Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics And Public Policy Today 20160719

[ applause ] day two of the Republican Convention begins this afternoon. House speaker paul ryan, majority leader much mcconnell, House Majority leader kevin mccarthy, two of Donald Trumps children and former republican president ial candidate ben carson are all scheduled to speak. Tonights theme is make america work again. Live Convention Coverage starts today on cspan at 5 30 p. M. Youll have a front row seat to every minute of the republican and Democratic National conventions on cspan. Org. Watch live streams of the Convention Proceedings without commentary or commercials. Use our video clipping tool to create your own clips of your favorite convention moments and share them on social media. Also, read twitter feeds from delegates and reporters in cleveland and philadelphia. Our special Convention Pages have everything you need to get the most of cspans gaveltogavel coverage. Go to cspan. Org Republicannational Convention and cspan. Org Democraticnational Convention for updated Schedule Information to see whats happening during each convention session, and every speech will be available on demand for viewing when you want on your desktop, laptop, tablet and esphone. Our special Convention Pages and all of cspan. Org are a publicer isives have your cable or satellite provider. So if youre a cspan watcher check it out on the web at cspan. Org. Next on American History tv, we hear from historians and activists who reflect on the historical arc of the civil rights moment this. Discussion, part of a threeday conference called the future of the africanamerican past. It was cohosted by the American Historical Association and the Smithsonian National museum of africanAmerican History and culture which opens this september on the national mall. This is an hour and 40 minutes. This moirng got a call from a reporter who wanted to know why would the museum at a time when it was focused on opening the building, why would the museum even help to organize such a conference . Well, the simple answer is that were crazy, but the real answer is at the smithsonian, at this museum, scholarship is the engine, and research is the lifeblood of the institution. Without the decades of research and academic scholarship as a foundation, there would be no National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture, so we know that we are tied so much to the work that so many of you do. So much of the intellectual and interpretive agenda of the museum has been shaped by the work of many who are participating in this conference. Thanks to this amazing array of scholarship, the museum is able to position itself as an institution that will help all who visit find a rich, complex and nuanced history of the africanamerican community, but even more importantly thanks to your work this museum will recenter the africanamerican experience and use africanAmerican History and culture as a lens to understand what it means to be an american so that the audiences who visit will realize how much americas identity and aspirations have been profoundly shaped by this history, by this culture and this because of you. Since the purdue conference, the field of africanAmerican History and culture has expanded and morphed so many times. As such, there are so many issues, so many topics, so many themes that it was impossible to do everything in this conference, and there are so many gifted scholars whose voices should be heard but who cant for this particular conference. It says, i think, so much about the vibrancy, the importance, the expansive nature of the field of africanAmerican History that no single conference can hold it all, but we are so excited about this conference because were excited about the array of scholars who are gathered here, and in some ways, as i see deidre of my staff say, okay, lone, stop talking, let me begin the conference by introducing the moderator of tonights roundtable, the long struggle for civil rights and black freedom, barbara ramsby. Barbara is a dear friend who is a professor of history and africanamerican studies as well as gender and womens studies at the university of illinois. A student of the black Freedom Movement and a longtime activist, she has been a close observer and participant in the black lives Matter Movement of which shes currently writing a book on the movement eats origins. Her work is well known. Weve all revelled in the biographies that she has written, and i want to tell you how honored and pleased we are, so please join me in welcoming a great friend and colleague, barbara ramsby. [ applause ] weve invited the whole panel to join us here for the roundtable. What a lovely audience. Thank you all for coming out this evening. I want to start off this evening, this roundtable, by thanking lonnie bunch. He thanked a lot of people, and i echo those thanks. It takes a lot to put on a conference like this and get a lot of very busy people in one place at one time, but i also want to thank and acknowledge lonnie for what has been a decade long labor of lot. You know, he was in chicago before, so we loaned him to this project. But it has been a decade of hard work and struggle and maybe some surprises along the way, and im sure, as we stand on the threshold of the opening of this historic new institution, this powerful institution, that none of us will be disappointed. And so, thank you, lonnie, to you and your staff and to all the hard work that is making what were anticipating possible. [ applause ] i also want to invite all of you here tonight to come to the next two days, because as i look out at the audience, i cant see all the faces but i know they are there, some of the most prominent and distinguished historians are in this audience, people who have made time to be here for this conference, who have present who will present papers in the next two days and so tonight is really the warmup act for the next two days, so, please, come back and participate in the discussion and the debate and you will not be disappointed. What i want to say tonight is by way of introduction is that while we want to give the past its due, we also want to give appropriate attention what dr. King called a fierce urgency of now. We have an extraordinary roundtable of panelists. Their bios are in your program, and maybe youve seen them on your website so im not going to give extensive introductions, but suffice to say there is a vast wealth of wisdom on this panel, both scholarly and experiencial from Terrence Roberts who was one of the little rock nine who marched into Little Rock Central High School in 1957 and made history, to the youngest member of our panel, jessica pierce, who is a fierce and formidable organizer with the black Youth Project 100 and has organized direct actions all over this country, and we expect her to be a part of that cohort to change the world, and in between we have three extraordinarily prominent historians, clay carson from stanford university, sarah evans, professor amarita university of minnesota, and roslyn turborg penn, also professor emarita from Morgan State University so join me in welcoming the roundtable participants. I did not select this panel, but i could not have selected a better group of people to start this conversation about the long Civil Rights Movement, and as jim grossman told me this election process, this represents a group of people who not only have thought and written and reflected about the civil rights and black freedom struggle but who in very concrete ways have been a part of and whose work has been influenced in very intimate ways by the movements of the 50s, 60s and 70s so im going to start with a question, and were going to have a back and forth, and they know this question so im not surprising them with it so dont, you know, think they are coming up with their great succinct answers on their feet. But the question is simply this. What was your entry into the movement . Tell us what was the most powerful set of events . What were the circumstances under which you entered into the work related to the black Freedom Movement, either as a scholar or as an activist. Some of you have written about this. Clay has written about this and some of the work that hes done so maybe well start with you, clay. Well, for me it started right here. I mean, literally right here on this street because when i was 19 years old, i came to the march on washington, and that was my first demonstration, and i thought that they were all going to be like that and so the movement was a very good thing to be in, and one of the things though that i think puts that in context is that a few days before coming here, i had met Stokley Carmichael at a student conference and then he was a senior at howard, and he introduced me to something that i really didnt know too much about, and i would like to make a distinction between what we might call the Civil Rights Movement which kind of culminated with the march on washington, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 64 and the Voting Rights act of 65 with what i might call the freedom struggle, and and what he i remember i told him i was going to try to get to the march, and he kind of derided that. Why would you want to go to that washington picnic when you can really join the movement . And he started talking about what they were doing in the deep south and the Delta Mississippi and all of that, and i didnt have enough nerve to tell him that just going to the march was the most courageous political thing i had done in my life and going to these places would have been beyond that. And a few months later i met well, i didnt meet, i heard bob moses giving a talk about plans for the mississippi i think it was a meeting in new orleans, plans for the mississippi summer, and, again, i kind of had this sense that beyond the movement that, you know, like i grew up reading in the newspaper about you, and it was it was the little rock nine were my heros, you know. That was the movement that i saw out there, but i think when i met stokley and bob moses, i realized that there was something deeper and that there were people in the movement who were not seeking civil rights legislation and would not be satisfied with civil rights bills, and understood that from their perspective Martin Luther king was not they were not following Martin Luther king. Martin luther king was following them, that they were in the vanguard of the movement, and i think that realization has shaped everything ive done since then because thats thats what i tried to join, the freedom struggle. Thats what my first book was about, was about that freedom struggle, and i think today, just to kind of set up this discussion it seems like the passage of civil rights legislation played shome americans complacent because the people in and at the center of the strug israel understood that their job was the same the day after the Voting Rights act as it was before the Voting Rights act. Thats right. And that they were in a struggle that was going to go on for a long i just recently talked to willy ricks, that some of you might recognize that name, the person who first started using the term black power, and for him this has been a 50year experience in his life, and for so many other people like that, and i think that thats for the generation coming up. I hope that they connect to that. Now, its interesting to hear you remember yourself all those years ago and being impressed with stokley and so forth. I remember once we were in a panel. This was also many years ago and you said as