war museum, is relevant today. many of you are regulars to the events, history buffs who love to study the lessons of history. i would like to add a special welcome to some of you who are new to the preservationists who have joined us today in the audience. as we have over the decades in our existence, as the museum of the confederacy and the american civil war center which combined to form the american civil war museum, we have always thought that it was our responsibility to engage constructively with public issues arising from the subject of the civil war. whether that subject be monuments, the confederate battle flag, or the discussion of slavery as the cause of the war. our purpose today is to promote a constructive and civil consideration of civil war monuments. we have organized a program that features scholars who come from diverse academic backgrounds and bring diverse viewpoints to the subject. collectively they will provide background and perspective on monuments and give us different viewpoints that will help us understand what's involved in these discussions and debates. too often these days people only talk to or listen to others with whom they agree. but whatever your personal opinion as you walked in today, you will hear opinions today that differ from yours. i hope you agree that that's a good thing, that exposure to other ideas and perspectives is the way we all learn and the way that a civil society should engage in divisive issues. as you can see from your program, we'll have three speakers before lunch and two speakers after lunch, followed by a panel discussion. there will be opportunity for q and a from the audience at the end of each of the programs, and we hope that there will be good discussion amongst the audience and the panelists in the final program, but this will be a civil talk. this is not the jerry springer show. since we are broadcasting live, i will ask that you help me keep to the time schedule that c-span is keeping on this, particularly, returning from the breaks after each of the speakers. but i should also say that after our live coverage today of the entire conference, c-span intends to begin airing each slot starting march 25th on saturday night, each slot once a week for the entire program. additionally, on our website and on c-span's website you can see videos of former symposiums and programs that we have done at the museum. now i'd like to introduce our first speaker. christy coleman is my colleague, the ceo of the american civil war museum. she's a native of williamsburg. she holds a ba in museum studies from hampton university. before the combination that formed the american civil war museum in 2013, she was the ceo of the american civil war center at historic treg ager. christy came to richmond from detroit where she had been president and ceo of the nation's largest african-american museum, the charles h. wright museum of african-american history. she began her career in public history at colonial williamsburg. after more than a decade -- after more than a decade there she became its director of public programs. christy's no stranger to controversies over public history. having been at the center of the storm over colonial williamsburg's re-enactment of a slave auction. when she arrived in richmond in 2008, she was quickly introduced to the strong feelings that surround civil war monuments. she recently served on governor terry mcauliffe's monument work group, but we'll let christy tell us more about all of this in her program entitled "monuments, markers, museums, and the landscape of civil war memory." ladies and gentlemen, christy coleman. [ applause ] >> good morning, everyone. that was quite an introduction, wasn't it? my alma mater would be very upset if i didn't make one slight correction. i had an ma from hampton university in museum studies, but i digress. so, let's get started. a public historian's primary job is building bridges between our colleagues and academia and the general community. it is a process requiring an understanding of the delicate yet necessary balance between history, heritage and memory. it's understanding that history is never static. it's always present. it's understanding that each generation looks to the past to make sense of the world in which they are currently living. we ask questions each generation that may not be the same questions that the previous generation asked, but the difference in the answers does not mean the narrative they are developing is somehow false or inaccurate. it is simply that history is present. now, public historians also understand that notions of heritage reflect stories and remembrances that a community has negotiated to preserve and reflect itself. and this happens at some very interesting points in time. because it's from this that the memories themselves are formed, whether they are the stories shared on the front porch of an elder's house or whether it is the first trip to a battlefield where you got to listen to the skilled ranger weave narratives that helped you remember or live a particular moment. and yes, it is also through a landscape that is dotted with statuary. all of these things play into our understanding, how we regard ourselves, our communities, our nations. now, quite frankly, if you had asked me back in 2008 when i became president of the american civil war center that that would be my feeling, i would say, huh, no. it never occurred to me in quite the same way the importance of a landscape that way. yes, i love historic preservation and beautiful buildings