welcome to everyone who's joining thank you so much for being here for our fifth
conversations with crosby welcoming very special guest uh secretary lonnie bunch
and i'll do a brief housekeeping announcement as we let folks continue to
join here we're very fortunate to have an
exciting discussion ahead of us um just to let you know this event is
being recorded and it will be shared on the imls website and youtube channel
afterward and we also welcome you to ask questions
of crosby and secretary bunch via the question box at any point during a
conversation we'll be keeping an eye on that and we'll um pose some to crosby
and secretary bunch for a q a and discussion near the end of the hour uh
with that welcome we're glad to have you and i'll hand it over to crosby to do a
proper introduction thank you great thank you very much elizabeth um
the purpose of these conversations is to look at the importance of the arts and
humanities in the life of museums and libraries and particularly uh what will
happen uh to them and them
uh in in the post-pandemic world which we
we hope is on the horizon and today my my counselor and advisor is
the zlani bunch iii who is the 14th
secretary of the smithsonian institution which means he is the ceo head honcho or
as he has said uh in his book of fools aaron the benign dictator uh of the of
the smithsonian which is a pretty uh remarkable position uh because it is not
only the largest museum it is a collection of 19 museums also 21
libraries so from an imls point of view he's the ideal uh
counselor nine i think research institutions and
lonnie has his own zoo as well the washington national zoo everyone should
have a zoo but why it does have zoo um he's the founding director uh
of uh and and the builder the inspiration the
designer and uh uh creator of the last great smithsonian building the the last
great building on the mall the national museum of african american
history and culture an extraordinary building an
extraordinary site an extraordinary uh collection
um he he was the director before he became the director of the national
museum of the chicago historical society
and before that he had a career inside the smithsonian both at the air and
space museum and at the american history museum but most importantly for uh our
uh purposes today he's been the most eloquent
indefatigable and inspirational voice and advocate for
the museum world in the most trying of times so why
we've just gone through and we're still going through one of the most trying
times in recent american history maybe all of american history at least going
back to the civil war not only do we have a pandemic we've had
the racial and economic protests we have poor black and brown uh kids and
and and poor white kids uh all kids of all color falling behind because of uh
virtual schooling is not in-person schooling um we have had an attack on
our capital and that constitutional process
and some museums are i have been in deep trouble through throughout this uh uh
how bad it is is the situation for museums and what
can we do is this an existential situation for museums and
uh what's going on at the at the
smithsonian uh in in light of all this well i think that what's clear to all of
us is that the nation is in crisis and when a nation is in crisis it's it's
incumbent upon cultural institutions museums libraries to figure out how can
they contribute to helping a nation be made better and i would argue that what
i'm seeing are museums and libraries trying to find different ways to connect
with broad audiences to basically be the kind of glue that helps to hold the
nation together i think that what museums and libraries can do that many
other places can't is they can bring together people of different political
points of view um who trust them and who engage with them and hopefully
through that create the kinds of dialogues and kinds of messaging that
helps people realize that um we're better when we're when we cross
racial and political lines for the greater good well and polarization is
such a huge topic today that you know the gallup poll in uh in 1960
uh showed that uh the the biggest divides in america were
race and religion if you know the typical question the great question
would you want your daughter to marry one uh whites and blacks would say no uh
from a racial point of view uh massively uh and also religiously the jews christ
uh christians uh jews catholics and protestants
wouldn't want their their daughter or son to to marry someone other religion
today we've had a lot of progress both on on
the religious and and racial sides of that and today the gallup poll shows
that republicans don't want their their
children to marry democrats and democrats don't want their children to
marry republicans we're so politically polarized and it's not really a it's in
a way it's not even about issues it's not about public issues it's it's about
some kind of cultural polish polarization and so how how does it how
does a museum deal with that
well in many ways i would argue that as you framed it that there are several
layers that the foundation is the great
political divide but i think that how that plays out is in amplifying other
divides racial divides cultural divides so that in a way what i think museums
can do is
i believe very strongly that museums and libraries at their best
help the public by defining reality and still giving hope
as a historian it's clear to me that we've had these moments before
um that doesn't mean that this is not a really horrible challenging time but