you got older, you know what im going to say, as you got older king got wiser . Yeah, yeah. Any decades after reflections about that moment of sort of seeing the juxtaposition of the rising black Power Movement and kwame torray and those folksed juxtaposed against king and maybe now seeing king in a different right. Well, certainly one of the things i found out is that one of the things that made as many differences as there was between king and snick, they agreed on one thing, that the movement was about much more fundamental things than passage of Civil Rights Acts. I think that king, the way i teach him now, is that rosa parks sent him on a detour, a tenyear detour. That he was a social gospel minister who wanted to i found this one paper that he wrote in 1948 where he talks about his mission as a minister was to deal with unemployment, slums, economic insecurity, and look what he was doing in 1968. So his civil rights part of his life, his career as a civil rights leader was a major part of his adult life, but it wasnt the whole of it, and i think that for young people going back and look at what were the ideas coming out of this freedom struggle and what was kings vision of what he was about, and i think that theres a lot of commonality there. Mmhmm. Sarah evans, what what story do you want to tell us about your entry into the movement. Right. Well, i have to say that my my entry into the movement same primarily when i was an undergraduate at duke university, and i was a bit player on the margins, but i dont downplay the bit players. Yes. As the biographer of ela bake worry have to say. My linkage goes way back because im a white southern, so i grew up in segregation, and my father had preached the year before i was born, had breached a sermon criticizing the biological idea of race, using paul and acts of god, and i was born in the parsonage in a little bitty town in georgia on the south of South Carolina which was kind of siberia. I think ive always known it was about history. My mother told me sometime in early grade school they are going to tell you in school that slavery was not cause of the civil war, but they are wrong, and i wish i could go back and ask her how did she know that. I dont know. And its very deep and its coming back up again now as i think our country is again understanding how deep racism goes, how embedded it is in so many of our ongoing daily relationships and structures and that its never never has been simply about a couple of laws but its about how we live together so and then, of course, i the movement i went to the montgomery march at the culmination of that was my first really big one, and then i got involved in supporting a union at duke because thats where the Civil Rights Movement went. And out of my involvement in the new left and antiwar and civil war i got involved in the movement. I went to my first meeting in chicago in the fall of 67 i hadnt realized how many northern white students went to mississippi in the summer of 64. I didnt even know about mississippi. They didnt recruit down white students in the south. I went to africa that summer and had an extremely interracial experience laying bricks, but it so that was my mississippi experience, but at that point the movement was my identity and i feel like those movements together sent me to graduate school, to study the history women, and one of the things that i am a scholar of is the ways those movements are linked together and the way Civil Rights Movement has been a template for other social movements that are about democracy. Im going skip over jessica. I know she has a lot to say about this and not as far back to dig for her memories of entries into this work, and particularly you two sitting next to each other, because i think one of the things the black lives Matter Movement and black Youth Project 100 have done, despite the way that it gets presented sometimes, is to really foster some Pretty Amazing connections to labor struggles, to immigration struggles, to queer and tran struggles and so forth and i want her to be able to talk about that and i want the other memories from further back. Old lady. Im right there with you, sister. Staying with the historians anyway. Tell us about a little bit about the early 60s, your naacp work and your troublemaking back then. Well, i was a student Queens College city wasnt City University of new york then it was just plain Queens College in the 60s and as soon as we got there as soon as i got there, there was movement and there was a little steal group called the naacp on campus, and and not many black students at queens in those days, but i did know them, who were there, and recruited them and we all so we said, you know, we really need to have a movement go, and i dont know if we used the word movement, but we really need to become activists. We need to do something, so thats what started me going, and then as i went home and, of course, theres no campus there was no residential campus, so we everybody went home at the end of the day. My father had a student at nyu, but he had never talked about his early years there in the 1920s when things were not always too good, but he was there with dorothy hight and she was a troublemaker, oh, yeah, dorothy, oh, yeah, so i knew that what i was doing he understood because he had had some kind of dealing with it before, so thats what got me involved. Then we started wed start being activists so our first forray was to go to woolworths and support by this time its 1916 maybe, in support of the students at a t who had gone to desegregate the lunch counters at isnt that awful in, greensboro. Greensboro. So we were going to support them so we started boycotting the woolworths on fifth avenue. Every weekend wed go down there and we would march, and, of course, we got and it was marching in front of the building. We were not sitting at the counters. Some people dm, but most of us were outside, and they got the same kind of response in new york city as the people did in North Carolina. White america was not red for this, you know. You needed to stay in your place so we understood this, so we rallied. We did that. We got involved. By the time i was a senior Andrew Goodman was a freshman, and i could i dont remember him that well, but i do know that we had started organizing students to be trained because most of these why were white jewish students from new york city, manhattan mainly, who had not had any interaction with black people. I said you really need to learn to know some black people before you just march into, so i talked to the minister at the black Congregationalist Church i belonged to st. Albans and i said would you mind and he said of course. Whats the rest sentence . Would you mind what taking them in . Bringing them in and introducing them to black life. At the time andrew young and his wife were in new york, and they were coming to our church, so it wasnt like there was no civil rights thought in the congregation, so they he had to go to the deacon board. My father was on the deacon board, and they agreed to let these students come in, so thats what started these Queens College students to integrate them into a community where they could learn what black life was like and realize that it wasnt that much different from their lives and that was that summer of 60, and they went off. That following to Prince Edward county virginia, and i thought that was important, that i was part of getting that together. And it tells that part of story that the northern part of story, the northernbased student. And the Northern Student Movement developed shortly half that. Sure, yeah. Terry roberts. We want to hear about we know the big picture. We have, you know, seen images of little rock and so forth, the very iconic images, but your family made a position that you would be part of the cohort group of young people to be in the desegregation effort. Tell us about what that was like when you were a young man. It actually started some years before. I consider myself to have been conscripted into the civil rights army on december 3rd, 1941 as i came charging out of the womb. I realized this was not the place that i had anticipated. Hes funny. So it took a while. Hi to acquire certain skills. I had to learn how to speak and eventually eventually i figured it out. In little rock at all black high school of which there was one, knee grow history as it was termed then was a required course. I had heard about it even before i got there, but it intrigued me, and i began to find out, and hi to do this on my own because a lot of people i wanted to ask questions to were reluctant. Dont bring that up. Dont cause trouble. I always was very curious about that response dont cause trouble because according to my estimate the trouble was there before i arrived at any rate, i figured out that we were now because of 1941 we actually were living under the decision of the pressi decision. The plegsy decision of 1896 didnt start anything. It was simply codification what have had gone on before for hundreds of year, and all this information is im taking it in like a sponge and as a 13yearold in 1954 when the court ruled in the brown case now heres an irony. In 1896 the Supreme Court said that it was constitutional to discriminate based on racial group membership, and yet in 1954 the same court rules that it is no longer constitutional. Im concerned about that. Maybe thats a question for some of you to deal with. For me it was exciting though because the law was now hon my side. I realized this, and my first thought was i have got to model lawabiding behavior, so by volunteering to go to Central High School was an opportunity for me to model for others what was proper in this socalled lawabiding society, fiction or not, but in any case we were more than 9 initially. We were probably 150 strong. We all went home on the day of making this decision to volunteer and informed our parents at which time those numbers dwindled very quickly because of the great fear. There were rumors that if any of us decided to follow through with this, there would be blood flowing through the streets of little rock and a lot of folks were not anxious to allow their kids to go. Now the parents nine of us were a bit different, and i think my own parents, i came home and told them i had volunteered. They respond by saying we will support your decision 100 , and if you get up there and its too hot and you want to quit, we will support your decision to quit 100 . So later on i figured out i had the best all worlds. I could stay there or leave without fear of lose onite yeah parental steam. That was wufshlgs and in fact i used that in order to keep going day after day because life was not very pleasant to put it mildly at Central High School. We were there, the nine of us, for one year. A at the end of that year the governor stepped in to close the schools, and most of you probably know this part of the story, too. One of the pantheon including wallace and whats his face mat yoks. Yeah, yeah, lester. Lester maddox, and, of course, our good friend george. Well, all of them, but he agonized all over this thing. Didnt want black kids in is his school because it was an allwhite institution. Before the start of the next school year he came up with a brilliant idea to close all schools in little rock which was a ploy to keep all black men out. The man wasnt bright enough to know that if you close the schools to keep black man out, you keep the white man out. Its not saying much that you were bright because in this country you dont have to have a measurable iq to hold public