and things of that sort, but it never really occurred to me what a statue or monument could mean or the power that it could have, and i mentioned 2008 because i was newly appointed as president and ceo of the american civil war center in historic tredegar, when less than a month in the job i opened up the richmond times dispatch and low and behold there was this grand article talking about a major donation of a statue of jefferson davis by the virginia division of the sons of confederate veterans to the museum. admittedly i was a little stunned because the board nor the staff ever mentioned this to me, either in interviews or in early meetings. now, there's a reason why they didn't mention it and that was because the article was the first time any of them had heard of this alleged donation. so, since no one within the organization had been directly contacted, i simply waited, assuming that the scv would reach out when they were ready. sure enough, they did. within a few days i received a phone call asking for a meeting, which i graciously honored. sure, come on in, i'd love to hear more about this. and we sat down and started the conversations. but you see, museums, we have protocols, we have policies, we have all those things. i made it very clear that our process is that we look at a donation, we consider its historic merit, artistic merit and then the collections committee would make a full recommendation to the board. i explained this to the gentlemen. and we spent months researching this piece. we went out and asked davis scholars in particular to give us their insights about the thing, the depiction within the statue because that, too, was critically important. and gathered all of these data points so that we, as an institution, could make an informed decision. because you see, i'm also not so foolish enough to think that it was simply what it was. this was a test for a fairly new organization that had just hired an african-american woman who run it. it was a test to determine or to put into place what we would be. now, i have to tell you, during all of this i also got on the phone and called waite rawls, my colleague at the museum of the confederacy. i said, waite, i don't understand. if this incident that's depicted happened at the white house or this person, why didn't they offer it to you? and he says, well, some of them hate our guts. and i said, well, i don't understand. that doesn't make any sense to me. you're the museum of the confederacy, yes, i get a long time ago you guys stopped being the museum for the confederacy and became a museum about the confederacy. i've known that since i started doing work for the organization. but i couldn't wrap my head around this thing. and again, it was really more about the way it was handled. but above all, it was my intention that we would do our jobs, that we would, in fact, give it the consideration we would any other artifact that was being offered to us. and that's what we did. we, again, spent months, we followed the protocols and the team made its recommendation to the full board. and that discussion was the first monument controversy i've ever been in in my life. and i said at the beginning it was really quite instructive listening to these men and women have, yes at times, very passionate discussion about whether or not the museum should accept it. what could we do if we did accept it, what was the expectation of the donor if we accepted it. all very valid questions that the staff had spent a considerable amount of time working through. as we were preparing for the vote, it was clear to me that this was not going to be an easy vote for a variety of reasons and not necessarily the reasons that you think. what was disturbing on some level was that some of it had become so impassioned for some, even though nobody was yelling or screaming at each other or anything ridiculous like that, but some folks, i have to say felt that our not accepting it would somehow -- would cast an aspersion, right. others felt that accepting it would cast an aspersion. it was really quite interesting. but one board member in particular, before we took the vote, said very thoughtfully, what business are we in? we are in the business of education. we are in the business of public history. and therefore, we could use this statue as an opportunity to talk about how people choose to remember. and the beauty of that moment was that a calm descended on that group as we now talked about the business that we're in. and so, as the press was waiting with bated breath for this board meeting to conclude, the board voted to accept this statue as long as the donor understood that it would have to be accepted under the policies set forth in the museum's collections policy program that was established, trust me, long before i ever walked in the door. well, as it turned out, those terms were unacceptable to the scv, and they, because, you know, frankly they wanted to tell us exactly where it was going to go. they wanted to tell us exactly how it was going to be interpreted on the site. they -- i mean, it was really quite interesting. there were groups of them that would show up on the site and just walk the grounds and start putting in some cases little stakes in the ground and they wanted it to be placed -- this is interesting. they wanted it to be placed on a slight hillside below where the lincoln monument was. now, this is a little aside for you. the lincoln monument, as some of you may know, was placed at the tredegar site as a gift from the united states