what it means is that as a nation we have had those moments when we were able
to come together and cross these boundaries and
incrementally move the nation forward so i think what our job is now
is to one provide that context so people understand sort of where we are and
what's possible and then encouraging people to find ways to cross these
divides to basically help the nation live up to its stated ideals
and that for me um what's crucial about museums and
libraries is they're about the greater good if they're not about the greater
good if they're not about providing that reservoir of possibility if they're not
about contextualizing helping people find understanding then we've missed the
opportunity of a lifetime and
yeah i think you're absolutely right and i love the word which you use frequently
contextualized which it seems to me for historian you're a historian by training
um is the most uh important word and i
think about this uh we have shared a project the smithsonian
and the imls uh called the realm project they're reopening archives libraries and
museums scott miller your chief scientist has been a a very important
part of this project and we we just turned it into uh
from a serious research project about the virus on museum and library
materials and spaces and whatnot surfaces
to a vaccination education uh project and and it's
the the information side of this the
misunderstanding i think george washington and benjamin franklin
vaccinated their families exactly 250 years ago they vaccinate every state
every state republican and democrat controlled
states have vaccination mandates on
uh measles or polio or tetanus or what whatever they're there there are lots of
vaccinations and i i i think somehow we've we've missed an opportunity and i
think the museum and library worlds are are a little bit at fault in this in
that we haven't contextualized exactly what you say uh the the vaccination
issue um we need to
reverse the trend of vaccinations being about libertarians versus centralized
status or whatever whatever in people's minds this is
um to a question of basic public health
that you know from the founding of the republic we
have believed in
public health as a community activity
and for many of us of a certain age we remember polio
and the scares you know i remember my mother saying don't go into a swimming
pool in august and i remember the
sort of confidence that came with standing in those long lines in our
elementary schools to get our shots and then a year later to get the sort of
sugar cube but what it really meant to me was that
vaccinations really were seen as part of the greatness of american scientific
creativity and they were key to helping us feel we could live the lives we
wanted and so i think the challenge for us has been how do we as institutions of
learning help provide the data and so one of the things that i'm very proud of
is that the smithsonian's work with many museums and libraries to create um
vaccine vaccines and us you know basically saying first and foremost
let's give you the data about this let's let's begin to counter the notion is
somebody said to me the other day they didn't want to get a vaccine a
vaccination because they felt that they would be a chip would be inserted in
them um they didn't want the government to follow them and i said well you're
using your phone so we know more about you
than you really want to admit and i think the notion really is how do we
provide information how do we sort of make it clear that
this is the right thing to do for the greater good of the country how do we
use history to show how vaccinations um how they're created and how they've
really been transformative at various times so you know the challenge is
for many museums and libraries there's a fear about um getting involved in the
contemporary issue right you'll be pulled into the partisan times
i think you're going to be pulled in no matter what so the key is you should
really i think do the best work you can to help a nation be made better yes
you're not going to say that we're democrat or republican what you're
saying is for the greater good of a nation
here are some of the ways we can move forward yeah we're a community i think
that's what what we're trying to say and and i i think there's no better
demonstration of how important uh museums are and libra libraries too this
happened in libraries but there was that moment uh when we thought the pandemic
was going away in may and june uh when and lots of museums opened up
and there were lines uh uh around the block for particularly for
the newer exhibitions and whatnot but but people were desperate
to get out to get out of their houses and and
their their zoom calls uh etc but they were
desperate to get out and go someplace where they could be together
uh and be together sharing something and sharing some learning sharing sharing
sharing an experience that had to do with learning it seems to me that there
is a huge opportunity uh in all of that for all of us in the
museum world there's a great opportunity as you put across me because on the one
hand there is the continued confidence um that comes from dipping into a
reservoir that is library or museum that the public has
that they trust us but then there is that sort of social element right that
opportunity to sort of be made better by the kind of conversations that occur
when you're in a museum or a library and when we had the confidence that we were
on top of the pandemic more and more people came out i've always been struck
what i've loved about museums especially or at least my goal was to try to
