He is a Senior Editor at the atlantic. He is a social and cultural historian of the United States. Before joining the atlantic, he was a lecturer of history at the harvard university. He previously taught at brandeis university. Yoni will moderate this discussion with dr. Daryl scott attended Marquette University and milwaukeewisconsin and Stanford University in palo alto, california where he received his doctorate in history. He began his teaching career at Columbia University in new york city and left therein 2000 to serve as the director of africanamerican studies at the university of florida gainesville. Since 2003, scott has been the professor of africanAmerican History at howard university. He has served on a board since 2003. It was founded by Carter G Woodson in 1915 and is the a list black scholarly and intellectual society in the world. So if you would please help me welcome our guest this evening daryl scott and yoni appelbaum. [applause] mr. Appelbaum wow, its great to have an audience like this. The inspiration for the event comes from an article, a colleague of mine, back in 2011 at the start of the centennial to the civil war. There was a question posed in the atlantic about the conflict of the 1850s that was leading exponent of the american idea of the cause of freedom and gradually more expansive views of that to the civil war. One of my favorite covers, which still hangs on the wall, is the battle that we published and put out in 1863. We have been returning to the topic of the civil war for 160 years, in different ways. At the sesquicentennial year, there was a question that came out of a personal journey. He had taken a left turn while pursuing other topics. He delved into the literature of the civil war. He was astounded by what he found, things that, despite his up ringing upbringing, he felt he has not been fully appreciated. Started visiting Civil War Battlefields and had the experience. As anyone has ever visited such a battlefield has likely had being there with his son as the only two black guys on the tour. And that gave him pause. He thought about why so few africanamericans seem to be at the battlefields, why their stories are increasingly acknowledged, but still largely written out at the sites in the books that he read. And he posted a little more bluntly than i just paraphrased, simply as, why dont blacks study the civil war . This is what we do in journalism, we offer provocative headlines that simplify the nuances. Yet at the same time, it captured something. That there was an element of truth that lay behind the question. So daryl if i can, that is where i will start. Why dont blacks study the civil war, and has that always been the case . Dr. Scott i want to step back a little further from that. When we ask who studies the civil war, if we ask it that way, you will come up with an answer that says there are some people who study wars, who study the civil war, and there are a lot of scholars who study the civil war. There are relatively few yankees who study the civil war. There are very few professional historians who study the civil war. So if you put the question differently, the first answer you will come up with this southerners study the civil war. And you might say, well why . Why no one else . And then when you ask the question about if this is about battlefields, then you say if that is the only way people study or commemorate the civil war. So you get into the question of, well, who goes to battlefields . Then you get back to the people who are most interested in the civil war, to understand battles or to see where they lost a loved one. But back it you back to where you started, right. They get you back to the question of, wait a minute, there were over 200,000 people of african descent who were involved in the civil war roughly 180,000 people of african ascent who were fighting the ground war. There is roughly 40,000 people of african descent who died in that war. So why dont they go . Why dont their descendents go . So its getting a better understanding of who had, if you will, skin in the game. So the people with skin in the game who dont go, interesting align off interestingly enough, our women. The people who won the civil war dont go to the battlefields. Now, how do you know this . One of the ways i know this is you are hardpressed to find a yankee in america today. And i dont mean someone who lives in the north. I mean a self identified yankee. Every year when i worked in new york at columbia, i would ask a question to every class, every class. How many yankees in the room . Columbia, new york city. One or two people out of roughly 100 would raise their hand. Mr. Appelbaum and they were probably baseball fans. [laughter] daryl scott] dr. Scott i would ask who are southerners, and five people would raise their hand. And some of those would be black people. There was just no shortage of southerners when you ask that question. They are everywhere. And they are self identified. And even the black ones in the room will say they are southerners. Even though some of the white southerners will say they are not. Ok . And so we have a sense of memory that is running along the line of who got whipped very bad. And i just have to put it like that. It really gets back to the statement of southerners will relive this event, ok and its not even over for a lot of them. But i can be exaggerated, too. Mr. Appelbaum we often hear that the history is written by the victors but the historical memory of the civil war is largely continuing to live with the southerners who lived with the legacy, who did not move on to other conflicts, other issues, but continue to have their lives shaped by the legacy and the fallout of the civil war. Turning back to the other question that i posed, has it always been like this . If the present memory of the civil war is largely dominated by members of the American South , by the aficionados of