Monuments discussing how people can make decisions about based removing or contextualizing them based on Historical Information , and public sentiment. The American Historical Association hosted and recorded this event. James good afternoon. I say that with some trepidation because our audience is national and international. Morning to some of you and good to some of you. I am jim grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. This is an initial experiment in something that we are likely to call history behind the headlines. We consider Historical Context essential to decisionmaking in public culture and especially in all aspects of public policy. Aha is a membership supported organization. Anybody who watches Public Television or listens to public radio is ready for this. If you would like to become a member and support this type of content, membership links are located in the chat on zoom and in the comments on facebook live. I want to give and especially grateful thankful to History Channel for their generous sponsorship of this webinar. Lets get started. It is an honor to introduce todays panelists, Annette Gordon reed. Professor of law and history at harvard university. And david blight, professor of history and director of the ablution of slavery at yell universe these three. Professors are Pulitzer Prize winning historians and they have won lots of other prizes as well. They have written and spoken frequently and insightfully on issues relating to monuments, history, memory and our nations continued failure to fully confront the implications of its own history. Professor gordon reeds most recent book, coauthored with peter own of is most blessed of , the patriarchs, Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination. Professor blights is Frederick Douglass, prophet of freedom. Both of these colors are notable for the way we remember and honor those people as complicated. Whether we are thinking about Frederick Douglass or Thomas Jefferson. We are going to have roughly 35 minutes of moderated discussion, after which there will be questions from the audience. I apologize in advance that given the number of people, we will not be able to address most of the questions that we get. We will do our best. Lets get started. Lets start with the meaning and implications of removing confederate statues from our public landscape. I know both of you, david and annette have discussed this frequently and in all sorts of venues. This is not a new issue but something is clearly different this time around. So lets start with what is different and why. And, annette, you have referred to what is happening now as a quote great awakening quote. Gooding up is always a place to start. So what we start there . Annette i think it is different this time and i do not know a precise reason but i have theories. Obviously, the killing of george floyd provoked a lot of soulsearching on the part of people. Video, theof the stark nature of the video. Peoplescaptured attentions in a way that has not happened before. It could be because we are in the middle of a pandemic and people have been cloistered and up foren told to come the basis of the Community People were doing something that made them think about other people that they had to think about other people. I have a feeling that may have contributed to it as well. The fact that people could focus on it, and the fact that we are engaged in a typically not something americans do or have not done recently in a communal fashion looking at this, people said something had to happen. It struck people viscerally in a way that the killing of other people have not. People were concerned about iayvon martin and so forth think the social circumstances in which this happened the , context is different. That made a difference in the way that people responded to it. Jim what is interesting we have , the statues being toppled, we have the being toppled in the context that you just talked about. These statues are part of a story and they tell a story. One thing i am curious about, and maybe david you can speak to this. Is this the death of a lost cause . David probably not. But we can hope. [laughter] i try to see this moment now, no one should predict anything right now in this climate, especially us historians. But it really is the culmination of a 150 year counterattack on the lost cause ideology. The lost cause ideology takes form right after the war especially in the 1870s and , 1880s. The Confederate Monuments came out of a later time than that. During the jim crow era. When the united daughters of the confederacy and the united confederates took hold of that process. It was an ideology, racial ideology, and ideology of white supremacy. And it became not a story of loss at all, it became a victory narrative. The victory was over reconstruction. But the attack back on the lost cause led by Frederick Douglass and many others is 150 years old. As early as 1871. Right after, douglass wrote a piece in which he said he was sick and tired of the nauseating flatterys of robert e lee. He wondered why the person who killed the most Union Soldiers and most americans in the dividing country was getting all the accolades. This is an old set of argument however, we obviously now have a different politics. If it had not been for the massive protests in the streets this past month, massive numbers of people in the streets, i doubt Police Forces of various kinds would have allowed people to tear down monuments as they have. Police have not always but by and large have been letting this happen. So there is a politics in the streets that is bringing this about. I would just add right now, i dont have any data on this but trumpism, lets be honest, the nature of our politics for the last three or four years is out there in the streets. Is everybody demanding a Confederate Monument be removed . Or attacking a Confederate Monument . Or