now, it's one thing to have these reenactments take place when it's somebody in a union uniform and confederate uniform but have an african-american show up with a uniform with bullets on his shoulder and union on his lapel, the whole dialogue changes. so actually when i was called and asked by this panel i said, well week got to find way to put another angle on this. we deliberately go to many of these place, including gettysburg, i've gone for the last eight or ten years, we march in the parade because this is just -- these things because a sorority fight, fraternity fight, where two brothers got up in the morning and had a beer and go on about their business again until we show up and remind people this was about the changing of america, making america a better place. it's important. i'm trying to expand that group now. i don't think they're going to go away either. we're just trying to change the

dialogue, do what we can to change the dialogue and we hope we can have reenactors in this state go to every battle. with regard to the monuments, this writer's name james lowin who talks about all these monuments. heap said there are more monuments in the state of illinois than they their are to abraham lincoln. he said some of these monuments need to come down. actually he said well meaning white people have to take down some of these monuments because there are not enough black people to take them all down. so that's your homework for the -- let me just make one last observation. we're busy right now working on the grand victory march down pennsylvania avenue in washington d.c. that takes place

may 23 may 23rd, 2015 now, the victory march that takes place down. you all remember these african-american regiments were not invited. they were part of the victory. president lincoln said he could not have won the war without them yet they ordered these men to the south when the victory march started. so we're going to correct that great wrong in history and we're going to also correct another great wrong in history and that is that virtually every state in the south had regiments that remained loyal to the union army. the state of tennessee had 36,000 soldiers who remained in uniform. they didn't commit treason and try to rebel against their union. nobody ever says anything about them. and so what we hope is that in this grand march down pennsylvania avenue elements of those regiments will march with us in the victory march down pennsylvania avenue. i want all of you all to help us in the whole states. this was a great period of american history. it made america a good place for

everybody to live. let me say congresswoman norton, she'll appreciate this, i was in alabama back in march speaking to a very large integrated group talking about how i thought the civil rights movement had been the civil war and civil rights movement helped change america and make america a better place, including alabama. it's a bit of a stretch. in alabama, the civil rights movement made alabama a better place. i said if you don't believe, imagine what would happen if the university of alabama had to get rid of all of its african-american football players. see, you got to speak to people where they are. i've seen some of these people at thee reenactments. i know who they are. they also got season tickets to these football games. man what would happen if you got rid of all the basketball players. and they had cam newton down there. he's now in carolina. the heisman trophy winner down there. we have to look at this a lot of different ways.

a lot of ways to look at that time is a humorous way which is the civil war had to take place before you could get the civil rights movement. the sift right movement was based on the 14th amendment. if you don't have the aemt p amendment, there's no martin luther king and no -- >> the football players at alabama did not write alabama's immigration law. and that immigration law is potentially a violation of that 14th amendment. as long as we keep that in mind, we can celebrate a blook football team at alabama but they don't write that immigration law. other people did. and i just want to say quickly i agree with everything frank has said today except one thing. i don't think history is on a road of progress. we want to be of course. who doesn't want to be living on a road of progress. who doesn't want to get up every day and live on a road to progress? who wants to live on a road to hell?

nobody does. t ings we can do is come to actually believe it. as history shows, revolution was a reconstruction that went backward. almost every revolution in the world history has had a counterrevolution and sent it backwa a experiencing another one now. history is not going any particular place. you have to make it. >> i'm john franklin from the national museum of african-american history and culture. i'm very pleased of the franklin center in tuls a, oklahoma is one of the sponsor of this discussion. three points i wanted to make the first is an international implication of this discussion that we often ignore, which was brought to my attention in london last year when there was an article, a story, about confederate heritage tourism to liverpool, which is the foreign capital of the con fed rasy. when i was in liverpool later that same week, i was shown the capital of the confederacy in

liverpool. we must remember the confederate ships, not just the slave ships were built there but the confederate navy was built there and ended up owing the union for those funds. secondly, the native american community is also part of this discussion, though rarely mentioned. and i say it again in an oklahoma context because my family on my father's side were enslaved by chick a saw people and we get to oklahoma through the trail of tears and the family name was bernie until my father's grandfather ran away to fight in the union forces and changed his name to franklin and freed himself. so that's another part of the discussion in addition to hispanic names mentioned earlier. >> right, right. >> and at the association for the study of african-american life and histories annual meeting this year, the finalry

was on african-american women and the civil war. research is ongoing and i think we should all look to the upcoming book looking at the massacre and exploitation of african-american women during this conflict. this is something we rarely hea. thank you. >> there's great research being done on contraband camps and the whole emancipation process and a lot of those scholars are beginning to show us that possibly one of every four fugitive slaves who escaped even within union lines died in the process. emancipation is is a glorious, tremendous story but it is not without its own authentic tragedy. >> okay. margaret. >> yes. i'm margaret smith. i teach in the peace and con flebt resolution programs at american university.