office. Thats true. That is so true. But i was planning to go back for another round, but because of the schools closure, rather than language in little rock wondering what was next i simply relocated from little rock to los angeles which was easy for me since i had relatives there who had always promised refuge. It was not the case for a lot of my age group peshs across racial lines, however. They didnt have the resources and ergo they lost the year of school at the least but they lost even more. And you were mentions, roslyn, Prince Edward county reminded me that in that county schools were closed much longer. A long time. Much, much longer and so it was that i now consider myself still an active soldier in this ongoing movement, and i dont see any end to it, unfortunately. Right. I want to come back to some of what youve hinted at, particularly around the question of selfpresentation and sort of representing yourself as a pin cal of respaktability. That was a strategy in a moment at that time to accomplish something, and fast forward all these decades, the movement that jessica is very much involved in has kind of taken a different tact and been very confrontational from the getgo, but had you, before you were involved in the black Youth Project 100, which started after the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, you had a history of that. Absolutely. Just thinking about to schools i had to go to the very first thing. For me i was always inherently aware of my blackness, whether it was my choice or not, and i think the first time is probably when i was in Elementary School and i was coloring with crayons and i was colors and talking about how much i loved my skin, my brown skin, and i was always excited. I was always a very loud body person. We love loud little girls. And my teacher came up to me and said, you know, your color may be brown but you are blacks right . Its a moment when you are that young and im looking at the color of the crayons saying this is the color i am and youre the color of this. I think she was saying i was the color of a black america, a sharpie, construction paper and i bust out in tears and my mom was trying to help me understand what the intricacies of what blackness was and even why a teach nerp that moment felt a need to stop my black joy as if it was offensive to her and her whiteness and i think thats always something that was pushed on me and i think in high school i was the only black american my high school class. I grew up in the bay area. The communities of the bay area is not black anymore, and i was the only black person in my class in my High School Call and there was a First Response activity and that goes by putting up every race on the wall on a piece of a paper in a chapel. One piece of paper that says black and one piece of black that says latinos and one piece of paper that says naft americans and asked all the students to go around and write down on their post it notes what their first ideas are and what the first idea is thinking of that race and being my bows self so i said, i just dont think this is a good idea. I love it. You were being honest. I just said i dont think this is going to go well and shes just like open your heart and enter the process so were doing this, you know, i put up my piece of paper and im excited again like was with my brown skin and putting up all these thing, you know, thinking my mother, my grandmother actually carry a picture of my grandmother with me at all times, and then at the end of activity she says, okay, go to the one you most identify, the culture that represents you and i want you to have a discussion with the other people in the group about the things on your piece of paper and hate to state obvious but im the only black person here so how do you see this as a discussion with myself going. She said i wanted you to selfreflect. So i selfreflected on Fried Chicken and watermelon and gang members and ebonnics and and selfreflected on things that i didnt see or that i didnt identify with or didnt represent. The black people are the brilliance that i november my own community and i ended up leaving the room and leaving the activity and got a saturday detention for leaving the activity. Then i went to college. First person in my family to go to college and i thought, that you know, i was prepared for college. I watched can school days and Goodwill Hunting and did all the research and im ready these amazing discussions that are going to happen and sat in rooms with people who said that people who committed crimes were trash and they didnt want to, you know, dealing with those type of people in their lives and i was trying to be a lawyer because i thought thats what you were supposed to do when you went to college. You had to be a doctor or a lawyer or like an engineer so i was like im going to be a lawyer and i was frustrated and i was angry most of the time and i had a professor that stopped me and said, jessica, you dont want to be a lawyer. You care about justice. You care about people and whats right for people so you dont want to be a lawyer so i then i focused on organize campaigns, and actually started with labor campaigns, worked on my First Campaign to sid sodexo out of my dining hall and kicked them out and ended up ki e ed up thinkin real work that impacts what im supposed to do. I went from my awareness of blackness to action and awareness absent action isnt helpful. Ive been doing that kind of work. Worked with the napna. I care about black people. Thats where you go. You go to the naacp. Here, you know. And i ended with kathy kwhoem put together meeting, first meeting of byp100. Didnt know what we were at the time. Told the story if its super professional and played. In the meeting, 100 random young black people and put us in these like limos and going a secret location. Im like where are we going . They are going to kill us. They are going to kill us. They found us all on kill us. Tried to stay on my phone and needed to know where were going and it just happened at the end of the second day was the day that the verdict came out in the zimmerman trial, and and in that moment, you know, we were supposed to be answer the question if we need an organize to represent black young people in this country and if show what would it look like, and in that moment we began to answer the question that we were set to answer in discussions through action so, you know, we had people that took to the streets of chicago hand literally organizing folks on the south side. We had people who started creating a Public Statement about what black young people real needed. We had people who Start Talking about what do we do around policy, nokes who wanted to cry, who wanted to laugh, who wanted to yell about the fact that black people never had v a space to heal. You know, we had in that moment in the organization and literally became black Youth Project 100 so thats really hoy charted my path to this moment. Thank you, thank. [ applause ]. Good, good, good. Very about half an hour for our discussion before we open it up to q a, and i had asked you before to think about one word that could help launch our discussion, and i heard some words that i would pick out of what you already said. Clay started us off in talking about post60s civil rights legislation and the certain complacency. Thats an interesting word. But im wondering if you all would say your world. Dont say why you chose. It just lets get all the words on the table and then lets have a conversation and the question is, of course, you know, what word do you think captures an important theme in the black freedom struggle over the past half certain try, right . Or now. I mean, a word that you feel is an important one for us to wrestle with as we try to understand this moment how we arrived at this moment over the last half century. Want me to start . Yes. Its a big question for a oneword answer. Blackness. Okay. Progress. Progress. No question mark . Just progress. Definitely progress. This oneword thing is real hard. I have five, but anyway, im going to say grass roots. Academics to give you just one word or organizers, right . I would say struggle, but to put it into context. No, no, no. Just one word, please. Yeah. Well, what i mean by that is that ive been coming on this long argument about using some term other than Civil Rights Movement. Yeah. And because for my students, if you say the the phrase Civil Rights Movement, it automatically back in civil rights days. Its something that happened in the past that doesnt have very much to do, and so throughout my career i think ive been trying to find a way of describe iing something, you know, a freedom struggle thats ongoing. So youve jump started the next part of the conversation, but lets get terrys word on the table. My word is enigma. Enigma. Okay. Do any of you want to react to or ask a question about a wo word . Black Youth Project 100 can wrestle with some blackness, right, unapologetically black, building black futures. Why did you say blackness . Thats what its about to me. Thats what the movement was about. Thats what our discussions should be about, but i see it as we said it that all these connect all these words connect. Mmhmm. And they form puzzle pieces or pieces of the puzzle that were trying to construct. Mmhmm. And you say blackness in terms of embrace in the way that jessica talked about it, embracing ones blackness in sort of a white supremacist culture. It could be that. It could be however you feel blackness impacts you. Mmhmm. To me blackness is whats the important part of the Womans Movement because i could not see myself in the early days of the Womans Movement until i added the black part to it, so the black Womans Movement i thought was significant. Since i could only use one word. But blackness, and i want to ask for your responses before we leave this word. Its gotten complicated, right . We have an upsurge in blackled struggle at this moment which i think is very hopeful. Young people who today, and by the way i dont know if people know, may 19th is a day of action, byp 100 and black lives matter and what are the other, ferguson. Ferguson Action Network. Ferguson Action Network and the say her Name Campaign about holding up the names of women who have been victims of police violence, but we have this upsurge under our first black president , right . So blackness is complicated. We have a situation in baltimore where freddie gray is murdered and the, you know, several of the culprits who are on trial now are africanamerican police, so its not it never was uncomp kate, but it is more complicated today to say blackness unqualified, right . No. You qualify it. Okay. Okay. To me thats the noun. You add the adjectives to it. Okay, all right. Other words or other reactions to this one . Yeah. Well, im just wondering about the notion that i think you put it the struggle is about blackness, and one of the things that just came to my mind as i was hearing you say that was kings last book where do we go from here . And i think i remember bob moses who, you know, commented on that and said the problem with that question is who are we . Who is the relevant we, and and you have to answer that question before you know where are you going . True. And i think to some degree we got too wrapped up in the question of what is blackness because it became not just descriptive but prodescriptive, that the blacker than th 0 thing which was a very divisive thing in the 1960s as opposed to the way the black Consciousness Movement was meant to be a source of inspiration to carry on the