replicate what happened when i was a little kid i used to go my family would
have a barbecue in the backyard right and and one uncle would say something
and then an ant would say something and the conversation would go in very
different directions and everybody was made better by that different
interaction and i wanted museums to be that place where i would see people
stand in front of an artifact and one person would say this and one
person would do that and we'd create informal communities those informal
communities gave confidence they've gave trust but they allowed us to learn
from each other and i think that's what's been missing during this pandemic
it's wonderful to sort of see people via zoom but the kind of learning that
occurs from the kind of informality of what often happens in a museum or
library was missing you know it your conversation is a is an important word
in your in your work and and uh in your view of the the world and it is
in mind too and creating communities around conversations but it used to be
when i was growing up and you and i are not far away from the same same age so
i'll say when we were growing growing up we would watch the same tv programs to
some extent this the news programs at night were the the same there were you'd
have water cooler conversations or playground conversations uh about the
same things and and that doesn't happen anymore
where our information comes from too many different places um uh our shared
experience uh doesn't happen uh that that that often um and and which makes
the the museums and libraries it seems to me even more important because that
is the place that we are able to have community conversations uh these days
well i i think you've really put your finger on it i want to emphasize this
notion of what's our responsibility to try to help bring people together of
different political points of view of different levels of learning i think
that that's really important and since everybody is now sort of splintered you
know if you're certain political points you watch certain television versus
others but you have to find those places that are reservoirs of possibility that
are glues that helps the nation move forward and i think that if libraries
and museums take that role on explicitly they are not only sort of helping their
own evolution but they're really helping a country and they're really helping us
find what's the greater good that we that we
can contribute to a society in crisis so i want to ask you about a particular
conversation you know i've talked a little bit about this before and you've
you've been in conversations about this conversation i've been an important uh
uh player in the conversation it seems to me and that's
monuments in in this country as as part of our uh our racial issues problems
discussion um the issue of monuments has has become
monumental i feel pardon that pun uh and a lot of monuments are being torn down
and and i will i will stipulate that some
deserve to be uh we want i'll only mention let's say nathan
bedford forest i'd i'd help to tear his statue down anywhere but um but
one of the one of the conversations which you've been involved in is in
washington dc uh and lincoln park about lincoln the statue of lincoln and the
enslaved man uh who's rising off his knees but is on his knees
and the the sort of paternalistic uh view of that
um frederick douglass was there when when
the statue was dedicated and he talked about
uh the ambiguous meanings ambiguity is also uh an important word for you
uh how how do we how do we preserve
what was great in american history and i i think we would probably agree that
lincoln lincoln represents the best of us but
also understand the flaws and the the
problematics what's your view of what we should do
with that statute we've done some things already but
but i mean i i would think that first of all what we have to do
as a learning organization to help people
understand that we've learned more over time and that
statues are frozen moments in history and they reflect the moment they were
created and that there's really an opportunity to sort of build on that so
i you've heard me say this many times i believe in pruning of statues um i
believe it's important that there are some statues we agree very much on
forest but you know there are some statues that have to go
partly to make room for new statues for new issues that people are interested in
obviously more diverse i'm always struck by how few statues there are of women in
this country and how important it would be to sort of
create that balance but i think also what i would argue is that statues and
monuments are also wonderful learning opportunities i think the notion of
contextualizing some of these statues and especially the lincoln statute
for me i know there are a lot of people in dc who say take it down but for me i
think it really gets at both an understanding of how attitudes
of race were in 1865 how they've changed over time but how
you have to recognize that you have to give someone like lincoln his do
in terms of sort of helping to change the nation but tell people understand
that that change came as a part because african americans were demanding that
change running away from being enslaved frederick douglass talking to lincoln so
really helping people understand that it's much more complex than simply um
one statue and i think that while it's hard to contextualize because you see
the big statue what i've been struck by as i look at these statues is that
people are looking both at the statute but looking to try to understand it
