he said you cannot have the guitar unless you take the car. [laughter] so, we take this car, and i am going to put it in storage. the staff goes no, it is really important. it is one of the most iconic things people want to take their picture next to, which always reminds me how dumb i am because i never thought that was important at all. when i realized was the joy of the smithsonian is you will never have enough, you will never be able to collect the full story. there are amazing things you want to do. you want to collect contemporary issues, you want to collect ferguson, you want to collect things you think are important, but you also want to collect popular culture. i am trying to become friends with beyonce. just to collect material, of course. [laughter] but i think what you realize is that a museum has to be looking forward. it has to think about, what are we collecting today that you may not use, but that a curator 50 years from now will want to be able to look back and tell the story of the election of x. for me, it really is a guessing game, trying to use the best scholarship to determine what we should be using today for tomorrow, as well as going back to fill stories we do not have. mr. grumet: i have one more questions about operations in the museum. it is a tough ticket. i have to imagine that initially, that must feel wonderful. you create this thing you think is pretty great, you never quite know how it will be received, now the response is overwhelming. do you have any concern that it now feels exclusive? i have three kids, we go to the smithsonian. studies see the interest playing -- how do you see the interest playing out? mr. bunch: it tells you the american public is more embracing of difficult subjects then we think. i think it is wonderful. i am humbled by it. i am humbled by the fact if i walked down the street, someone will stop me. first they will say thank you and then they will say can you give me tickets. i merely please it really is the hottest ticket. but it is so -- what is so amusing to me is about two weeks ago i got a call from a woman who wanted tickets and i said my staff will not allow me to do tickets. she said don't you know who i am? i was your girlfriend in seventh grade. [laughter] i have to be honest, every13-year-old boy remembers every crush you ever had. i did not know this girl from adam. but i gave her tickets because she gave it a shot. i would hope that this museum would be there as long as there is in america and it will be able to tell those stories and you will be able to get it. i love the fact that people desperately want to get into a place about history. i love the fact that it is something that has changed the discourse. history museums around the country tell me their attendance is up because of the excitement around this museum. in essence, this is what the smithsonian does best. it is the beacon that draws you to washington. and it should push you to local museums. that is one of the things i am proudest of. mr. grumet: almost every answer you have managed and how the -- to point the museum. i'm going to read something you wrote which i love. the biggest challenge is a tension between the past and future and crafted in a museum as much as today and tomorrow as it is about yesterday. raised in this country right now is heavily freighted. visible than it has been in most of my lifetime. how are you thinking about that? you mentioned ferguson. you talked about some of the really incredibly traumatic experiences country is going through. how does a museum at this moment influence that broader conversation? mr. bunch: one has to realize that museums are considered one of the most trusted aspects in american life. therefore, you want to take advantage of that trust, not abuse it. what i realize is there are very few spaces, public spaces in america, where you can discuss these issues safely. where you can bring people of different points of view together around collections or around the story. so, i want to take an opportunity, take advantage of that opportunity. i also realize that part of what is essential is to say, how do we give people contextualization. so often the conversations are often without understanding, without understanding broader consideration or the contextualization. for me, it's our opportunity to take a ferguson and bring together law enforcement, community people, entertainment types, who then take that in a 's different direction, and help people understand what this really means for us. what i want more than anything else is -- i did not want to create a museum. i did not want to just create a place that had good collections or did good exhibitions. what i wanted was a place that would make america better. a place that would force americans to confront what they do not want to confront, but help america what it needed to remember. i think if we can use this museum to help frame the challenges of race today, than that is why we are there. i have a limited interest in just saying, isn't it interesting to understand chuck berry. but i have a great interest in saying what is the urbanization telling us about the creation of culture? what does music tell us about the opportunity to integrate? i want to look at the bigger questions which will help make the country better. mr. grumet: i have a lot of questions. in the spirit of democracy, i am going to open it up a little bit. mr. bunch: you made a mistake. museum directors are not democratic. mr. grumet: let me stop for a minute. we have some fleet footed mic runners. if people have questions, just let us know who you are. there is usually a four second awkward pause. that was fast. right in the front. please let us know you are. >> congratulations. we love the museum. three or four times. you did a marvelous job. the question is regarding the movie "green book." it is a very interesting display. what