struggle. Instead, it became a sofrgs Division Within the struggle, and i think that, you know, thats perhaps one of the things that we havent really resolved, and it goes beyond the black community. If we are going to change the world, who are we going to change it with . Yeah. Who are the relevant allies. Who are the people we are trying to work with and work against. And i think the terms of those alliances too, you know. A birks big fight in the Bernie Sanders campaigns, of course, and i think many of the groups working around black lives matter has been clear on class issues and clear on Economic Justice issue, but also saying that you cant ignore the Racial Justice component of that, so to silence discussions around antiblackness within larger Multiracial Coalition is to, you know, i mean this discussion were having right now reminds me of the reason why i chose the worried chose as a oneword response and more to the point. I was asked recently by a works one of my groups, she wanted to know if i would prefer to be called black or africanamerican, and i looked at her. Was respectful. Give her eye contact and she seemed puzzled. She said, well, arent you going to answer, and i said frankly i think i need more options, but in her world i could see that that was it for her. I had been reduced to either one of those categories. Finally i offered up terry rofnlts i said try that one for a while and see how that works. Good for you. Say more about why you chose enigma. You know, very early in my life it occurred to me that collectively we seem to be skirting around the issues. Nobody was willing to name the problem or problems, and i thought, okay. Theres a fear here, but theres this unspeakable, unspoken whatever it is, and it presents a big question mark to almost everybody. Nobody really knows. Its as if were all Walking Around in a room where the lights have been turned off and we bump into each other and we bounce off, much like billiard balls on a table. Thats how i see most of life really. Im surprised to see any two human beings who can have a conversation together because were so unique in the universe and we think so differently. As a seek gist i use that in my work with couples. I can see that this thing is not going to be good, you know. You have two people who have ostensibly chosen the most perfect human being in the world for a mate, that i knew from my standpoint that none of us are perfect, that was one problem, but its all about that. Its about how we see who we are and know who we are and how we see others. What happens at taint section of self and others to begin with . Those are the diads that build eventually the society. Were in trouble in terms of understanding very basic things. We calm ourselves with putting a lot of energy into technology and really pursuing knowledge at some levels, but true knowledge, true understanding of who we are, thats missing, absolutely missing. Or we make things up. Or we what . We make things up to make it work. We pretend as if we know the truth. Right. Well talk about that afterwards. Thats a longer conversation. Yes. Because i think there is i mean, theres you know, theres a process of selfdiscovery, as we change, as the society and the world changes and all that, but in my moments impressed byways in which very, very different people come together for you know, for struggle, for forging community, for survival, for joy. And all of that. And i found that most in not really in the academy as much as in political circles, but among very unlikely cast of characters often. Well, no, youre right. Happens to me, too. I bump into people now and again. Those encounters are so profound that i can be sustained for as much as six months as a consequence of having had that encounter. Okay. I get a little more mileage. Good. My requirements are so much greater. I want to come to jessicas word. Because i was a little surprised. Actually, i thought you might be. I liked it but i was surprised . Yes. Progress. So i think in movement circles sometimes now im referred to as an eder. Im trying to walk with it and sit with it. Embrace it. Im trying. Sometimes i look around to see who theyre talking about. Often i feel apologetic like we didnt do enough. Like we didnt kick the ball but that you would say you feel a sense of progress. Tell me about that. Yeah. While youre in the middle of all these struggles around very daunting things. They call you an eder and i got called a youth elder the other day. I was like but progress with a heavy bold underline italic and question mark after it. I starteded in this work as an organizer but now pretty much focus more on systems, infrastructures, trainings, Capacity Building for movement for black lives work. And so i do a lot of data work. Thats the majority of the work that i did when i was at the naacp. I just want to give a couple sticks and kind of explain why i did progress. So right now, just very basically, if you look at population growth. Like all these sources are government sources. Im not quoting some random blog that my best friend wrote. I always get that question. Where did you get that . From the census bureau. So black population right now, about 13. 2 of the population. They did 2016 population growth projections. So right now, black people 13. 2 of the population. 2060, 20600, well be about 14 of the population. About a 42 population growth increase. The only demographic lower than that people of color is native americans. We have Pacific Islanders at 62 . Latinos at 114 . Surprised. And asianamericans at 128 . So. 12 . Population increase by 2060. Thats just the base framework what we are in growth. But we know in terms of life expectancy, black people have the lowest life expectancy. We know that when we look at any issue, we could look at unemployment, we know that unemployment for black people is about twice what it is for white people. Black unpilot at 11 of 4 . Unstatistics for last year stagnant or down for most communities. It went down. Black people income about 10,000. 26 of black people live in poverty right now. The scariest piece of that for me is that 46 of black children under the age of 6 live in poverty. You look at health. You know, we know that more white women will get any form of cancer but more black woman will die from every form of cancer. More black men will die from every form of cancer. The deadliest hate crime in the past 75 years targeting black people was last year in charleston. Were at the point right now where statistically and mathematically it makes sense for us to compare Police Shootings and deaths of black people to lynching. That makes sense. Thats where were at right now. We note statistics in 2014 was a black person was killed every 28 hours. If we updated that for 2015, it was every 23 hours. We say progress and say improvements. But when i look at the numbers, and i hear the stories, and i see whats going on, i say progress towards what and for who and for what . Progress is then a system thats fwhilt antiblackness and built on the blacks of black people doesnt make sense for me. I think for us, the progress that we see when we see that without a question mark and exclamation point is in looking at what has happened in the past, the strategies implements, the conversations that were will and using that to redefine what progress like for us outside of the systems. For me, its progress. Its problem ma ties the information progress and to say we have to redefine it. Yeah. Its always an ebb and flow. Some things move forward. What you raised too is you know, brings us to the question of disparity and the range of black experiences, right . I mean some black people are doing better than you know, one would have projected. And then many, many of our people are in desperate situations where theyre living under siege. Sarah. Gualee grarassroots. Can we get more progress as we do more grassroots organizing . I landed there because it seemed to me that well, i love clays word because struggle is always there. Always there. Its when the grassroots are mobilized and mobilized is maybe another word that the movement becomes really powerful. And you know, i feel like im mostly a witness, but i grew up in segregation. And i spend time before i retired absent but even since then particularly since ferguson, i found myself giving talks wherever i can about the deep long history of racism because people either dont know or i would say were a society thats really good at forgetting. But he i grew up in a world that believed it couldnt change. And i witnessed a revolution. And everything you say is totally true that revolution is so incomplete. That its actually scary. But the there are pieces of it that you know, you were there. As it was happening, that did get defeated and it was the scale of the movement in part. It was the fact that the people at the bottom began to believe that change was possible. It isnt though. And that they could take a risk because people did put their lives, their jobs, their families, everything on the line to get involved. But isnt that the dilemma though is that i think the success of the struggle was to destroy the legal structures of jim crow. Right. And i think in a broader sense, we got Citizenship Rights at the same time the rest of the world you know, one of the things that happened some time during the 60s getting into sticks is that for the first time, the majority of humanity were citizens of the country where they happened to be. Oh, yeah, because colonialism was crumbling all over the world. Thats why i went to africa to see that happening. My point is not so optimistic about that because i think that part of what didnt happen. Right. The was that human rights didnt happen. I mean, if you look at what has happened since is if anything weve gone backwards with respect to human rights. And i think that thats one of the things that we became very complacent about with respect to gaining Citizenship Rights. I mean, if you go around the world today, your human rights are your passport. If you have a good passport, you have human rights. If you dont have one, you dont. And there are lots of people, you know, i was in zambia for the 50th anniversary of their independence which happened 0 coincide with the 50th anniversary of in the Civil Rights Act. And one of the ironies was you go to the u. S. Embassy and this is true in lots of african countries and you see all the people standing in line trying to get a visa. Either to the United States or europe or some one of the countries like that. And the irony of the number of people die to gain independence and how many people now would give up that citizenship right in a moment to get a work visa out. And i think thats where we are is that with respect to the basic notion of human rights which is written into our declaration after independence. Now, all men are created equal and all that kind of stuff. Well, thats not true in the world. And weve gone backwards with respect to that. Thats not truth in some communities in this country, too. And i think thats really an important thing. Were part of the world in that respect. But i mean oftentimes human rights get discussed in global context outside the u. S. And assumed that u. S. Citizens have full Citizenship Rights. I think what this Current Movement is showing that theres a police state in certain communities that people dont havent mobility that, people dont certain kinds of rights in this country and the solidarity delegations that byp and ive gone onto different places around the world its been to say you know, that thats an illusion that there are