because even though we think they do they don't and so if we could offer
contextualization if we could offer alternative statues that just oppose um
with lincoln then i think we're really helping people learn and i think that
you know you've used the word that i care a lot about i think that the most
important thing we can do as cultural institutions as learning institutions
has really helped the public become more comfortable with ambiguity as a nation
we really look for simple answers to complex questions and you see where
that's gotten us i think that what you want to do is help people understand the
shades of gray the nuance the debates i think if we could do that regardless of
what history what culture we're teaching people what's important
is if you can get people to grapple with complexity then we'd be a better nation
i i i couldn't agree with you more and i think within that context it's still
possible to have our our heroes um i think you know preserve the statues of
lincoln but but but let's let's build some new statues as you said you know
we can we can we can move on and and add uh to our uh
there is change there's always change my theory of change theory of change is a
big big world and a big word in our world and and i have a theory of change
it happens and it seems to me that
you talked about women and not having having many statues which is so true the
the the mystifying thing to me is why there isn't a statue of harriet tubman
you know in every in every city you know there's there's a woman who put her life
on the line over and over and over again uh
uneducated uh you know
poor uh herself and an escaped uh slave etc etc and it's
an extraordinary story her story is so extraordinary and and it seems to me we
we can go out and find our heroes uh at the local level i mean have have
conversations at the local level america 250 is coming up the celebration
of the the 250th anniversary of the declaration it seems to me one of the
things we could do the imls at the smithsonian and our national uh
institutions is work with
local institutions to find their heroes and help build monuments either verbally
or physically uh to to the local heroes who
deserve it you know i think as a historian i was
made better by working with local communities by working with living
living communities right so that um i would argue that when we think about
this upcoming celebration commemoration it'll be really important to think about
what what was 1776 like in what was spanish california what
was it like in detroit with the french influence what what was it like in
different parts of the country so you begin to see
the changing notions of freedom um and you get a sense of the broadest
diversity of this country i think that to be able to to say that part of what
happens with the commemoration of the declaration of independence is really
freeing all the stories we didn't tell before
um allowing monuments of women and people of color um you know this little
town i grew up in new jersey we've discovered that there was a significant
chinese-american population that came in the late 19th early 20th century to work
in one of the factories nobody knows about that that should be that should be
celebrated somewhere in that local community and so i think that
we could not we're not asking to forget paul
revere we're not asking to forget the founding fathers we are asking that you
understand who they were their strengths and their limitations and what blind
spots they had on issues of maybe race and gender but we're also saying that
we're a better country when we really make sure that we're celebrating a
variety of people a variety of issues in a way that helps us better understand
who we once were and who we can become
well you're so right about the the the recontextualization of our history i
mean slavery didn't start
in 1619 you know
to begin with it existed among native american cultures but but also uh the
spanish hit what is today the united states well in
advance of of the anglo uh uh presence and i i love the story of estevan eco or
esteban uh that who was moroccan i believe
originally he's african um uh uh the slave uh enslaved man um who
became an important part of the expedition and man may have been the
first person from of european or more or less european background who
made it into uh the interior in new mexico maybe as conceivably he'd he
probably died in new mexico but conceivably as far as kansas um the
whole idea of el dorado uh essentially came from from him and
coronado and et cetera and that's all before
what we typically this you know 1607 1619
etc uh think of as the as the origins of the united states
you put your finger on such an important point because it seems to me i remember
when i first began to write about california history um and suddenly
learned about you know i was thought history went east to west
well in california it went south to north right and so it changes the way
you think about things i i i would love for this 250th commemoration uh of the
declaration to really say how do you understand
what it was like in french northwest how do you understand what it meant in
spanish florida how do you begin to understand how that all came together
and that in essence the great strength has not been a recent discovery of
diversity but a long history of diverse people grappling trying to figure out
how to get along with each other sometimes trying to figure along how to
control each other but ultimately it's an amazing story that really deserves
much greater attention well