historical society to the national park service. that happened in 2003, before the center ever came into being at that site. even then the placement of the lincoln statue itself was a lightning rod of controversy. so as i was, quite frankly, going through this interesting dynamic with scv, the national park service shared with me the volume of letters it had received about that. and it was deplorable. the things that were being said. 2,000-plus people who gathered to dedicate this monument, very subtle thing if you've never seen it. it's relatively subtle compared to, you know, the monoliths that we have on monument avenue, fairly subtle thing. but it was dedicated in 2003 as a plane flew overhead with a banner. as those who managed to make it through the crowd, some who threw bird seeds on it with the intent to have the statue blessed by passing birds, really quite stunning. but it was the letters, as i read through the letters that i just couldn't get over the venom. and again, that's when i understood the power of a thing for some people. now, again, that kind of opened my eyes the first time of really thinking about what monuments say about our communities, what they can mean, what they can evoke. and the truth of the matter is, when we think about this thing that way, we recognize that they are powerful symbols. they are meant to be. that's why they were erected in the first place. and tourists and museum goers explore the civil war, most of them, through these things, by visiting thousands of monuments and museums and historical markers that are scattered all over the united states. these things document battles and events and personalties of the war, heros and others. depending on one's perspective, there are other words that are used north and south, east and west. but collectively, these places really should remind us that the civil war altered everything in america, not just the landscape but economy and politics and social structure and more. however, i have to ask this question, what view of the war's cause, course and legacies were and are visitors getting from these experiences? a recent study by the pew research center and by recent i mean in 2015 found that more than 48% of respondents believe that the primary cause of the civil war was states' rights, meaning tariffs, et cetera, compared to 38% noting slavery as its root cause. those in public history we clearly understand and academia obviously that the causes for the war are deeply intertwined, yet translating a more nuanced interpretation to the general populous proves challenging for many reasons, and i would dare say part of that is because of what the landscape looks like in many of these places. so whether you're in the north and you see monuments to grant or, you know, sherman or whoever it is, there's this notion of sort of where we won so we're done and they don't pay much attention to them. in the south it's a little different. in fact, when you factor in the reality that most civil war sites and battlefields are principally in the south, how do you think things often will be remembered? quite frankly, among the most prominent, i say among the most, you know that our former institution is among that. but among the most prominent of course are the battlefields and those are run by the national park service. for decades the park service, as brilliant as they are, as dynamic as they are, avoided the controversy of cause of war, focusing solely on actions, what happened on those battlefields. they focused on military actions, they focused on leaders with great vibrance, with great verve. but that approach proved little in terms of helping move the dial for generations that are coming to those places now asking new questions, needing a different context, needing something more. other civil war-related museums and sites around the country also were facing this same dynamic. some moved faster than others. and for the park, it took a literal act of congress in the 1990s to bring about any change about discussing causes of war. meanwhile here in richmond, the former capitol of the confederacy, how the civil war was interpreted here without a doubt started to have and it always had a national impact because you see it was here, here in richmond, where memorialization of the war took on grand scale. the first of course being the erection of the monument to robert e. lee. immediately after his death, a group of people started -- a group of women in particular and ultimately the lead memorial association gathered to talk about not only where should the monument go and in richmond for them was absolutely it had to be richmond, but they started talking about how they wanted to remember him, this honored figure. now, if we back up just a little bit, i think it's important to also understand that as the war is raging, a certain memorialization is happening during the course of the war regarding the dead. first, we have the establishment on the federal side. we have the establishment of national cemeteries in order to bury these tens of thousands of men who were losing their lives on the battlefield. and the confederate states of america did not have a similar system. unfortunately, what that meant is that too often many of its dead had to languish in the field until someone could retrieve their bodies, or they lay in shallow graves. and there was outrage around this fact. but the women, mostly middle to upper class white women, organized themselves to rectify this situation, and that's where we get a lot of these memorial associations