even other kinds of monuments . Are they always thinking about trump . Probably not. But trump has developed a toxic kind of politics that is now bringing out all kinds of resistance that we had not earlier seen. It is directly related to Police Killings but also to a bursting out of rage against trumpism. I just hope this can be harnessed somehow into something. Jim that was my next question the harnessing. , you talked about how the politics affects what happens in the streets. Right before that, annette framed the politics and what is happening in the streets, it has a larger context that ties together. I am curious if both of you can talk about how what happens in the streets affects the policy. The politics we have a bunch. We have a bunch of monuments. Annette it is an interesting question. We had this moment where we had huge numbers of people finally looking toward the question of policing in america. Particularly, the policing of the africanamerican community. And voicing support for black lives matter. And then the focus shifts to , statues. And for me, there is a little bit of frustration. It is not that i think monuments and statues are not important but it is way more important to get the issue of police reform, voter suppression, those kinds of things on the front burner. We have fallen into battles about culture, the culture war things that deflects from real economic, social kinds of issues. That brought out to begin with. People are being killed. I mean africanamericans feel , threatened by police. This is something that has been going on for decades. And everybody can tell you a story. Many black people can tell you a story about people they knew or they know of who went into police stations and did not come out. People who had encounters with police that ended in death for minor things. Those kinds of issues have brought people out. I want to talk about monuments and i think theyre important but i dont want us to get away from those kinds of central issues. What is going to happen november 3 with the election . Voter suppression, all those kinds of things, those are things i would like to be focused on. There is a way that we have this moment. Lose it,oment, we can lose the momentum on that if we focus too much on the wrong things. As import as they are. David that is a powerful argument, annette. And one of the ways it manifests is it is easier to oppose a monument that it is to figure out a vast new social policy. We are historians, we like evidence and all of that but one of the things i wish people would do now, is actually go and read the policing injustice act. This is the house bill. There is a lot in there. It is not everything but it is a new kind of civil rights act. It even has a federal antilynching law in it. There is a lot in that act. That is how this has to get andthat is how this has to get converted, harness into a new politics. Into a new politics. A new civil rights regime of some sort. What is interesting about the monuments is we have a Tipping Point here. We see this throughout history, a point where people who would have really defended Confederate Monuments a year ago cant quite do it now. Even republicans in the senate are saying maybe those military bases, maybe that wasnt such a good idea after all. So there is a Tipping Point here that we were not at even a year ago. Annette absolutely. David we werent there in the summer of 2015 after the charleston massacre. Back then it was about taking the Confederate Flag down and a few monuments were under duress. [laughter] now it is everything confederate. Annette everybody. David every moment like every , Tipping Point has excess. It is going to have excesses. Everyone is moaning right now, how could you take down a grant statue . He was bequeathed one slave and he freed that slave and so on, he saved the union, he was the general. Ok, right. There are going to be excesses and we have to stand up and say toppling that one, that is wrong. Annette yeah, thats wrong. David topple that one . Ok. I am with you. Annette you make choices every single day. We do that all the time. The point is how that takes place. The kind of discussion that takes place. Some will stay and some will go. All three of us have talked about this. There is not an inevitable slippery slope. This is a ridiculous argument. Annette, you have written prizewinning work about jefferson, founders in general, this is what is constantly brought up by the people who say this is inevitably going to all , the icons will be smashed. What are the criteria you can imagine, using, thinking about, when you say there is judgment here. Annette the criteria, there is lots of them. The one i am always giving, the distinguishing the confederates from the founders is that the founders created the country and the confederates tried to destroy the country. I think that is a pretty bright bright line rule. When you lose the war you dont usually get to continue glorifying yourself by putting up statues of yourself in Public Places mocking the people who defeated you. The confederates were vanquished. There is no reason for them to be there. The confederacy was a branch. If you think of it was a branch a country as a river that went , off to nowhere. There was nothing they can contribute to us that we cant get from some other place. It is not what we stood for. Their values are not what we stand for. African chattel slavery, the inferiority, they specifically repudiated jefferson and that declaration of Alexander Stephens did. So we can do without them. The founders are different. They founded the country. It is hard for me to think of living in a place without telling the story or actually commemorating, not celebrating. You think of one a statue is about. Wase, it is not about this the greatest person who ever lived or whatever. It is about recognizing that this person did something important. And i think founding