and and if we could if we could share find
ways to share this history it becomes
everybody's history once once we have a conversation about it once we talk about
it and understand that it's how we got where we are today you have a great
story in a fool's errand your your your great memoir of building the national
museum of african american history and culture um about listening to your
father and his friends talk and how you wanted to participate in
that conversation and ultimately was about
baseball which you weren't all that interested in
but it became something you you you wanted to be interested in because they
were talking about it yeah and
it seems to me that you know that you you you throughout the book the full
full zero which is a great book so i everyone you know i'm told by my staff i
can't i can't highlight something a commercial purchase but i'd say if you
can find a fool's errand one way or another in a library or a bookstore it's
a great book um but
you you talk about a lot of subjects that we all have in common in their
history so jazz music in general uh food uh you know how important the cafe is at
the national museum of african american history and culture and and um we share
those things and and it seem it seems to me conversations about that about their
history about where they come from great african-american culture
you know who or or or the debates who came first chuck berry or elvis you know
well they both elvis and chuck berry had a
view of that and it was kind of complex and ambiguous too
um the shared conversation that we're that we're not having as often as we
ought to have i i think that
what i felt strongly throughout my career but also with my colleagues
building the nationality of african-american history and culture was
that it was important for us to build a place that on the one hand allowed you
to dig deeply into african-american culture to understand those hidden
stories to understand the pain but to understand the resiliency to understand
the joy but on the other hand it was how do you make sure people understand that
this is everybody's culture that this is a story that has shaped us all um and so
that to me is the challenge and it's the great challenge but it's a great
opportunity to help people say you know even though i never lived in the south
or my family never lived in the south i realized that we were shaped by slavery
um although i never lived in california we were shaped by the latino culture and
so the goal here is that 30 or 40 years ago we would be satisfied
by saying that these individuals also existed that
you could rep yet you can embrace a black community or a latino community
but now i think the challenge is to say these individuals these communities are
also the communities that shaped us they've shaped our notions of freedom
they've shaped our notions of culture um so that in essence what i hope people
will say is that i am made better because i now better
understand myself by embracing the diversity of this nation
you know i growing up in kansas city and both as a
banker before i became a librarian as a librarian very involved in 18th and vine
and the negro leagues baseball museum the jazz museum american jazz museum the
black archives of mid-america and uh and i wanted to bring when i was
a librarian i wanted to bring a guy named tim blanet you might know him as a
historian a great 18th century story the great 18th century historian in my in my
view um
of europe and uh so i sent him an email and i said if you're ever in the united
states would you come to uh to kansas city to speak in the library
um he had written a book about the uh music the history of music which i which
i particularly like which is about the rise of the concert is a democratic
thing and uh so uh he said i can't come
because my doctors won't let me he said i've always wanted to come to kansas
city because i grew up listening to charlie parker and i know about 18th and
vine and i thought you know that's so extraordinary and and we
everybody in kansas city ought to everybody in the united states ought to
share that same joy in in music that started in kansas city
started in the poor african-american community in uh in kansas city uh and
and it seems that sharing that culture um is is
something that that that museums do uh so well
so um and another uh
example of this in in my life that is also important in your life is john hope
franklin um and and you talk about how important
um his statement of seeking the unvarnished truth uh
was it is you i think he chaired your uh
your scholarship advisory committee when you're building the
national museum and i i heard him we brought him to the
library and and
and he had a conversation with me
but more importantly with the audience that was one of the most extraordinary
moments in uh in in my life because he talked about tulsa
um and his his father had just moved to
tulsa something like two or three days before the riots before the the massacre
um and they were going to move he was going to move uh uh with him his mother
and his brothers and sisters too uh and couldn't and didn't know if his father
was still alive for a while um and later he became a
part of the commission that uh looked at reparations for that etc um
and but the most important thing about it to me was the amazing conversation he
had i asked him three questions in an hour-long conversation
um and he just went and he told these incredible stories but then the audience
asked him questions and his engagement with the audience and
it was i think which was about half white half black