to rebury and when they are reburying they are building monolithic type monuments but not necessarily depicting a particular person quite yet. that's why i said the erection of the lee monument becomes significant piece. in fact, when it is actually dedicated, 100,000 people, 100,000 people show up to the outskirts of richmond to participate. can you imagine that? 100,000 people showed up. it was quite the spectacle. it would not take much longer due to the success of that particular venture for other monuments to be erected on monument avenue in richmond, virginia, the developing real estate for wealthier homes on the edge of the city. an honor to live there was the idea. so over the next three decades, the jeb stewart monument in 1907, jefferson davis monument also in 1907, thomas j. stonewell jackson in 1919 and matthew fontaine murray in 1929, each of them embedded in granite. one would find the accomplishments of each while simultaneously speaking to honor and sacrifice. as i said before, the placement of the lee monument alone in 1890 quickly made richmond a must-see destination for a confederate memory faithful and the curious from around the world. this period when these soldiers are dying off, again, north and south, what we find and often refer to is as the memorial period. that makes sense, right? people are dying, you want to memorialize them. you want to remember them. but we cannot ignore the other social forces that are taking place at the time. particularly, this is the birth of jim crow. it's also going on. the federal government has backed up. the south is able to begin to do what it does. part of that again makes itself real and is supported by the federal -- by obviously the supreme court of the united states, several members of whom were still very much and closely related to the south or confederate sympathetic. rural ferguson, 1896, this is the period where we see, again, the memorial period, jim crow era, they are happening simultaneously on the landscape. it is a reassertion, a powerful reassertion of white supremacy, and these monuments are also going up at the same time. is it any wonder then that people's views of them may not be unariffic. is it any idea that for some from the very beginning these are not things to celebrate, that they in fact could be powerful, powerful and painful images of oppression. we would not see another surge in monuments like that until the late 1940s and 1950s, which is sort of the second wave if you will. and again, what's interesting about that, especially as we were beginning to approach the centennial by 1961, beginning to see another wave of monuments principally in the south but we're seeing another wave of monuments, but you can't ignore what's happening in the larger and wider society. this is also the period of the modern civil rights era. it is during this period not only that we see more statues but in complete defiance of the supreme court's decision in brown v. board which right here in our own state, one of those cases being right down the road a piece as one would say, and barbara johns and her classmates walking out of the deplorable school conditions that they were expected to learn in, that schools throughout the country, particularly again in the south -- let me correct myself. particularly in the south, started to rename those very schools. if they hadn't shut them down, began renaming those schools after confederate icons. many of those schools that had majority students of color, again, what do symbols and monuments and things mean. there has always been this up and down. we have always struggled with what this means. when richmond and its community began having these conversations again and do not think for one minute that the recent discussions around monument removal is new. it is not. here in richmond it's been going on for quite a while. but when many richmond civil and community leaders decided to tackle this question, they chose a slightly different route. they decided that what was most important was not taking away but enhancing and adding to, that our stories are vast and each of them worthy. and they started in the '70s. it's interesting to me for a lot of reasons, but it's interesting to me that the very first monument that richmond put up to honor an african-american was in 1973. it was a statue to honor bill, bojangles, robinson. yes, he was a very world renown, beloved hollywood figure. he got to dance with shirley temple and taught her how to tap. but this would be the first image that would be depicted. another monument devoted to an african-american would not go up for another 20 years. 1993, the boatman was dedicated being eventually placed on brown's island as part of a riverfront development. but at one point it was moved or stolen or something and had to actually be anchored down much more tightly. and that statue was designed to honor the black men who were crucial to the enterprise involving the river, these boatmen who made richmond hum, enslaved and free. soon it was henry box brown in the bottom neighborhood. you would probably walk right by it. it's just a box on the ground. like i said earlier, by the time the lincoln statue showed up, there was already trouble afoot in richmond because again, this fight, this back and forth over images and monuments and landscape and all of this, had been waging here for quite a while. some of you who are richmond natives may remember that these flash points around particularly confederate imagery had been happening quite a bit. monument avenue