do you think of the movie? i know it has been very controversial in some corners. and which movie are you rooting for? [laughter] 's -- and which movie are you rooting for? [laughter] mr. bunch: on the one hand as a historian, you want any opportunity for the broader public to understand the past. the story of the green book, of 's -- of how african-americans had to find ways where they would be able to travel, or they would find places to stay or places to eat, and the green book is a great story telling that. the green book itself. the movie is not about the green book. the movie has a great title, but it is not about the green book. i am very pleased it has led to more interest in what this green book is. but i also think that the movie does a really better job than many movies that are buddy movies. usually these movies are told through the lens of the white community and the black character is secondary. in this movie they are equal partners. for that it is very important. i just wish it was more about the green book than what that is really about. mr. grumet: right up front. >> you have been in my studio doing an interview before. tell me about the crowbar. you mentioned the crowbar. was that just a joke? mr. bunch: this was the real deal. [laughter] >> how would you define the particular leader in charge of our country right now and how that is affecting the african-american community? mr. bunch: crowbar, huh? [laughter] what happened is when i came back, i was at an office in the castle and one day my dear friend said, you now have ant plaza. l'enf i was so excited, i took my whole staff, one other person, and we went to where the offices were. we were really excited because i am real now. i go to open the door and it is locked. so i go downstairs and go to the main desk and i say i am lonnie bunch, director of the museum, and the lady said, i don't know who you are. we have no way to let you into the office. i am thinking, you are kidding. all right, let me go to the real power. i go to security and i say listen, i am the new guy in town, i want to get into this office. they said we have no idea who we are. my favorite thing is they said , we do not want you to break into an office and steal something. i said it is an empty office, what am i going to steal? i am standing. i go back in front of the office, i stand with my one staff person, and this guy comes by and he has a cart and in it is a crowbar. so i use the crowbar to break into the office. the door was always a little bent. i promise i did not do it if people are here asking about it. the reality is we had to break in. what struck me, that told me a lot. in some ways, it was a metaphor for the fact that none of us were ready for this. none of us were ready for what it would take to build a national museum, what it would take to find the money to build the collections. so, breaking in really convinced me, one, we would have to break into many other areas to be successful. the only thing i regret is we gave the crowbar back. i wish we had kept it for the collection. [laughter] but we give it back because the guy said give me back my crowbar. he made us promise to say we did it and not him in case we got in trouble. i think that in some ways, one of the things that this museum is is a place where we hope everybody learns. and we have had president trump, we have had a variety of people come through the museum, and we hope they begin to grapple with these questions that we raised. my goal is to educate everybody. i am also a washington diplomat. [laughter] mr. grumet: some other questions, please. >> good morning. i am manny vega. a consultant, if you will. my question, america's history is of course composed of many ethnic groups that have made contributions. is the african-american museum experience, is it propelling, or making other ethnic groups want to have their own representation in the washington community? that is, the smithsonian community, to show their contributions to america's history? mr. bunch: i think there is always a desire for a variety of communities to make sure their stories are told, especially on the national mall. the challenge is how to do that. what i think is really important from the work that we have done is to say to ethnic museums that if you are going to tell the story of the japanese-americans, or the tino's in the southwest, what i want to make sure you do is revel in your ethnicity, but claim your americanness as well. what i hope we have done is model that for a variety of institutions. i think that the challenge really is, how do you find the right balance between centralizing a story and telling all the component parts. i was at the museum of american history for 14 or 15 years. it is a great institution. one of its great challenges was that in a building that size, you could not tell all these stories. part of what i think is a challenge for the smithsonian is to not only open its doors and spaces to these different stories, but make sure those stories have a ripple effect in all museums so that you begin to see how natural history has been shaped by questions of ethnicity and race, or begin to understand what the air and space museum really tells us about technology and its impact on race relations in this country. so for me, the smithsonian has an opportunity no place else has. the smithsonian can use each of us different museums as a portal for what it means to be an american. therefore you can enter through the air and space museum or the american art museum or american history museum. the goal is the smithsonian will do something revolutionary, which is to work well with itself. then it can be a place that is transformative for the rest of the country. mr. grumet: a couple more questions. right here in front. >> i am with the congressional black caucus foundation. we lead a series of digital exhibits about the