and um it was a transformational experience
having that conversation with someone you could relate to and who related to
this important terrible moment in american
history in in a personal way and also in a reparative way
he was an extraordinary man i'm just i i think having a conversation
with someone like john hope franklin changes your view of the world
absolutely i mean i can you know he was the chair of the scholarly advisory body
of the museum so i would sit next to him in these meetings sort of every quarter
and you know he would just whisper things in my ear about how important it
was to tell the unvarnished truth because he felt the american public had
a tolerance for it if it wasn't done in a
certain way that isn't about pointing fingers or guilt it's about sort of
understanding who you are and what i used to love about him is he used to say
to me when you build this museum what's important is to make sure that
people are touched in a way that they can be changed um and so i've always
sort of loved those moments with john hope where he would sort of whisper
about this historical moment or that but what i think what was so powerful about
john hope was he really was one of the first people to
recognize that african-american culture that latino culture are really wonderful
mirrors on america um that they tell us so much about who we are beyond the
story of individual community and so i just think that we were so fortunate to
have someone like john hope both as a gifted scholar but as somebody who as
his life evolved was able to convey that history in a way that was
moving that was meaningful and can be that could be transformative
right yeah he was an incredibly empathetic man but
an empathetic man who never ever abandoned the truth the the truth
is he saw it and of course he was a great historian
um so i wanted now i want to shift gears
just a little bit and i want to talk a little bit about the liberal arts uh and
your view of that in the in the museum and library world and the life of the
life of american culture at one point
you you said um let literature we should let literature
be the voice of history and i i want to ask you about that and
ask you a little bit about the books that you think are important for us in
in our in in the nation's life the literature that you think is important
in the uh in the nation's life well you know i am a firm believer i'm
the son of two teachers so obviously the written word and spoken word very
important in my house and what i realized is that
literature and film to be honest were really wonderful ways to convey history
in a way that um literature would allow you to sort of have you know
conversations with unseen generations film would bring
history and culture to life they weren't all good films but they
would bring history and culture to life and so for me what i really believed in
is the power of education the power of words and really the the power of
our ability to um
grapple with our differences based on our ability to use different lenses
whether it was literature or film and i have to be honest one of the things i'm
proudest of in the african american museum
is the amount of literature the amount of words quotations that are on those
walls that really counter the notion that people don't speak the people don't
convey these important issues and that i really wanted one anything else is to
use museums and libraries to reduce great history to human scale
um so that people will not be saying we're looking at migration or we're
looking at work but rather how did that play out in the lives of a particular
family or an individual so i wanted people to sort of not be able to
walk away but i wanted people to see themselves in these individual stories
and so that was why for me literature and film allowed me to help help me
learn these things in a way that reduced it so that i could understand it and see
our common humanity so and and and the visual is is so
important uh in your uh view of the of the world and
and and at one point you've talked to a number
of points you've talked about the the things in the collection at the
smithsonian uh that are important to you and the things that
some some of which you brought such as the greensboro the woolworth uh counter
greens from greensboro um which has that human scale that you're talking you know
we can all imagine ourselves sitting at that at that counter i mean i
i my father always took me to shraps in new york we
went to new york but but i i get the woolworth experienced uh along with that
which traps wasn't open we went to woolworth um
and and the the scale of of that or um the other the other object that's one of
your favorite objects is also one of my favorite objects in the world i think
it's it's one of the two or three great pieces of sculpture and that's the
augustus saint-gaudens um
sculpture that he did for henry adams after henry adam's wife died it's
essentially a memorial to clover at adams i didn't have a title
and adams at one point i i think you quote this uh i
wrote to uh someone who wanted to know what the title was and said
the the sculptor
saint gardens didn't want to give it a title because he wanted it to be a
question not an answer which i i think is a i think that's a
fabulous way of describing what a museum can do which is to give you a question
about the world that you have to answer you have to work through what the uh
what the answer is well in a way one of the things that museums and libraries do
that i love is the best of these ask you to work you know they ask you to