is not just the primary focus, even though we know that many of the statues there frequently are defaced and that has been having increased frequency, unfortunately. but in 2000 it exploded again because there were many in richmond's african-american community that raged against the image of robert e. lee being included on a banner that was celebrating and highlighting richmond's most iconic figures. on the city's flood wall. the lee banner was burned by what police described as a molotov cocktail and the culprits were never found. when attempts to replace it were made, a city council member railed against it while vulgar threats and racial epithets were hurled at him. the united daughters of the confederacy and sons of confederate veterans lodged their own complaints about what was happening. they strongly believed that lee's image did deserve to be among the honored persons depicted. robert w. barber jr. who was the commander of the division of scv at the time called for a swift and thorough investigation of the vandalism, labeling it as nothing less than a crime of hatred towards southerners and confederate history. passionate times. what happened two years ago in charleston, south carolina, a young man waving confederate iconary set the world on fire again, and like a rippling effect in communities all over, this question of what shall we do, how shall we remember. from changing names on academic buildings to actually removing statuary from public squares to what i consider a more reasoned approach, recognizing that the landscape is big enough to say all of who and what we are. recognizing that the same investment and care should be given, recognizing that we also have an opportunity to help our current generations by answering their questions honestly. to provide the context in many cases to these places and statuary that may, in fact, be far more difficult for them to understand. yes, i have watched all of this, all of us have within our institution, within our field, trying to figure out how we can best serve, how we can provide a space for our visitors, for our guests, for our communities no matter what side they're on to come together to have reasoned discussion. to come together to figure out how we do this. the table, if you feel it's too short, build a new one. it's not over. i recently learned actually just a couple of days ago that even in louisville, kentucky a statue has just been removed and will be moved to another location. we all know about what happened in charlottesville, we know about what happened in new orleans. our stories are vast. today you're going to hear a number of conversations, a number of perspectives around how we can and should remember. but here's the beautiful thing. it was communities that made these decisions for themselves. therefore, it should be communities that make the decisions now. it's just our hope that we understand what we're doing and why. with that, i'm going to turn it over for questions because i think i have six minutes remaining. i've been trying to be very good. anybody who's ever heard me speak before -- [ applause ] -- knows that i can definitely just kind of go on and on and on, but c-span made me be disciplined today so i actually had paper which hardly ever happens. anyway, are there any questions at this point? and i will repeat the question if necessary. >> i wanted to ask you, what's your insight on why the robert e. lee statue was taken down in charlottesville? >> what's my perspective on why it was taken down in charlottesville? it hasn't come down yet. i do understand it's going to be about $700,000 to do it, which is stunning to me. as one colleague has said quite passionately, can't they find something else to do with that money. no, but seriously, i was surprised by that decision. but as i just said, communities decided to put them up and as long as the conversation that's happening in that community is one that is reasoned, a community can decide to move it. you know, it's tough and i get that there are people probably sitting out there right now looking at me going, why would she say that, that's so wrong. i'm not saying that's what i would do. i'm saying i understand the logic of it. i understand that the dominance of these pieces and the fact that a community has not made an effort to add to the landscape, to add scope to the landscape. basically the communities are saying this is how we want to be remembered, and if the community changes and they're saying, no, this isn't the only way we want to be remembered, that's something else. i think that's one of the reasons why here in richmond the conversation, yes, it has certainly been passionate, but often tends to be a little bit more even toned because of the variety of statuary that has been added to our landscape, particularly in the last 25 years. and it does make a difference when you can see a reconciliation statue, knowing that there's going to be a statue to maggie walker, knowing that there's -- it makes a difference when our capitol square takes all of this history into effect. i think that's what's often lacking, and i would dare say that's one of the conversations communities could have. >> my second -- >> no, you only get one. sorry. yes, sir? >> i'm from charlottesville and i've been there with the exception of two years in the united states army since birth, 65 years ago, and when you say the communities need to have that conversation, that's very true. the problem is in charlottesville, we have a city council of five members, all of whom are democrats