legislative process and policymaking. i was thinking through your conversation about the early days of the museum, and thinking about this aspect of persuasion, what you mentioned earlier about investors and getting the money. imagine that even the idea of the museum required so much persuasion and motivation and inspiration. i was wondering if you could speak about if there was a seachange or some moment that made it very apparent that this museum must exist. ways, it is ae tremendous achievement but it took a long time to build, as well. can you take us back to that time where that was critical? mr. bunch: i think what was important was to really frame the museum as not a museum for black people, by black people. that was really the key. once we came with that vision, then it was a tent a lot of people could get under and be a part of. i think if i would argue there was really a seachange, it was the notion that -- when i left chicago, mayor daley called me into his office and said, how dare you leave this great city, why are you going to this one horse company town called washington. but then he said, why do you want to run a project. in the mind of people, this had been something that was floating around as a project for 100 years. i took his advice and said it is not a project. it is a museum that existed from the day we started. so we began to do exhibitions, books, we birthed the museum online. but the moment that was transformative was when i did my first exhibition, looking on collections in the porter gallery on black portraiture. we opened in new york city. and that moment where people came and said to me, this is real, we need to care about that. members of congress came. so that moment really moved it from an idea that may never happen to a place that was already up and running. it just did not have a building. mr. grumet: a couple more questions. here in the back. ok, more than a couple more questions. we are going to be picky. >> hi. one of the most striking moments walking through the museum for me is jefferson and the display of the declaration of independence. when the ceiling goes all the way up. can you talk more about how that display came to be? mr. bunch: this is an area where we talk about the paradox of liberty. and this was a conscious decision on my part to say, how do we take the best example of how african-american and american history come together. that notion of defining what america is. when you walk into the space, you see a statue of jefferson. behind him are 612 bricks. on those bricks are the names of the 612 enslaved people jefferson once owned. you can'tis understand american notions of freedom without understanding american notions of slavery. you cannot understand jefferson without understanding how he was shaped by the enslaved people around him. it was that intersection which allowed us to say this is why the stories are wedded together. plus, my notion was that if we are going to poke people in the eye, let's start with jefferson. [laughter] if we are going to cause trouble. so i thought that, for me, that is still the space when i come through. to get there you go through a tight space looks through early slavery, then it opens up. and to me, that opening signals the possibility of america and the ongoing paradox of america. mr. grumet: the question up front. >> i am the ceo of the national children's museum. we are reopening here in washington. a lot of what you are talking about we are in the middle of right now. i came from the museum of science and industry in chicago. i came from the museum community and i know what the museum community is like. since moving to washington, i noticed your team at the african-american museum is really collaborative and fast-moving, and all the things museums strive to be. so i am curious how you ' developed a culture in a way which would move quickly and could be collaborative. mr. bunch: in a way, when i took this job, i agreed to come back in march. but i had to finish a major exhibition which looked at the 50th anniversary of the murder of emmett till in chicago. so i had months to figure this out. first of all, being a lame duck was horrible. but it gave me four months to look at the vision for what this museum would be. to really think about, since i was starting from scratch, what did i believe a good museum would be. for me, collaboration was at the heart of what the museum would be. if the museum was successful just because it is on the mall, it has failed. if it was successful because it improved the work that was the done in chicago or los angeles, then we could really do that. i guess the benefit for me was, every job i have had, i have had to convince people to trust me. some have had to hire everybody. i basically said these are the kind of people we are looking for. dedicated, nimble, recognize we are making it up as we go along, we will have to do midcourse correction. but i wanted to have people doing something that is hard for museums. i wanted them to recognize it is not about them, it is about the bigger questions we want to wrestle. i needed us to be collaborative within the smithsonian and throughout. it was wonderful hiring almost all the people on the staff. what i did was i wanted to get the smithsonian to let me get in the job description -- they did not, but i wanted to put at the end, no assholes, but they would not let me do that. [laughter] mr. grumet: d.c. has a specific clause preventing that. [laughter] my dear friend? >> welcome. >> a quick introduction? i/.t.m the director of here at bipartisan policy center. i want to go back to something you said early on about you doubted that you were the right person to lead this. i wonder if you ever overcame those doubts, and how were you able to overcome those doubts. mr. bunch: like so many of us, i always think i am fooling people. and that someone will shine a light and