particularly black communities here that very much resemble those communities in other parts of the world that dont have human rights. Economic justice, we havent talked about that too much. But weve hinted at it. I mean the question of Economic Justice in terms of where the movement where king left off, where king died, right . With sanitation workers in memphis, im wondering maybe if we can talk about a couple of these themes in our next few minutes. The issue of capitalism and Economic Justice as it relates to an ongoing black freedom struggle. Its probably an appropriate time to share the wisdom offered by malcolm x and thinking about these things. You know, i was in little rock for one of our tenth year celebrations. And people were so anxious to have the nine of us support the notion of celebration. I chose not to, in fact, i wrote an oped piece entitled no time for celebration. What malcolm said in regard to that was if you plunge an eightinch knife into my back and then you remove it two inches, and you want to celebrate, weve got a sixinch misunderstanding. I love it. I think we have to be careful about that because when you see through a clear lens this society, i think everybodys aware no matter what word games we play. Reporter think people who truly look can see the truth. But we create these linguistic fictions i think just to maintain life on any given day. If the truth were in our face 24 7, i dont know if wed have the stamina to survive. But i think we must strive to get there so we can truly know what were dealing with. Especially for those who come after us. Our progeny. Those who carry the banner forward. Yeah. I think we have to get to the point where were comfortable complicating the conversations and strategies can. Yes. And our existences that we have and even just the narratives. Byp 100, we do black liberation work through a queer feminine lens. Usually i Start Talking about things like looking at the lgbtq movement. How far does Marriage Equality get you when you cant go to the bathroom in North Carolina. You tell me whats more important, the fact na women are now getting stalked in bathrooms in North Carolina being harassed physically because theyre just trying to go to the bathroom. But i have my marriage license and married to my partner. We look at Economic Justice issues and want to boil it down to wage disparity issues between women and men without understanding that people need to take days off to take care of their children because at this point, child care is more expensive than rent for most people. If their chide is sick, they dont have the luxury of being able to put their children somewhere else. We simplify these narratives and the movements and blackness for the comfort and saiki think of people when they sit at the dinner table instead of understanding we have to do the opposite. We have to have complicated conversations. We have to talk about Economic Justice and identity politics and race. You know, when i go into a room, im never dressed one thing. Tilled love to walk in i room and just be jessica today. Im not going to be black. Im not going young, im not going to be queer, but you know what, every single time i walk into the room, i have to carry all those identities with me. For you to ask me to sit at a table and not address every single issue and talk about how it impacts me every single day is negligent of our communities and how they experience things. It is different if you are a black woman. It is different if you are a black transperson. So you have to incorporate that the into the conversation which is a lot of also what we put behind say her name. Today is our national day of action. I would encourage folks if youre on twitter or even on google just to look up the hash take say her name. Its a day of action to say her name because you dont know the those names. Right . And thats another simplify indication of our work. You know who eric and trayvon is. You know who jordan is and mike. Why dont you know who iana is, why dont you know who rakia is . Even if you do know, do you really know what happened . Why doe always talk about mlk and malcolm. I know its malcolms birthday. Id like to once start a conversation framed around ella baker or baird russton. We need to to talk about the women and the queer folks that helped make this work happen. The majority of the organizations that are part of the black lives Matter Movement are the run by black queer women. Thats no surprise. But thats always been the case. Thats probably who is running behind the scenes right now. You know . So i just need folks to get to the point where youre comfortable letting it get a little messy because our everyday experiences are already that and the work should reflect it. Can i just add to that that what i think youre describing is the kind of work that makes a Grassroots Movement powerful because youre engaging in organizing which is Capacity Building, which is building peoples ability to have those conversations. And also, to figure out how to act together. How to make each other strong instead of feeling isolated. And you know, it is certainly true that when that legal structure fell down, a lot of people sort of thought, well, thats taken care of. And it was only the beginning of a beginning. Well, two words. One is when clay said struggle are, theres struggle in the macro sense and then theres struggle within movements to find a Common Ground that we can stand on together. Right . Right. And thats critically important and it involves dealing with all the complexities that jessica just laid out there. May i Say Something. Yeah. I think we have to remember the young people who are coming up like through Elementary School. Im not talking about teenagers, and the way they perceive not only children of color but children who are white, as well. Especially since were almost in a semi integrated you know, a lot of the communities have the schools that include black and white and asian children. Latino children, too. Community where i live is like that. In columbia, maryland. I raise this question because years ago when my daughter was in maybe second grade, somebody called her black. She said well, you know youre black. She came home and said, mommy why, did she call me black. She wasnt angry. He was just confused. She said, i dont she looked at her hand and said im not black. I said black is a color but it has more meaning than just a color. She said, okay. And i said, so she got that. But she still didnt understand what we were saying. I said now, and i dont know how i got it out but what i managed to tell her was some people identify themselves as black not because they are literally black in color but that their world view is about people who are considered black by the larger community. Black is a political color. Yes, i didnt say that, but she finally got to that. And it was very interesting how that was an educational point in her life that has meaning still. And i think this is something we need to to focus on too is how were going to translate the, quote unquote, movement of the past and the movement of now because theres a movement now the so that very young people will understand it enough so when they reach teenage they dont have to be educated about it. And thats the intergen rational work. One of my questions which we wont explore right now, well turn it to the audience is how we see intergen rational work. The youth movements of the 60s, the antiwar movements saw itself as a youth movement. Snic was a Youth Organization. But none of these movements were ever without connections to elders and people of other generations. So how can we see that and how do we see what the challenge of what youre raising in terms of young people, freedom schools which we have one in chicago of young people trying to you know, grapple with a different view of the world and themselves as theyre emerging so into adolescence. You all have sat very still, quiet. So there are two microphones. We want to invite knew the conversation. If youre wondering what topic, we were told to sort of reflect on the long black Freedom Movement. I think weve put a lot of things on the table from different vantage points and perspectives. Wed like to invite you now to sus sing little put some other questions on the table or very brief comments or thoughts that you have in response to this conversation. Dont be shy. You dont even have to tiptoe down. Just come on down. Take those shoes off. Hello. How are you . Tell us who you are . My name is logan. I just graduated from graduate school with a masters in public injury. Yea. My question is kind of going a little bit into the future. Were currently in well, its a continuous of the black freedom struggle. Speak right into that microphone. Excuse me. The black lives Matter Movement as part of the black freedom struggle. How do people see in say 10 or 20 years kind of commemorate or kind of remember the black lives Matter Movement . I kind of see this question, i ask this question because last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of bloody sunday. And i was at that commemoration. But what the press, of course, you cant really trust the press at times, i just want to see how the public or just people or scholars or anyone in general see our kind of commemorate commemorate or remember the black lives Matter Movement. Thank you. Depends on how sounds like are you the one. I guess the first thing i would say is that i would really hope, i come from the naacp march organizing. We do ought national marches. To the point where i wrote an oped about why i wouldnt march anymore nationally and why i wont unless its somewhere else like thats not d. C. If were doing local marches on capitals and states, thats quite different. I look at the word commemoration in that same way. I dont ever want to be someone or movement that is commemorated. I would love us to in ten years to still be collaborating and agitating and organizing. But its like this thats still the work. Theres still going to be work in ten years. Hopefully in ten years, im not the person up here talking about young people. Because you know what i mean . Ive moved to another position in this work and really think thats what it is right now. Even when we think about the intergen rational pieces that yes, i work for a black Youth Organization but not just black youth have a role in the liberation of black youth. Not just black people have a role in black liberation. And i think thats the thing is i hope in ten years, what happens is that people are figuring out how to continue to strategize so we can 0 polish these systems and infrastructures that are built new blackness that were not just trying to pass reform policy, you know, where people it can also show up and wholly be themselves. Thats a lot of times what the work we do at byp 100 is holding eem as whole selves. We ask people how theyre doing but can we create spaces where people can say im tired, im frustrated, im angry. What does that mean to be held in that way and to provide spays where we also heal at the same time as we organize. So hopefully in the future, there is that space that continues to build, continues to grow, is not funded by foundations. You know, i could continue to dream. But i just hope that in ten years, hopefully we can be in a space where were still working together. And that we have won some things but also sustained those things because i think thats the weird place im in right now. Were building new campaigns. A lot of new campaigns were building now are trying to restore things that people up here