and none of whom are from charlottesville and they appointed a blue ribbon commission consisting of three sort of specialty members and six members at large. of the members at large, none of them were from charlottesville. they had four african-americans on there and two very liberal white people. and so, the citizens of the community feel that we haven't been involved in that discussion -- >> can you imagine how it feels to be a part of a community that no one is listening to you? >> absolutely. absolutely. there's no question about that. that irony is not lost on me. >> okay. so let me just say this. i am not from charlottesville and so i can appreciate what you're saying. i do take a certain offense to the idea that, well, they're all democrats. if they were republicans then they would get this. i think that's kind of not fair because i know that -- i know some hard core confederates that are democrats, that this is their history and their ancestors. and that's part of the problem. i think that we're often so quick to dismiss by these labels that we aren't hearing, and i know that i was a little snarky, so please forgive me. but the idea of nobody's hearing us because they don't represent us, that's essentially what the communities are often saying. that nobody was listening to us and nobody was hearing us when we were saying there's something about this that eats at my soul. when you step back from that, again, it gives us a better way to handle that, and i really didn't want to speak to the decision itself because, again, i follow it in the paper like anyone else, but i was never at the meetings. i didn't. i know it comes up again. we have time for one more question, and i have to leave. this gentleman right here, yes, sir? >> good morning. >> good morning. >> in my study of american history, no white people found america, and no black people were in the process. this is the language that i'm having difficulty with. if i want to say -- >> no. >> american history of racism teach that if you are european ancestry, you are the white american, and african blood in you, you are a black american. we fail to realize these terms came along at the time of slavery to plant ideas of inferiority and superiority in human beings. >> understood. >> okay. so -- >> the question related to the topic, though? >> the question related to the topic that we cannot address the issue until we abolish the psychological impact of institutional racism. this language, black, white is very divisive. i ask american europeans here, where in europe they came from, they can't say they came from white land. america is a society of diversity, and even today we are the most are the diverse on earth, and until we, just like in times before civil war, no one wanted to make the issue of institutional slavery the reason. here today, nobody wants to make the issue of institutional racism the issue that's tearing us apart. we got to change the paradigm. >> understood. i think i know where the question's going. so the bottom line is about narrative change. the conversation is about narrative change. absolutely right. narrative change within communities. other issues is a different symposium, but relating to monuments and statuary, it is about narrative change. that is what communities are grappling with. how shall we remember? thank you, all, very much. [ applause ] >> we have a facebook question from peter, he says are there any historical resources on the people who died in detroit? >> well, there's one in particular, the -- you could be featured during our next live program. join the conversation on facebook at facebook.com/cspanhistory. and on twitter at @cspanhistory. >> if you're a teacher of social studies and civics to middle and high school students, try our classroom resources at the c-span classroom website. there's ready to go resources including current events videos, lesson plans and handouts. also enhanced teaching tools to engage your students in discussions with new content added regularly. many teachers across the country use these resources, so you should try it too. it's free, quick and easy. go to c-span.org/classroom to sign up. sunday night on "q and a," founder and ceo of open the books on how taxpayers dollars are spent and the need for government transparency. >> veterans affairs we've audited their checkbook for the past four years. and last summer we found that during a period where up to 1,000 sick veterans died while waiting to see a doctor, that the v.a. spent $20 million on a high end art portfolio. so it was 27-foot christmas trees costing the amount like price like cars $21,000. it was sculptures priced like five-bedroom homes. it was two sculptures for $700,000 procured by a v.a. center that serves blind veterans. it was a cube rock sculpture all in with landscaping for $1.2 million. this is the type of waste that's in our government. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q and a." on "lectures in history," westfield state university criminal justice professor george michael teaches a class on white supremacist groups in the mid to late 20th century. he describes the difference between white supremacists and white separatist groups. and looks at events that have attracted media attention. he also discusses the relationship between the extreme right subculture and current politics. his class is about 50 minutes. >> okay. good evening. today we are going to take a look at the history of the white separatist movement in the united states. now, at the present time white separati