i teach on conflicts like northern ireland, rwanda, cypress, bosnia, sri lanka, et cetera, all civil wars where there has been a contested society where groups rely heavily on the collective memory in order to maintain the cohesion of the group for all kind of political reason. of course israel, palestine is another one. and when it comes to trying to address the question of memory in these places, one reality is that history is serving as a way of conducting the conflict by other means. and so until you get a political arrangement that creates a certain amount of stability, it's actually rather hard to shift the narrative or to find any willingness to shift the narrative. but maybe that's only a problem of degree compared to what you've been talking about here. in any case what i'm trying to

get out is the question of the relationship between the historiography and the politician. can you change the historiography until the chang the politics? or can it work the other way around? you're talking today -- i think what we're here trying to say is that by doing things to shift the narrative, you can have an impact onpolitics. so i'm trying to raise a question that comes to the heart of why we're here today. can youo this? or is history only an expression of the political realities? >> could i take the first shot at th any more complicated, i probably won't be able to do it. let me just say this in the i say this i think i told you this, i've been at

this all my life. i started as a college student at moorehouse college and i've been involved in this whole effort of civil rights and human ri i just would like to say two things. first of all, in the african-american community, this someone swha responds to what david black said earlier about reconstruction, we -- african-americans because of the way we were brought to this country have both a memory of america as a place where we were enslaved but also a memory of the same memory that everybody else has of a great place where you can express yourself and do great things. but the tie to the geography or the geopolitical tie to america for african-americans is very different. and i'll just give you two aspects about this. if you look at the history of black people in the united states, there was never any large movement toward racial integration in the black

community until the 1960s. we might have been all right, separate but equal except it wasn't equal. it was white supremacy. and i point out to people all the time the first sift rights demonstration i went on, i went to the southern bell telephone company for a job climbing a telephone pole. i was a understood dent, a good student and i couldn't even get a job. that was my first civil rights demonstration. didn't have anything to do with eaching at a lunch counter, going to a church or a school, marry anyone's daughter. it had to do with getting a job. now you think about that in the context of somebody who is just coming out of slavery and now they're starting a new community, a new life. they got something called a new found freedom and they've got to

build a new world for themselves in the context of discriminat n discrimination, violence, klu klux klan and so they start churches and schools, schools and churches. schools break out like wild flower and is a school is a place where three people gather together and one can read and white. we've got tulsa, wilmington and all of these communities become targets for white mobs because white supremacy says african-americans -- that no black prn can do any better than the poorest white person. that's right. this goes on. so our reality in terms of political and whatever is a little different. the reason i went to holly springs as a civil rights worker is because it was 76% black. if we can register a few people to vote without getting them

killed we shall can elect a mayor and city council member. by the time barack obama gets elected in 2008 i said there were 19 million african-americans registered to boat, there was thousands of school board members and these people helped to provide some kind of defense against the terror, the tyranny, the violence of people who not only operated under the color of law but they also formed mobs to come burn your house down at night. they can't do that if the sheriff is not supporting them and if the prosecutor is not going to support them, if they're going to go to jail and they may end up in one of these jails. so for the african-american community, the reality is a little bit different canned i thi -- and i think the key to this is not only that we've been able to register a number of our people to vote but also the point about president obama,

finding well meaning whites who are willing to work with us. david, i respectfully disagree with you. i think the -- i think the fact is you have seen that coalition in action this this country. you saw it in action at the last election, you're going to see it in action again at this next election. you're going to see it in action again at this next election. it's the arc that this country is headed in. it's the only way it can go in any way and it's the right way to go because this world is more like america than america that some people realized. most of the people this this world is colored. if you put india and africa and throw in a few chinese and japanese together, you got to learn how to get along with us. america is a place where we're learning how to get along. >> one last question. >> we didn't answer your question. we're not answering your question. >> i'd like to respond to margaret smith's question. >> let the theologian have a

crack at that one. >> what i'd like to say is that a healthy democratic culture is one in which people listen to each other's stories and bare those stories in mind when they go to the polling booth. and that's a rich democratic culture, which as we welcome different people into it, we welcome them into our minds. i have much admiration for the reply of oliver tam bosh the acting head of the national african national congress of south africa. when his nens came to him sand said we have the capacity with our dynamite to throw bloe up a monument, he replied and said we must not do that because that monument is precious to the memories of the afrikaners who put that monument up there and

one of these days we are going to have to live with those people and we should not damage their monuments. to me that's good democracy. >> i don't know what you were going to say david about the kre kwe about historiography, but i think it's important for people to understand. all the conversations that we're having today is a virtuous cycle and it goes back to what the congresswoman was say, okay? the civil rights struggle grew out of brave almost all african-americans who kept alive the story of the possibility. and the association for african-american life and history and carter g. woodson and all that. once that began, then there's a whole generation answered grew up inegregated schools by the time i went to college i lived in another world and african-american history, which is now a whole new terrain for white scholars to explore. and david was talking about we're still learning about the contraband camps even now so for