say you're not that good. part of it was recognizing that doing this museum was carrying the burdens of hundreds of years of history, carrying the burden of a community. and that was frightening. but what i realized is two things. i realized for me, effective leadership was really about the ability to define reality and give hope. i was good at that. the other thing that i realized was that i cared so much about getting the story right, about engaging new audiences, about using history as a tool to change the country, that i just felt i could make this work. while there were many times i worried if you know, did i have the political chops to deal on the hill, if i was nimble enough in these meetings with potential donors to make midcourse correction to get their money. but i realized after a few successes that what this was really about was, did you care enough to give the time, the energy, and creativity to make this work. and i vowed that this was going to be something i would give everything i had to make work. and i wanted staff who also believed that. that this was greater than us. this was about being able to make a country better, and therefore i wanted everyone to bring their a game. ultimately i convinced myself that i could fool everybody. [laughter] mr. grumet: doing a heck of a job. two more questions, than we are going to close it up. >> i also work at the bipartisan policy center. you have told us some really beautiful stories about the exhibits that came together. can you tell us about any other ones that were particularly surprising to you in terms of how they came together and how well they told this interwoven narrative of african-american history and american history together? mr. bunch: the most in some ways -- it is like saying which of your kids you like best. but in some ways for me, it was finding the remnants of a slave ship that really was the most important one to me. i realized that slavery was the last great unmentionable in american discourse. and the slave trade itself is something very few people talk about. so, i had been to museums that had re-created slave ships. i hate that stuff. i did not want anything to do with that. what i wanted was to find relics or pieces of a slave ship. and i was naive. i thought, how hard could that be? they have to be in museums in europe or africa. , welled and people said don't have anything. so i had to create a partnership with a variety of scholars to map the ocean floor and find out where the ships were, and i spent two years tracking down a ship that left bristol, rhode island, went to africa, was on its way to an american plantation outside of cuba. i spent two years working with the castros, the cuban government trying to get a chance to dive on a ship in cuba and ultimately they said no. i was about to say i am not sure i can do this, when i had worked for years, every summer, teaching in south africa. i had a bunch of people who knew me and they said we might have a slave ship that sank off the coast of cape town. so we did all the research and we found the ship which left in 1794, was chased by the british, went all the way to mozambique to pick up 512 people from a tribe. it was on its way back to the new world when it sank. so i decided, not only do we have to do the diving, but we have to go to mozambique to see the people. so i went to mozambique, and the chief said to me, i want to give you a gift. he gave me a vessel that was wrapped in cowrie shells. i opened it, and it was full of dirt. i am trying to think what kind of gift this is. my new jerseyness kicked in. i go, what are you trying to do? he said to me, i want you to take this soil, take it back to the side of the wreck. and then 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, is the joy of what we can do. the fact that this was not a story that was hundreds of years old. it was a story that was so important to this community. and to be able to bring that piece of a slave ship up is one of the things that means the most to me. mr. grumet: final question. >> a question about historical literacy. we, for i constantly read that there is a crisis in understanding, knowing history, especially in the schools. do you first of all agree with that? there's so much emphasis on stem education, sometimes it is called steam education. is there a crisis in historical literacy, and if you agree, what can be done about it? mr. bunch: you know as well as i do as former director of the museum of american history, that there are people that realize they did not understand the complexity of the past. they understand moments of the past, but the complexity of it. i would argue the greatest contribution that museums could make is if they could help the public embrace ambiguity. rather than give people simple answers to complex questions, help them grapple with shades of gray, with complexity. that to me is what is really needed. i think our museums ought to play a bigger role really thinking about, how are we engines of economic change. rather than do what we traditionally do. we do wonderful museum education, get your scavenger map out. we do that very well. but i am not convinced museums have really said, how are we really educational? how are we really helping k-12 understand why history matters? what i love is you go to any conference with historians and that is what we talk about, how great history is, yet we do not convey that to the public. we have to do a better job of conveying why history matters and secondly figure out how we really do put our shoulder to the wheel of improving education in america. mr. grumet: i have a final question. mr. bunch: the yankees will win the pennant this year. [laughter] >> they are undefeated. [laughter] mr. grumet: you have anchored your life in this conversation about race in american history. i just wonder if you could close with some thoughts about, what