Associate professor of history at the university of california, davis. Kate masur is a is a professor of history at northwestern. Have been looking at ways to incorporate the history of reconstruction into the National ParkService Sites and they will report what the National Park service is doing. Is ahen, Jennifer Taylor phd candidate right here at the university of South Carolina who helped to develop very impressive exhibitions and tours of the Woodrow Wilson family home, which focuses heavily on the reconstruction era when he lived in columbia. Just by sayingin this littlent in part of reconstruction history whenback to the year 2000 i received a phone call from the secretary of the interior, bruce professor, isaid, have just read your book on reconstruction. I said, that surprises me. I hope he was not insulted. That cap really think and a members had a lot of time to spend reading long history books. Know there are some who do have a strong sense of history. Invited me to washington to talk about ways the national that there was no recognition of reconstruction at that time. Even now a National ParkService Sites the only exception is the Andrew Johnson homestead in the great smoky mountains, in greenville . I was there once. They havent heard about the new interpretations of reconstruction of their. Up there. News doesnt travel very fast to eastern tennessee. [laughter] iyway, the secretary and to develop the idea of a National Park service in South Carolina to exemplify many of the themes of reconstruction. It has not happened yet. Its sort of kicked off discussions in the National Park service about how to deal with reconstruction. I am anxious to hear what is happening now. I will turn the floor now over to michael allen. [applause] good afternoon. Im with the National Park service and it is great to be with you today. I was there in 2000, as well. Thenoutgoing secretary of the interior Bruce Babbitt and 2000. Visited buford in mission; to look at the buildings, the landscape, the environment of buford which was essential to understanding reconstruction potentially with an opportunity to establish some sort of park Service Presence in that area. Is in 2016, there are no National Park service directly associated that talks about the history of reconstruction. Just to give you some background, we began our journey after the doctor and the secretary of the interior left. We then transitioned into the Bush Administration and we still to accomplish that task. Likeached out to partners on city of buford, folks hilton head island. We try to cast a wide net of partnership and inclusion in an effort to go about the task. From the political side, we reached up politically to come at that point, the congressman and representatives of buford, joe wilson. Accomplish and we asked for his support. Got boththe game, we of them, so we continue to move forward. As we moved forward, we began to hear the voices of rumbling. Rumbling that came from the group that we did not reach out as well as we should have, in that group was the sons of the confederate veterans. The head of the National Park service was inquired, what are you doing in buford . Because we are public, we had shared to hide, so we with them what our thoughts was, the impetus is why we were doing it. This is what we do as a National Park service. Well, we reported back to them. I guess they digested what we sent and it was presented to us by joe wilson perhaps this is overhe time nor the season the place to have a conversation about reconstruction. Unfortunately, in 2002, we were told to cease. Thats what we did. In the back of many of our minds , we knew that the day would come when the National Park mantle would take up the again to have a serious conversation about reconstruction in our agency. ,ow and behold, five years ago i got a call one day indicating that two of our historians were in the ford to look at historic landmark sites. It a to take them around part of them coming was to see these particular sites had connectivity to reconstruction. Historians around buford in every place that we went in 2000, we went again. They were still there. And so, that worked out well. And then i got another email saying over associate director for the Southeast Region wanted buford andook around so i picked her up and again, every place that we went in 2000, we went again, because they were still there. And by that time, we realized that there was some effort afoot in the National Park service to begin to address this matter. We went to another meeting in washington and one of the Senior Leaderships pulled me to the side and i said, what have i done out . She said, we are moving forward, looking at reconstruction in buford and we needed to be a part of this. Gain, we are Going Forward at that point, i had been afraid i said, madame, the last time we engaged in this journey, we were not as well prepared as we should have been. There were fundamental things that we should have addressed that we did not. In some places, we may have been uncomfortable or afraid. I said, i know this time we will be successful. If you ask me to be a part of the process, im going to bring my a game. In the things that we did not do last time, we will do this time. One of the first things that we did, we gathered a number of historians to actually sit with us. History andhe whole the spectrum of reconstruction, the impact, the legacy, the connectivity to life today into big into look at the themes we could begin to address and the concept of this type of process. The next thing we did is we pulled together to great americans that we called part of our team, greg