that history, was there a time when that was not the case . Dr. Scott there was a time, and its interesting how people construct the central event in their history, ok. And for most of African American history, since the civil war the civil war was the central event. It was the central event. And the short answer is it was the central event until the Civil Rights Movement. Ok . So there is this long history of africanamericans being almost upset with the civil war. And almost upset with history. I want to make a general statement that says in america there are two keepers of history. There are southerners and there are people of african descent. And history seems to mean the most to both of these groups. And of course, i dont want to get into how people become southerners. That is related to the Civil Rights Movement. But southerners were pretty much in ethnic Identity Group or on the path to being one, because of the civil war. Africans were nonamericans with the civil war began, ok. And we are about to start to have a history that talks about a long civil war, get repaired for this. That it does not end in 1865. That is where we are going to go, and i have been trying to go there for 20 years. Other people are now ready to go there. So this history for us begins as people who were slaves and emancipation and the destruction of slavery, that is a central event for most of African American history. Immediately after the war, black people start commemorating the war. Memorial day really begins in 1865, when blacks in charleston basically took over a prisoner of war cant prisoner of war camp and properly read the dad on may 1, 1865. That is the first celebration of memorial day that we know of. And then three years later, the yankee government in d. C. Start celebrating memorial day. And for most of the time, until the end of world war i, there are separate southern and northern memorial day is. Well, why not . There were separate armies and there is sectional tensions, but africanamerican celebrated that day. Africanamericans also, at this point still africans, started celebrating lincolns birthday. Now, lincoln, of course, is assassinated. And from right in the 1860s, late 1860s, the celebration starts. February 12 becomes a day of celebration. In honor of lincoln. And the grand army of the republic war generally start celebrating lincolns birthday. So africanamericans are celebrating lincolns birthday from 1866 or so all the way until 1926. And that is when the shift takes place, and its related to my association. Because in 1926, negro history restarts. Negro history week is an effort by woodson to coopt two birthdays, lincolns birthday and Frederick Douglass birthday, because black people also celebrated Frederick Douglass birthday. So what woodson was trying to do was celebrate a people rather than two individuals. But Carter G Woodson becomes an historian because of the civil war. He becomes a historian because he works in a coal mine in West Virginia with a lot of Civil War Veterans. And he cuts his teeth on history talking to those veterans, and he learns from them that black people had played a Critical Role in their own emancipation. Mr. Appelbaum let me interrupt you there, because i think that is an interesting point. I never met a Civil War Veteran although i understand there are still a couple people in the south drawing Veterans Benefits on the basis of marriage. No there are a couple of pensions being paid out to widows of war veterans. Dr. Scott wow. Mr. Appelbaum which is kind of astonishing. But nobody ever took me on their knee and told me about their services in the civil war. I can recall any memorial day parade where i pulled over some of the afterwords, a reenactor he said he was a member of the 54th massachusetts regiment, talking about why he made the choice to do that. And for him, it came in part because his father had served in the first world war. This was an older gentleman, and so this was a way of connecting back to the heritage of american service. Is it partially a generational shift, as this generation of fighters who where the union blue and take up arms for their own emancipation and the emancipation of their people, as that generation passes off the stage, is there an immediacy of memory that is lost . Dr. Scott i would say to some extent that has to be at. Another part relates to what you are saying, you start getting the wars. By the time you get memorial day, really, the united memorial day, you also had the spanishamerican war, right. And once you get that war, you have Something Else to memorialize. Ok . So memorial day itself gets to be convoluted, if you will. It has competing parties involved. Then after world war i, ok, you get the consolidated memorial day, and it really has to do as much with world war i, the great war. And so the great war sucks up a lot of oxygen. The number of Civil War Veterans in general is declining in numbers. They are still around, so i think there is a little of that, too, but here is the rest of the story. Lincoln Day Celebrations, to this very day, lincoln Day Celebration still can be found on the internet by local black communities. Ok . They still exist. And along these lines, lincoln Day Celebrations, to show you how important this is, the Negro National anthem is written by James Weldon Johnson and his brother at the turn of the 20th century, and that was a lincoln Day Celebration song. It was created it was written for the purpose of the lincoln Day Celebration. So lincoln Day Celebrations remain even when negro history week, so long. There is a rough way of thinking about it. As long as there were people who self identified as negro, the civil war is a big deal. The civil war was always a big deal to negroes. Two black people, not so much to black people, not so much. So what we are talking about is the great shift in africanamerican culture a reorientation of black life, a