is your imagination about the future of race in america? mr. bunch: you know, as a historian, i never despair. because i look at what people have been through and what people -- and how people did not quit. i look at my own grandfather who started life as a sharecropper and ended life as a dentist. how does someone imagine a world that no one should be able to imagine? so for me, i am hopeful that people will fight the good fight, will imagine an america that we cannot imagine yet, an america where race will always matter, but fairness will trump race. that is the world that i dream and hope for. looking back at the past, i believe it is not without loss, it is not without amazing sacrifice. but there is no way in the world, just in my own life, that someone will tell me to drink out of a hose. just in my life that has changed. so i am very hopeful. worried. worried that in the short term, the kind of hatred that i see bubbling up today, the kinds of death threats that sometimes we get in the museum, that worries me. but ultimately i believe strongly in the greater good and that folks will come together and challenge and make america better. but that race will always be a divisive factor in america, and it will never get to the post-racial world many people thought we would. that just will not happen. mr. grumet: i want to thank you for your determination and your imagination, and for the gift of this museum. i appreciate everybody being with us today. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> interested in american history tv? visit our website, www.c-span.org/history. schedule,ew our tv preview upcoming programs and watch college lectures, museum tours, archival films and more. american history tv and www.c-span.org/history. >> we are happy to announce the winners of this year's c-span studentcam video documentary competition answering the question, what does it mean to be american? we received almost 3000 entries from 48 states, with more than 6000 students. congratulations to all of our winners. our first prize middle school winners, edith chen and hanna lee from eastern middle school in silver spring, maryland for mcaamerica, america runs on fast food. >> the economy, our health, and hasway of living, fast food impacted our society in sony more ways than we realize. nation's values, it is part of what makes us america. >> first place high school east goes to ella, justin and luc from winter park high school in .inter park, florida fo they are also the fan favorite winner, winning an extra $500. >> don't we realize that being an american is about so much more than national pride? it is about the freedoms that allow us to function in a safe and just manner. >> in the midst of fake news and controversies, we forget the important role journalism plays in our nation's survival. >> the first prize high school winners, from urbandale high school in urbandale, iowa, for "fighting for a better tomorrow." >> did you know it is almost the 50th anniversary of the des moines court case? >> what is that? >> a landmark case in 1969 that affirmed the first amendment rights of students and protested involvement in the vietnam war. >> the first prize high school west goes to christian and gabriel from william j palmer high school in colorado springs, colorado for "what it means to be american, voting." one of the most important ideals in america's government is that every man is represented. american,at makes us the concept everyone who is affected by government gets a say in their government. >> the grand prize winner of m5,000, mason and eli fro international academy in mckinney, texas for their video, what it means to be american. >> our american institution, citizens have the powers vested in them to hold the government accountable rather than just sit around and complain. the greatest thing about the issue of corruption in the united states -- in most cases people are within to recognize a nation's flaws even when politicians don't. >> over the last 15 years, c-span has given away $1 million in total prizes to the winners of the studentcam video documentary competition. the top 21 entries will air on c-span in april, and you can watch every winning documentary studentcam.org. >> you can watch archival of the onairs -- archival films public affairs each week on "reel america" on american history tv. here's a quick look at one of our recent programs. >♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ henderson airfield on guadalcanal is the most hotly contested strip of land in the south pacific. runways, built by american soldiers with captured japanese equipment, are inspected by the marine commanders. fighter planes are constantly on patrol. they have tried to win back this vital outpost, but their transports lie wrecked on the sands of the solomon islands. ♪ general vandergrift and general vogel push forward into the jungle, directing the campaign that has killed nearly 7000 japs dalcanal alone. they call guadalcanal "death island." ♪ supporting the infantry, the marines' amphibious tanks bring supplies over any road, or through no roads at all. ♪ american freighter battles an oil fire, just as she prepared to land cargo. calmly, the marines fight the flames. all supplies are saved, and the ship will sail again. ♪ >> you can watch archival on ree next on the presidency, the coauthors of "history of impeachment" discuss the only three presidential impeachment proceedings ever conducted. those involving andrew johnson, richard nixon and bill clinton. participating are historians john meacham and timothy neftali, white house correspondent peter baker and jeffrey engel, director of the center for presidential history at southern methodist university in dallas. this is just over an hour. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> good evening, everybody.

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