and kate here. Then to have scholarship on our side as we move forward. And then we also realized, the size Andrew Johnson, i have to defend my friend. Mineay is a good friend of to be clear, you mean libby is your friend michael she realized the challenges that come with it. We move forward in terms of roi needs to be done. Just has to continue to engage the community that they will move forward, as well. Was bringingstep us together but also realizing several things to put into place. Buford, weooked at made a tactical decision to look at the entire southeast in to look at all of the states of the confederacy and the dynamics that came with that in terms of reconstruction. In my view, there are other parts of our nation beyond the byth who are also impacted reconstruction. That does not mean we are going to cut off the rest of the nation. Our working campus is the south,. Irst step earlier today, you heard anssman clyburn outline of reconstruction. 18651877. One year ago, i shared with him that on this journey our 18611895. He grumbled a little bit when i said that to him. For our purposes of our work, we bringingng at 1861, the experiences of hilton head all the way through plessy versus ferguson in 1898. We havent gone to the 20th century and. The next decision we made is that in addition to looking at places in buildings across the landscape, we need to look internally. Look at the existing park Service Sites in the southeast that have connectivity to reconstruction but perhaps at the present time are not addressing it. And so we pull together another team working out of atlanta, looking specifically at park Service Sites across the south specifically and their connectivity to reconstruction. From a broader context, we reached out to the state Historic Preservation offices across the south, universities, thattions, whomever can bring this information. We are cataloging locations, buildings assisted with reconstruction across the entire southeast, because we realized that reconstruction in many minds is a challenged subject. Inare going to move forward terms of having a conversation about that time in our american experience. We needed to people where they can experience bradys physical vestiges are located. We are doing that both internally and externally in a way that, in the end the day, this will not be a report on a shelf, but this can be a report used by the american public. To that end, one of the things i , many of youight have probably visit park Service Sites across the United States. And perhaps when you go, you purchase a handbook. I hope you do. I am holding in my hand a thattly released handbook says the reconstruction era. Is your tax dollars at work , because we are putting your iney where our mouth is, terms of having a physical, tangible product that talks about the history, the legacy of reconstruction in the three people sitting at this panel have some part to what is in this document here. Remember the last time, we did not do this. So now, this is something tangible that is coming out of the work that we are doing good the last thing i want to share with you is that we realize that reconstruction is a challenged subject in Many American minds but we try to put it in a context that people perhaps can relate to the work that we are doing. So we looked at some themes arc service the staff, civil unrest and violence. Building, theion churches, businesses. In franchise meant in new duma in franchise federal power, modernizing of the south. Those are our broad themes. Day, when thishe is all said and done, i think we will have not only a primer but a textbook a roadmap. The reality is, as we look around our nation today, a lot tiesr conversations have to the efforts of reconstruction. Many americans may not know that there is connectivity to reconstruction, and so, it is the mission, vision, goals of the National Park service to have a concerted conversation about this time. Many of you in this room supported us the previous 45 years during the sesquicentennial which was also another challenging time of how do we interpret the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the civil war . How do we do it in a way that is holistic and diverse . I can say we survived. He is survived that. So the next chapter in our american saga is reconstruction and so it is my goal, my mission ly thenligent we can, as i often say, reconstruct reconstruction. Thank you. [applause] gregory before i came out here, i called a friend of mine from said, i amina and i flying out to via to talk about a museum they are developing on reconstruction and he is a bit older than i am and he paused and he said, for or against . [laughter]. Regory i said, for and he said, you are doing is voluntarily . So i said, voluntarily because they believe in it and he said, South Carolina has come a long way, not to say there is not more to go play want to thank you for having us here and it is amazingly heartening for the things that we do in large present the country where reconstruction is barely mentioned or kind of hidden in euphemisms to see a place that is really embracing the idea of its country already to their culture, history, development, and i feel like you all will be a model not just for the kinds of ideas that well talk about with the National Park service but i hope a model to lots of other communities. I will quickly give you a sense of how kate and i came to be interested in this before i do that, i will about how i got to be there. Along with that, the propaganda of history. Nobody can talk a South Carolina and in crazy stories but i grew up in central kentucky and in the center of the