50 years now one discovery after another. moving glory is is a byproduct in some ways and the exhibit at gettysburg is a byproduct of academic scholarship which then feeds back into all of that. so the national museum of african-american history -- >> this is progress. >> this is progress and the museum that frank leads. so i think in some times that academics forget that what we're doing can actually matter, but when it's manifested back museums and films and television shows but also in what our children are learning, it is not without consequence. and, you know, i wouldn't want us to forget that without the hard won knowledge that comes from many loan live scholars that studies issues, we don't have the information we need to move forward. so i think sometimes we rage at an impotence that we don't

actually have. >> real quick, there are examples in the past when the academic history coming out of the best universities from the greatest historians served public policy in the service of white supremacy, the so-called dunning school and reconstructionist, the so-called u.b. phillips school. if you grew up in the united states and learned anything about american slavery sirka 1925, you learned is essentially out of u.b. phillips and his many students, most trained at yale. >> a school for savages they called it. >> yeah. but we also know, and we can't measure this, but the revolutions in scholarship about the civil war, about race, about slavery, about women, about all sorts of elements of our past that have occurred in the past half century have clearly changed textbooks, have clearly changed schooling, have brought about an enormous new revolution in documentary filmmaking beginning with "eyes on the prize" and dozens and dozens and

dozens of others which are now part of the mental landscape of americans. there is much, much, much to b t thing we can ever do as historians is to think we have much real impact. honestly. there is far, far, far more ever be the history we write. that means the history strooi we write has to get into the museum exhibitions and get into the films and even into presidential rhetoric because that's where public memories are actually formed. we have to affect the stories -- >> but it can't get there if we haven't found it to begin with. >> you got to affect the grandmother stories are telling their children. >> d.c. gets 20 million visitors. we get more than any other city in the country. up until a few years ago, park service were part of the problem until congressman jesse jackson got a bill passed in congress to require the park service to interpret slavery as a cause of the civil war. that's how you get that great

new exhibit at gettysburg, which is a pilot for the whole park service. so what happened, the politics did change. the politics the politics did change. it changed because of somebody named jesse jackson, jr. it does make a difference. i think the history is suspect. historians browrote the books f years saying slavery has nothing to do with the war. they just passed right over it without being truthful about it because as they say in the civil war sales of the south and the people have different view. if you want to sale something, you have to have write something that's sentimental to their view.

we put together an increase that shows the increase in the income in the african-american community. last week the nielsen people say it was over $1.1 billion. bigger than the income of canada and turkey. we are headed in the right direction. we just have to keep going. >> it was an cnn poll last spring. i think it said that about 47 or 48% of americans, i don't know what the poll question was, which matters believe that slavery probably was the principal cause. i had to decide whether that was good news or bad news. i decided it was good news.

i bet you if you did that poll 20 years ago, it would be even less. >> i hope it's brief. >> i think this process you're talking about here of healing and so on and reconciliation is desirable. it has a nice ring to it. the public interest in -- let's not say interest but grasp of history is disentegrating. it's shockingly low.

i propose the idea of e raising any kind of monument of any sort is a terrifying prospect. >> there's one point i've been restraining. myself. the treasury och virtue and yankee pride. in addition to all of the very, very substantial issues on economic politics, tragic loss, no real healing. no real mourning of southern losses. there is a long tradition of

insult and disdain from new england towards everything southern. well before the war, the civil war, thomas jefferson was anxious that his university of virginia charlottesville be completed quickly. jefferson singled out harvard. emerson was probably the most distinguished. in a famous, not famous enough 1837 journal entry he wrote spoiled a child but good for nothing else. he has conversed so much that

he's a rifle, horse and dog. >> he had a way with words. >> he is dumb and unhappy like an indian in church. a double barrel ethnic insult. yankeeing aren't aware of this, but southerners are. everyone has a story. the reactor of southern self-regard is evoked in the fictional character of mississippi who goes to harvard at his mother's urging and commits suicide by jumping off the bridge of the charles river. quinton is a professor of

american literature at louisiana state. quinton has an effect by going to harvard and committing suicide assume the burden of the whole history of destroyed world of southern slave holders. faulkner believe thad the past is in the present, and i believe the wounds to self-esteem inflicted by a north almost totally unware of its history and the political psychological consequences must be acknowledged symbolic representatives need to acknowledge its destructive behavior and accept responsibility for it. i think only the contemporary south and its transplanted aliez

and unburn itself against northern liberalism and join with white america throughout the country and face responsibility to black america and i also say native america. this is a road to national reconciliation. maybe this is a way to try to address this issue before it gets to the congressional level. healing history requires healing everybody's hurts. listening, careful listening, respectful listening. not excusing human rights violations, vicious racism, behavior that is clearly immoral but there's some wonderful people whose feelings are also hurt in the white south. yankees are totally oblivious to it. i've come from that yankee tradition. one of the things i hope will come out of this session today is much more examine nation of

the northern contribution to the hurt. the resentment is very much alive in the american congress today. it's paralyzing the ability of our first black president to really govern this country because there's so much unfinished business in that relationship. >> he didn't like the yankee evolutionists. he once called him a big old meat ball. >> i love it. thank you very much. >> maybe humor will save us. [ applause ]

>> they knew america where freedom is made for all. i mean new america with ever lastingly attacks the ancient idea that men can solve their differences by killing each other. we look back at 14 men who ran for office and lost. go to our website to see video of the contenders who had lasting impact. >> the profit of the radical liberal left continue to offer one solution to the problems that con front