the United States, there is a lot of people that dont think i was a good idea but if you think it was a good idea that these people did that and you see them, the important thing is to see them in all of their complexity. To see them in all aspects. You have jefferson, soyou have jefferson, you have washington. You mention that they bought and sold people. You mention those kinds of things, the good with the bad. We are to my mind stuck with , these people who created the country, the confederacy, that is not a story that continues in any kind of way. We have made use of the things that jefferson put forth. In particular, ideals. Whether it is some religious belief in your heart, those ideas have been useful. So that if i would make. Understand people say he owned slaves and therefore they should go. But that is like you cant redo , your parentage. He cant stop and pretend those people did not exist and that they didnt do something. That week, most of us think was a positive thing. You have to tell the whole story about them. It creates a much more mature when you tell the whole storyit creates a much more mature attitude about history and historical figures. They are not about our best friends and the people we want to hang out with or whatever. These are the people that did things that we have to know about. In order to understand who we are. And take the best of what they to do things differently, gave, reject the things that were bad. I think it is hiding your head in the sand if we pretend they did not do anything positive. Or that the negative things automatically outweigh them. We have to talk about both of them. David annette, can i ask you a question of a sort . Say it isll i would so true, to focus. If we can help the public focus their minds on what the confederacy was. It was an insurgent revolution to create a slaveholders republic. I would just say to people, we dont want to name too many books here but you should read stephanie mccurrys most recent book called confederate reckoning. If you have any kind of progressive view of the United States and if you actually believe in our pluralism and in equality, you cant read that book without a tremendous sigh of relief. Death confederacy did not win. Reliefemendous sigh of that the confederacy did not win. [laughter] it is really important to understand that. Annette you let them off the hook. They wouldthem, and like nothing more than to be lumped in with washington and jefferson. No. We are just like those people. No. David they were the vessel of the American Revolution. Resisting, resisting centralized authority and all of that. That is a central tenor of the lost cause. Annette they never quote stevens. They dont look at the documents that framed that government and society. They were slave owners and they were racist and they may have been like jefferson and washington in that sense. But the documents that they set for their nation dont comport with anything that we say we believe. We can take the constitution, transformed by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment. We can take the declaration and make any society. We cannot take the cornerstone speech or the constitution or the secession and we cant do anything with that and continue in peace in this country. David or jefferson daviss 1200 page memoir. Annette yes. David on every page it defends the existence of slavery because africans were savages. Here is the quick question, we are living a moment where there are a lot of people. I will just name it, the 1619 project suggested that americans ought to reconsider what the founding is. That the founding is really when slaves arrived and not the creation of the republic out of the American Revolution and the writing of the u. S. Constitution. Maybe that set of assumptions was out there anyway. I am not just blaming the 1619 project. There are a lot of people who said the founding was all racist anyway. It was all in the service of slavery. Why not get rid of jefferson . So i dont believe that necessarily. Annette i know, it is hard to respond to that. In the first place if you want , to pick something other than 1776 as the founding, you might pick the british founding. 1607. You might pick when englishmen rolled up on american cotton and said we discovered it. And began to push Indigenous People off the land. So that is a point, certainly 1619 is a point. But that was part of the english empire. That is part of the english empire. There is no United States of america at that point. We cannot treat it as though those moments put forth some inevitable outcome that we end up at 1776 and me sitting in my apartment right now. Anything could have happened at that point. I think the founding was racist. Certainly the constitution protected slavery. And sean could speak to that. David i think is watching. Annette at protected slavery. But it also unleashed an antislavery movement. The revolution did. And that was not inevitable either. What happened from that was not inevitable but it did. The fact is, africanamerican people other people said wait a , minute, this applies to us as well. And that has been the basis for a struggle up until now. That is real. It is as real as the founding is many things. It is not any one thing. It is what you make of it. And people may Different Things of it. Jim so you are focusing on the first, east coast. Which we do. And on the english. What happens if you shift the angle of vision . There are issues over the statues in the capital capitol. It is easy to identify 11 or 12. There is also father sera. He never donned a confederate uniform. He never took up arms against anything called the United States of america. He did some putting bad things to people that are the ancestors of americans. What do we do when we think about father cera in the capitol . Annette david, do you want to try that one . David we are going to have to come up with s