consideration of something to be as important nay, more important than the civil war and that is the new freedom struggle. The new freedom struggle. Mr. Appelbaum let me interrupt. That is a linguistic shift, to use a favorite academic term construction, deconstruction of identity, the way the community defines itself is muted in the path going forward, and youre getting that through the civil rights era. Dr. Scott exactly. We talk about minorities coming to america in 1914, 1915. There is a cultural watershed that takes place in the early 1960s. You all of a sudden know that you are in a different world ok. My mother was a negro. Im black. My grandfather was a negro, of course. Im black. Ok . And there were things when i was growing up that people would say in protest, they are angry. I was a chicago boy. A guy would come on the radio and say after some outrageous incident of races a mention on, he would point out on his radio show, he would and his show every day saying its enough to make a negro turn black. That was lou palmer. But it speaks to this generational shift. And you could even see it in our association. Proud american day is how we had, in 1961, in our associations history. And then there is the picture of lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and woodson on our posters ok. So the negroes were in charge of our association. And the young folks who were coming in, trying to change that association this was taking place in all kinds of black organizations, with people who were self identified black. And negroes would go slow. Negroes loved lincoln. Now, lerome bennett, a historian, chicago boy, member of our association, i cut my teeth reading his books when i was a kid. He has written some provocative books on lincoln. The first paper i ever wrote in my life, i cribbed it from him and it was entitled, abraham lincoln, white supremacist. And he has become an historian because in the segregated south of mississippi, he was allowed into the bookstore before hours or afterhours and he learned from southerners from some book about lincoln that lincoln was a white supremacist. . Ok and that made him an historian for stop because when you learn something that challenges how you see the world, you want to know more. My reading that shook me. I read his version of this and wow, it blew me away. I think it was nine, tenures all. I think its pretty much why im an historian to day. I thought lincoln was a good guy. Lincoln was a white supremacist. Again, i must have plagiarized because my first paper was abraham lincoln, white supremacist. And we were black and lincoln was a white supremacist, and black people saw him that way. We did not ham and all. Negroes hemmed and hawed about abraham lincoln. Abraham lincoln did the best he could. He was on the path. The on the path argument for stop when you like them, they are coming around. When you dont like them, they are not coming around. So black folks reinterpreted lincoln, they reinterpreted the civil war, they reinterpreted everything and that major interpretation was really Something Else. It was about we are going to rediscover black peoples fight for freedom, fight for equality. And protest becomes the central piece of African American history. The theme changes. Mr. Appelbaum so the scene shifts to protests, reflecting what is happening on the ground. There is an understanding of the past which helps us, gives us the tools to grapple with the present. But you can also go back to the civil war era and find the 55th massachusetts demanding equal pay, equal rights. There is a protest tuition that roots itself there is a protest tradition that roots itself. Dr. Scott and thats what well talk about. Mr. Appelbaum excellent. So there is a way to do it, but its not the way its done. And thats an interesting shift, because instead of redefining the civil war not just as mr. Lincolns war but as a war of a few hundred thousand black men under arms, marching on white supremacist in the south, it gets redefined as tangential to the story of black empowerment. How did that happen . Dr. Scott but theres another problem, ok. The same movement that brought you protests brought you the first rocher critique by africanamericans of american society. With some too quickly would call antiamerican, ok. So negroes loved america. Negroes identified with america. Phyllis wheatley, we love her. Negroes love christopher attics. We love these people. Black people dont love these folks the same way. They dont even love the people who love white people that much. If you get me. So it becomes a new generation of intellectuals they become to a large degree, against militarism. Or if they are for militarism they are for revolution, ok. Four years ago, when we had our first celebration of the sesquicentennial, we took on the theme, africanamericans in the civil war. And this gets us to the divide in the black community between the intellectuals and the rankandfile. Used to be there was not much of a difference between our intellectuals and rankandfile. We talked about this problem existing among white folks. The white intelligentsia had no connection with the rankandfile. There has always been a class divide like this. But we are talking about an intellectual divide now. So the people in the academy they were not so hot over that theme. They tolerated that theme. Some people, however, who were academics do not even come to the conference because of the militarism suggested. You cannot suit up for the civil war . And some people told me, no, ok. Some people would run the hard argument that was still the army of white supremacists. I hear those arguments. So black people, black people can get freedom out of this and they are still fighting for what supremacy . There are some hardliners and will say that is what they were fighting for. I say, really . But thats how some people see it. I have never im from fairly humble roots, a l