town square, there is a cannonball stuck in a brick with an arrow pointing to it and if from,k people what it was it was the union army, of which was no such thing the United States army had fired at the town of when it was held by confederates and then if you walk a couple blocks off is that there was a marker and it said, george custer, custer stayed in when he wasown overseeing efforts to collect. Axes against moonshiners both of these are total nonsense. The first thing was at the town square burned to the ground in 1929 and when it burned to the walked throughy and pulled out the cannonball them when they rebuilt today got on a ladder and stuck it out there. The second thing is that the town, a a unionist patriotic town, not a treasonous town i mean, kentucky has a lot to answer for it as you will see, and that there can in was fired by confederates attacking the town. The third is that custer was elsewhere because the seventh calverley had been sent in both in the Green River Valley in kentucky but then down the train lines elsewhere to put down a wave of insurrectionary violence against African Americans and loyal whites a second wave of what had followed after the date on the ku klux klan in the carolinas in 1871 not to collect taxes from moonshiners. But this is the same propaganda, right yakov the problem of if we do not the problem of why we misunderstand reconstruction is tied up with the problem of flight we misunderstand the civil war. It is necessary to have a propaganda about reconstruction to support a propaganda about the civil war in that if we are going to undo that propaganda we cannot just undo the propaganda of the civil war and then stop at they have to be interconnected. For the reasons now, kate and i have individually been writing about you know, books on reconstruction, it seems like there is nothing new to be set and there is an uncanny way in which you think of something and think it is any pickup aarons book anyone like, how to use me that in their . Which anticipates sort of everything that one would want to be said that she had written a book about reconstruction and civil rights in washington dc here and i wrote one on North Carolina which i apologize for that i picked the wrong carolina and then won on the u. S. Army and the occupation of the south in the middle of this together collected new scholarship for this book. But we began we were speaking during the sesquicentennial we were increasingly dissatisfied that as we would go around we would ask people in the New York Times about the civil war which we and others participated in what are you going to do about reconstruction yet can the answer was nothing, right yakov the New York Times and many historical societies seemed to imagine you get to mathematics and you close the door and you are done can enter it in the civil war and any Something Else appomattox in then you close the door to the civil war and then something we are certainly not unique in that pure we enter this with the feeling that having done the Historical Research it was also incumbent upon is not the sort of sit in in the towers but to follow the example of eric and many of the people in this room and drying figure out how to fulfill our responsibilities to the public and we werent mad with the help of the American Historical Association and others in National Park service where we were lucky to find for the reasons mike and a group of people in the park service who had been working toward this employment for this for a long time, right . So it was a harmonic convergence and so what i will do is talk about the poorest piece of that and cable talk about the second piece. And so one of the things it has to be met and we talked about was the problem that eric as usual anticipated and last night which is that at one point, there was a stage in which a lot of people of generations had reconstruction that over the generational [indiscernible] periods it seems like an especially so among the that they have no view of reconstruction at all. And anyway, that means we dont have to undo the mistakes of the past but they dont have any idea why it is important. [indiscernible] they understood that it was important. And that we had to be put a figure how to convey to people that it mattered. And so this was the motivation behind the group of us at the National Park service and kate and myself on the handbook that mike mentioned in what we aim to do is to provide information but also contemporary interpretations of reconstruction that are aimed at a lay audience waited is not present that you committed all iterics book to memory that is a requirement by the time they finish but that people who have interesting curiosity by not knowledge to pick it up. We also aim to while i didnt have the good sense to study South Carolina we included people who do including tom native south carolinians among many others including eric and many others and that the goal of the book was to convey to people why reconstruction mattered so that the people who walk into a park and say what is this about have a place they can turn to that is really aimed for them to capture their interest, so i will very quickly sum up how it begins and ends in an alternative or to kate, so i am happy to say despite my unbiased toward North Carolina and actually begins a guy and not making this up in South Carolina and it begins i have not making this up either with robert small, right . Sitesmation on multiple what he needs to think about this transformative figure out somebody who goes from a slave, plants the u. S. Blockade, his political involvement over decades, Constitutional Conven