worked to fight to get than were repealed and taken away. Absolutely. How did i. Hi. Im joslyn iani. So i forgot who was on the panel that made the point about making a distinction between the Civil Rights Movement and the longer freedom struggle but i see us the same way we misremember the Civil Rights Movement as shorthand for every black activist thing of that time period, i see us doing the same thing with black lives matter as the catchall term for anything happening now or for feminism become the catch all term for anybody who wants to push back. How do we not make that mistake anymore . How do we stop doing that . I think one of the things that happens when the closer are you to the inside of a movement, the more you realize that as youre creating a movement, someone else is creating a mythology of the movement. And you know, even as historians and perhaps as museums we do that all the time because we create these narratives, you know, i worked on eyes on prize and you know so you have this narrative that the movement happened. Six parts. And so what gets left out of that . What gets left out is that it puts the emphasis on those events that captured the attention of the media, and. Right. Barbara johns in 1951 when she led a walkout of her high school to protest against poor educational conditions, that was just as audacious as the other teenagers in greens beau, North Carolina in 1960 who launched that sitin movement. Why is one a central part of the narrative of the Free Movement and the other is except for my history textbook, largely forgotten . You know, im not sure how many people any this room know that Barbara Johns convinced her almost her entire student body of a black high school to walk o out. Protest of conditions in that school. I know. And that that was ended up as a legal case that became brown versus board of education. Theres hope. Let me just add that. One of my former ph. D. Students is from the county. Farmville. Her mother was part of the boycott. Her mother is around my aim but shes still alive. And you are very much alive. So are you. What im saying is. And live. Were in that generation thats dying off. But her mother is still here. Shes interested in doing in fact, shes done some oral histories with the people. So there is a movement going to recapture that and im sure this is true of other movements. But i guess my larger point is that movement and struggle are things that are going on at all times and all places. And the notion that we select out these particular events, even the march on washington which obviously was important to me, there were at least a dozen cities that had marches that spring and summer that were not quite that large. But in terms of the movements in those cities were just as important. Thats part of what we do as historians though and we have to be careful is that theres a kind of artificial containment and an orderliness about the way that we approach it. Right . You have to put it in chapters and have a title on it. Its all messy and all overlapping at the same time. But i also want to speak to joslyns question in another way. I think that for example, black lives matter, black lives Matter Movement is very distorted. I thought it was really important that opal tametti and alicia garza inserted their names and themselves into the narrative, the origin stouffer black lives matter as a hash tag and so forth but it really encompasses dozens of organizations about 20 National Organizations that are doing this work right now, right . Some larger than others. But the way beat contain it narrows our sense of what is going on, right . And i think in a certain way deradicalizes it, too. And you know, and i think that happens in every period. It happens while the movement is unfolding, the contestation over naming and then it happens when we do our work as historians. I want to be fair to this person right here to get a couple other questions and then well go around. Im mindful of the time, too. I have a time keeper. My name is big. Im from california. I want to address Something Interesting which speaks to this. My father is the late reverend john junior. He was past president of the st. Louis naacp from 1971 to 81, but he has a history he brought to st. Louis in 1965, a history out of los angeles being the treasure of the western christian Leadership Conference which was a west coast arm fund raising arm. My father and my stepmother juanita were icons in st. Louis in the late 60s, 70s, through the 90s. They both passed away, one in 2010, my father in 2011. My father is buried in the same cemetery in ferguson that mike brown is. What i want to talk about is that they passed away, had managed in a way to create an artificial or hold an artificial peace at least in terms of the view of africanamericans in st. Louis. But st. Louis then and now especially in 2014, 15, 16, is really the im going to say the birmingham, the selma, the montgomery of our times and the challenge that we see through the trial of mike brown was that this concept of self, white st. Louisans somehow see themselves removed from the experience of what were talking about of progress and they have an idea of themselves and an idea of africanamericans. Still were seeing that in ferguson irrespective of what you know, the findings of eric holder were, were still seeing today that ferguson and the white power structure are rejecting this progress moving it idea of making it progress instead they are keeping it. How do we separate and Going Forward look at the differentiation of self of me as a historic you know multigeneration africanamerican person or person of color versus me as i come from generations of whiteness in st. Louis and the st. Louis culture is somehow the Civil Rights Movement missed the st. Louis culture. Its kind of complicated. I want to pose that. I wonder is it so unique though . And im not sure of the answer to that. What i think ill do at this point because were running out of time and you raised a lot of questions, very particular st. Louis and ferguson, maybe put im so sorry. Youre waiting for the mike too, right . Lets get a few more questions on the table and then well entertain comments if youll allow me. Okay. And then here. Theres somebody in the middle, too. I didnt know you were waiting. First of all, i wanted to make the comment i will collect my google and its quite fitting today is pall malcolm x birthday. Didnt you mention that . My question goes to, and im not sure if were going to cover mr. Bunch said we cant cover everything. Specifically i want to get your input on one of the things that Michele Alexander talks about in her book in the new jim crow. She raises a very interesting notion as it relates to struggle and civil rights. I wanted to piggy back on both of those two notions because once again, i think it was Frederick Douglass who said where theres no struggle theres no progress. So michele talks about this notion during the sib Rights Movement of the idea of respectability. She talks about it the idea that prior toro sa parks, there was another africanamerican female absolutely. Who was denied but because she was pregnant she didnt fit the notion of so called notion of respectability. So from there so thats the i want to eif you can put your arms around that and kind of speak to that. And also how it relates to the whole mass incarceration thing. Thank you. Were going to put, it, youll be the third one well put on the table and well get responses and take these next. Well start with you and go down here. Mitch, im a historian at western michigan university. My question has to do with the comments made by terry and jessica i thought were interesting, that terry responded to someone asking if he preferred black or africanamerican with try terry. And jessica made a comment that i cant come in and sit down at the table and just be jessica. I have all these other identities that i just found that the juxtaposition of those comments very interesting. Im wondering if the two of you or the rest of the panel have thoughts about sort of the conversation that might take place around that difference in response in terms of its implications for understandings of blackness and identity and implications for the ongoing freedom struggle. Very good. Okay. A lot on the table. Everyone doesnt have to answer every question. And we have four other people who were going to cut it off at whoevers in line now. We will try to squeeze these questions in. So if we could all be disciplined and succinct. Ill be very succinct because i do feel that one of the issues we face as a group of people in this society, we have been inundated with all kinds you have information that is simply untrue. Myth logical stuff. For instance, race itself is mythological. And yet we embrace it. It has more currency now than ever before. Lines seemingly are drawn in much greater bold relief. But United Nations till we can recognize and accept difference of any kind, were in big trouble. So thats what i meant by you know, not responding to this womans wanting to categorize me. She perceived herself as being different from me and i saw her as different than me but i wasnt willing to put mer in a category. Just tell me who you are and we go from there. The question about st. Louis and unchanged white culture, respectability and mass incarcerationing. I want to get some other panelists in. Then well come back. Then the issue of identify . Yeah, on the respectability piece, yeah. So ive read the rosa parks was the field secretary at the time in the state and so theres actually like writings about what happened at the time in that story. Respectability is just something we have to dismantle and stop dealing with at this point. I think the people that appear to be the most respectable center done the most disrespectful things to people. So honestly, i mean ill be honest you. Come in the door with a suit, like its a reality of the situation. So and i think we use that as a faux measure of where you should go or who you represent and its just another tool to like dismantle people and separate people as opposed to us actually to build together. So thats the only thing i would say on that. Blackness is not a monolith is the thing around the identity and we need to to be comfortable when people dont identify the way we do and let them identify for themselves. I think respectability has many meanings. You can look at it from a variety of positions. I like to look at the way Mary Church Terrell from washington, d. C. Whose husband was a judge, she was a principal of a black school. My girlfriend girl was on picket line all the time. She was in her 80s in the 50s on the pick line in washington, d. C. Someone raised the question about a respectable woman like you doing that. And she turned it around. You the know, and it said, its important for all respectable people to deal with these kinds of issues. So respectability back in the 1950s back in the 1920s, today, is a debatable thing. And it comes up a lot. And part of it i think, ive come to this conclusion is, a way of putting you down if you rock the boat. Uhhuh. And you know your mother wouldnt like the way you think. You know . Its that kind of thing. And i think we need to to reject it. And i mean, around mass incarceration in particular that part of Michele Alexanders thesis borrowed from lots of other people, you know, suggests the ways in which there are certain people who are deemed disposable in our society if you say someones a gang banger, you can write them off. If you say somebody is a prostitute. There are certain labels that have come into that are in the lexicon that deem people outside of even in certain black circles, right . So i think its a really important point to bring up. So were going to get the questions of the people who are standinging and then were going to allow each person and im going to start to be really mean about time. Go ahead. Thank you. Actually, i think a lot of my questions will be answered over the weekend because there are a lot of conversations. My names carroll brooks. Im a graduate student at Goucher College working on capstone that deals with winter generational dialogue but as it relates to the conference that i found out about this conference was the National Council on public history. And their theme was challenging the exclusive past. And i think so much of what our public history that is taught to the younger generations theres a level of untruthfulness and so theres a need to kind of retell the stories from the perspectives of those who have been in these situations to reconnect a younger generation. But given the struggle that were still in today it, previous movements it was easier to amass a large number of people from different eth felicitys around a single focus. Now there are so many issues and so many variables, even with being multicurl turl. You accept your blackness but you may also be looking at other cultural backgrounds. You raise some complex things. Im going to ask you to distill it a little bit. How do you mobilize masses of people around targeted agendas or targeted issues so that youre addressing multiple people. And youre you get a mass movement. Excellent question. Hard to answer. Good evening. Hi. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Im going to be quick. Speak up. Okay. Thank you. My name is jamie and i have two comments. One is im a black muslim. Cant change the fact that im black. I consider myself black and i choose to be muslim. Im not going to change that. But i choose to voluntarily show that imus him. And i was assaulted by a white female who was clear that it wasnt about me being black. It was me being muslim. And the other comment is, just saying something about the say her Name Campaign. I wonder if the reason why we focus today on the black men who are dying at the hands of each other and at the hands of the police is because historically, when you look at pictures from the past of lynchings, its just on appearance heterosexual black men who are hanging from these trees and so when we come here to the president , we are still seeing that we focus and that. And now what happened to me and the shift in a lot of black women being assaulted were going to have to start stop kind of focusing on the past, kind of looking at the present through the past lenses and kind of come you know, front and center in the present and just look at whats happening now. It wont be so hard then for us to say her name. Thank you. Im glad you brought up the issue of islamaphobia. I have a comment rather than a question. And it may be that i shouldnt actually express it after your comment about race and mythology. I wanted to Say Something about mythology. But i do recognize that you mean race as a biological category but there are all kinds of ways that people think about race that are not related to this. So i just wanted to say that i want us not to the dismiss mythology so easily. Because society, six civilizations and cultures are have been built on mythology. And it has a purpose. And im i know im going a little farther than you maybe i think im going a little farther than you meant that. But i just really quickly, i just want to, theres this is wpa narrative of this former slave whose mother, well, she was actually born in slavery herself but her mother and grandmother spent their whole lives as slaves and her mother told her a story about her grandmother and she claimed in the story that her grandmother beat 13 clue clux klansmen one after another. And her grandmother. You dont think she did that. Had just had a baby. She had a new baby and i mean, and i think it was just brilliant. I think it was i think that her mother telling her that story about her grandmother who could not correct it who was dead and gone and could not correct it, i think it was brilliant. And is so big, it really does sort of resonate on the level of mythology. This is not just a lie. I love it. Its a myth. Yeah, this is a myth. Its a myth. This is the myth of not just a lie. And i think that you know, i just dont want us to dismiss mythology so easily. Thats all. Good for you. Good for you. Some myths are empowering and some are not. I love these big thoughtful questions that are going to carry us through the next couple of days. Good evening. Im melissa. Im a volunteer and i have a question from twitter. I was informed to let everyone know a key fob to a nissan has been found. If anybody has dropped that. And someone left a trenches coat upstairs in the lounge and it is at the security desk. Okay. So onto the twitter question. This question is from skyler b. Gordon. The question is, how important are historians to the black freedom struggle . Very. Oh, my. We could stay here all night. Thats right. Get us going. Thats a touchy question. I like it. Okay. I think there may be a veiled statement in that question. Im foregoing my Closing Remarks so we can get everyone to have a minute of response. I know were trying to get out of here and we have two more days can together. So very succinct response to one of the questions or comments that were put on the table or a closing comment that you want to make. I will take you on. We will talk. Thats all youre going to say . Thats it. Okay. Well, actually i think these last few comments tell us why were here. Because in a sense it, one of the things we very to look at in terms of being a historian and being a museum is how do you decide what belongs inside it. What belongs inside our books. And is there a reason that this is not called the American History museum . Because in a sense, if we told the correct story, there wouldnt be a need for a partial a part of the story. And but i think the question of myth, i meant that in the sense that we all are in the business as historians of creating myths. Were creating stories that are, we hope, are accurate in the sense that weve got our footnotes right. But we know are selective in terms of what our narrative is and what importance we place on certain events rather than others and why its important at all. So i think when we look at here we are, were going to have a museum of africanamerican life, well, history and culture. And im going to be really interested in the number of mythological things that are going to going into na museum. I hope that everything is has a prove nens that you know that we can trace. And they are actually artifacts from, and we kind of trust the curators to do that. But i think as we walk through it, we have to ask ourselves what story and are we telling because that story of the past is telling us thing about our future. Absolutely. Sarah . I want to say amen to that. Because the histories that our job in some ways is to keep on complicating the story. Every time it gets simplified and myth ollizes and i agree thats not always bad but some histories are empowering and some the message is, you could never do that. Could you never do that. And we have to be about the business of creating histories that say you can do that. Because people like have you done that and we all have shoulders to stand on. Lots and lots and lots of shoulders. Not just giants who we cant imagine ourselves being like. Thats our job. Thank you. Jessica. Yeah. So i think i guess being im not a historian if anyone was confused. Historymaker. Organizer. But youre making history. There were several questions. Whatever you want your Closing Remarks. There is something dangerous i think inherently about just telling the truth and telling the real stories of what happens. I think even just the question that was asked about youre being attacked because youre a muslim. Part of that is because theres been a popular narrative put out that tries to create the face of terrorism and associate that with a Muslim Identity when this reality the situation right now the is the most representative, love you all is white men in this country. It is not its White Christian men who are working class, those have been the people who have targeted us the most violently. Thats not a narrative that fits the popular narrative. The narrative of claude yet colvin was not a narrative that fit a popular narrative. The popular narrative is to again talk about black men and show faces of black men being lynched because black women are frank il because black women, because thats not the role we take. Theres a reason we can talk about mike brown and eric garner and those plays in the news because people want to talk about mike brown is a criminal or heres what he did to get killed or eric garner and how he was confrontational in the conversation. We dont hear about tamir ris rice in the same way because what is confrontational about a child playing on the playground or iana davis because a young black girl was sleeping in her grandmothers house and getting killed in front of her grandmother. That is not something that supports is the popular narrative or supports the Current Power structure and the power dynamics. Thats why thats not going to be the narrative thats told. Thats why we have say her name. Its not just because the we dont heart stories but we are telling narratives that take power away from the people. Part of the work of what were doing is trying to create narratives and stories and campaigns and organizing infrastructure that represents the narrative of the power and the power relies in us. We have to be the people that retell those stories. Thats literally why even when i do training i always retell the story of claude yet colvin and rosa parks not because claude yet didnt represent respectability because people neglect to understand there was an entire organizing structure that went into building that movement. They targeted the buses because this was the only place black people had more economic power. It was an economic power. There were meetings that happened across other cities. That was work that happened. But that is way too powerful for us to tell other people. That is my interest in had moment no matter what is making people inherently aware of the power we each core, building that power and actually altering the power dynamics, abolishing the systems eventually. Thank you. Building something better. I have a suggestion for historians whether youre lay or professional. To look for the untold stories. And there are a lot of them out there that you might not even think are relevant. And research them and build upon them and see how they fit within the flow of the movements. And there are multimovements. Theres not just one. There wasnt just one Civil Rights Movement. Whether he i started writing this, i was bringing in 1th century ones. There were 19th century Civil Rights Movements. Many of which focused on womens organizations. Look for those. We might note about prince hall and his attempt to get the schools of massachusetts ipt greated in the 19th century but we dont know about the women who followed and said, yeah, but you got put women in the schools, too. So youve got to do a little more if were going to meet the goals that weve already talked about. Theres stuff out there that people have not connected to the whole idea of civil rights. And i think thats something all of you should be thinking about. Thank you. [ applause ] were over time. So im not going to stretch it out. We center to be out of this. I do want to i neglected earlier to thank our two bloggers, Ray Arceneaux of the university of south florida and Allison Miller of the American Historical Association. Both of whom within 24 hours are going to be blogging up a storm about all of the issues that we raised. And all of the questions that were posed and maybe not fully answered because of the limits of time and other things. I would just add on this question of the role of historians is you know, one of the worst things you can call a historian is presentist. But in some ways i do think like everyone else we have to be accountable for our work. Many of us love the subjects that we write about, right . But we love them enough to tell our understanding of the truth about them. But i also think we have to be in dialogue beyond our academic communities. We have to be engaged with people who will do something with the history beyond simply sit with it, right. That people will build upon it. The difficult lessons as well as the sort of heroic narratives because also with the grassroots celebration of grassroots power and all of that, we see a movement right now which is relying on grassroots organizing which is very, very scary to me and betrays many of the best values of the black freedom and Civil Rights Movements. So we have to be careful about the heroic narrative in the same way we want to be fair to people who are often left out of the story. Well have some interesting and provocative conversations in these next couple days. Hopefully this has started us off and launched those conversations in a way that will be fruitful Going Forward. And i thank all of you for coming out tonight. And again thank the organizers and thank the absolutely wonderful panel. [ applause ] the Republican National conventioning is live from cleveland this week. Watch every minute on cspan. Listen live on the free cspan radio app. Its easy to download from the apple store or google play. Watch live or on demand anytime at cspan. Org on your desktop, phone or tablet where youll find all of our Convention Coverage and the full convention schedule. Follow us at cspan on twitter and like us on facebook. To see video of news worthy moments. The Republican National convention, all this week on cspan. The cspan radio app and cspan. Org. And on monday, watch the Democratic National Convention Live from philadelphia. European trade commissioners Cecilia Malmstrom talks about transatlantic trade and the trade and investment agreement. Shes also part of the panel on the ttip negotiations. The potential for a deal to be reached by the end of the obama segregation administration and what effect the uk vote to leave the European Union has on the process. Good afternoon. Welcome. Im the director confident Atlantic Council Global Business and economics program. A economics program. A special welcome to the european commissioner, Cecelia Malmstrom and her team who im sure had very busy days in last days in europe. Im delighted all of you have joined us today for a stock taking after brexit. The next round of negotiation has just been announced couple of hours ago, will take place in brussels in two weeks. And commissioner malmstrom is the first european leader coming to washington after the british referendum. We are all eager to better understand what the next steps are for ttip and for the eu after the vote. We do not only seek to understand, but also we are the council advocate for a stronger europe since the European Union i want to remind to all of you is one of the richest areas on earth, has strong institutions, both national and european level, shares among its participants the same values of liberty and democracy, and plays a key role in Global Economic governance, among many other things. On april 18, 1951, less than six years after the fall of berlin, and the end of the war in europe, germany, france, alongside with other nations, italy, belgium, luxembourg and netherlands, created the European Community which paved the way for the founding of the European Union. Thanks to the foresight and the Strong Political and economic support by the United States, something that was impossible to think about a few years before was able to become reality. So things that seemed impossible just last week can become reality now. We think it this time to face the challenges europe has had in transforming opportunities with ultimate aim of creating more prosperity for european citizens and the whole world. This is why we launch the Euro Growth Initiative last march. Through our publications and events like this, we want to galvanize this Transatlantic Community to contribute its ideas. I want to thank Jose Manuel Barroso for leading this effort as well as the whole task force, the euro growth task force. Im particularly happy some members of the task force are here today. I also invite all of you to bring home our first three publications. Two on ttip and the third one about the united kingdoms economic gains from joining the European Union in 1973, the publication are outside. And you can grab it. So the outcome of last weeks referendum only reinforced the importance of the transatlantic relationship and our mission, the Euro Growth Initiative nation. I cannot think of a better person to open this discussion that european trade commissioner Cecelia Malmstrom who has been steering the european commissions work on trade since 2014. After her remarks, ms. Malmstrom will later be joined on stage by a fantastic panel, miss laura lane president of Global Public affairs at u. P. S. , and mr. Trumpka, president of the American Federation of labor and congress of industrial organization. Aflcio. The panel will be moderated by joe schultz, editor of the political pro europe brief, which has been one of the leading transatlantic journalists on ttip trade and brexit. After the moderated panel well open the discussion to the audience. For those who follow along via twitter and please sweet about today, i invite you to use the yestottip and eu growth, our hash tag for the positive euro growth. A positive hashtag. We talk about growth and not about crisis. Commissioner, please, the floor is yours. [ applause ] thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Im very pleased and feel privileged to be here today. As i said before we decided quite a little drama before coming here, so this referendum was organized. Ill come back to that. In washington only for a couple of days unfortunately so i cant stay for your fourth of July Celebrations, thats a pity. Everybody likes a good celebration and with fireworks and some people seem to think also that trade negotiation is like fireworks, but i have to tell you, they are a little bit more boring. National holidays are important time together with your family and friends. In my country sweden, we have just celebrated midsummer, which is an old pagan festivity where we pay tribute to fertility and summer and life. But this year when we woke up on friday morning, some of us had spent time in front of bbc, it was a little bit less festive than usual. It became clear early first day early friday morning that the uk and its citizens had decided to vote to leave the European Union. Of course, we respect that vote. But i must say that we regret it. It will have big consequences for the uk, for the eu as well. I know you all have a lot of questions about this, i will try to answer some of them, but we also need to realize that we need a little bit more time before we can fully grasp the consequences of this referendum. There was a meeting yesterday with the heads of states of the European Union including Prime Minister cameron, and today also the other 27 heads of states and Prime Ministers met to discuss the future. Formerly the uk are still a member of the European Union. The referendum, even if it was, you know, very clear, does not legally change anything. In order for us to start the exit negotiations with the united kingdom, the Prime Minister has to trigger what we call article 50, in our treaties. And Prime Minister cameron has said he will leave that to the next Prime Minister, probably to be chosen in september. So before that, nothing can really start, and the formal exit negotiations, which are highly technical and includes a lot of practical items will be will take some time and they will go on and lots of these issues have to be sold before we can even start thinking about the relationship between the European Union and the united kingdom. This is something that the no camp, the next Prime Minister will have to define, how would the uk like to see their relation with the European Union. It is not really for us to define it. They have chosen to leave. Of course, theyre a neighbor, a friend and ally. We have a lot in common, but out is out. Cant be half in. But exactly how that will materialize is a little bit too early to say. So for the moment, they are in. And when it comes to ttip, that means that i and my team, we are negotiating on behalf of 28 countries. And that could very well be the case for another year or two, or even longer. So i had the possibility yesterday to meet with ambassador froman and we jointly agreed, and this is also backed by 28 countries, that the rational for doing ttip is as strong today as it was on thursday. Maybe even stronger. The reasons why we chose to embark on this is theyre still there. And we will continue to to talk, to negotiate, and we had the possibility yesterday to go through a lot of different items and to prepare for the next round of negotiations that will take place in brussels starting the 11th of july. We are committed to this trade agenda. We are negotiating with a lot of other countries as well, not only ttip, and we will do whatever we can to make sure that we make as much progress as possible, the coming month, if possible concluded before the end of the obama administration, that is still the plan. And that has not changed even if the referendum is there. And as i said, the brits are still with us and we are negotiating them. And that was confirmed yesterday by member states. Now, im sure well have possibilities to discuss this in the q a and in the panel. Back to National Celebrations and holidays. Because they are related to trade. Because they are an expression of how people assert their identity. And identity has not always been part of trade negotiations, but are very much to date. Thats a little bit of the paradox were facing. Global trade and investment has never been more important for our economies. Political debates on trade and investment has also never been more intense. That is true here in your debate in the upcoming president ial you have a president ial election. I thought i read that somewhere. And in our countries, where trade and ttip is being debated. Here i think the focus is mainly on fast why and ttip. In our countries, some of our countries, ttip is debated as well. Thats a good thing. The debate focused very much on how to reconcile preserving identity and our individuality embodied in midsummer and fourth of July Celebration among many other things, but also the way how we choose to regulate our societies, our economies, when we live in a globalized world. And our response to that so far has been twofold. First, we need to engage much more with people to address the concerns. That includes changing the approach somehow we negotiate trade. We need highly ambitious trade agreements also that create economic opportunities. So we need to listen, engage and n