grapple with questions and and understand this literature um because i
think that you know we're made better when we work a bit and when you go
through the african-american museum you work a bit um because i thought it was
important for you to engage for me the most important things that
museums do is yes they are places of wonder there
are places of inspiration um but they also should be a place where i find the
opportunity to challenge myself and to challenge the nation and so i love when
a museum asks me to work hard i love when i and one of
the things i miss to be honest is as we now you know type in what book we want
to see i miss walking through the stacks of
libraries right and just sort of seeing a book and say i would have never pulled
this out and here i am discovering and so for me that sense of discovery is
something we have to protect at all costs
yeah and amen to that you know one of the
people i think is something of an inspirational hero to you is to to me
and anybody in the library world and museum world should be john cotton dana
who who was the great defender of the idea of the openstack
um who is the great defender of the idea that every community has got a history
and objects from that history tangible things that are important he was in
favor of every library having a museum which of course you know at turn of the
19th and 20th century there were a lot of libraries including kansas city
public library uh as an example that created museums
um yeah and uh and and it was usually about important objects
that relate to who we are in our community i one of the great objects
that you talk about um in the national museum of african-american
uh history and culture is the tin wallet yeah
yeah and and that you know that it's so tangible it's small it's so tangible
anybody could have done this or but it also has just so
much larger meaning you might well in some ways i'm
my career has been shaped by john condan right his notion was
fit the museum to the community needs right and so that led me to thinking how
do i find the stories that might seem small but are really large like the chin
wallet this was um a man uh named joseph trammell who gained his freedom in the
1850s and with his freedom came that freedom paper that document and he
recognized that if he lost that or if it was destroyed it could destroy his whole
life so he built this he made what he called a handmade tin wall kind of an
ugly little box but he would put it in that box and carry it with him to make
sure it wasn't destroyed or by perspiration or anything and then every
night he would go back to his house he would take it out of the tin wallet
according to the family and he would talk about the power of freedom the
importance of freedom the fragility of freedom and for me
that small tin case really became emblematic of a nation's grappling with
freedom a community's desire to understand and embrace freedom in a way
it was always a reminder to me to never take freedom for granted
you know uh dana was attacked for for for trying
for playing too small that the libraries and museums should be about greece and
rome uh you know the the renaissance etc and and and and and one of the things
that he said was but you know these objects in this community connect to
that and they connect to it through those important words like freedom
for equality work or courage or justice uh and and uh
and and it seems to me that that's the the
the important thing that uh that that we can do as museum or library leaders um
is is relate the the day-to-day life uh in the community to those larger most
important things that we all agree on i mean the the difference between uh
america and many other countries and you talk a little bit about this is that
we're really an idea we're based on it on an idea and we
haven't lived up to the ideals behind those ideas all the time but we have
those ideals and we share those ideals isn't that the most powerful thing right
that we can look at these words and the declaration in the constitution these
founding documents and yes there are many stories that are not there the many
words that aren't there but they give us something to aspire to um and so i've
always argued one of the great strengths of the civil rights movement for example
was simply saying live up to your stated ideals that's what we're really asking
you to do um and so for me that is really powerful to sort of say the
country has always been a work in progress
and so therefore what's important is that we have to challenge we have to
prod we have to push we have to come together to help a country live up to
its stated ideals i think there is nothing wrong with aspiring to be
the best of what america says it is you know aspiration is really
important and you have a great story uh in your book in your own family it's
about your mother um
that's about aspiration um and she some of your friends you're you're
at home with some of your friends and she goes around the
table and asks each one of them what do they want to do uh where do they want to
go to college etc
and and they give their answers and then she turns to you
and she asks you what are you going to do after graduate
school after graduate school and um
you know her expectations you have another great phrase in in in the book
that that seems to me is a you know a tremendous
uh reason the power behind your success in the
world which is that your mother's expectations you say we're both a gift
burden which i think is just a is a fabulous
phrase and and i i think that's you know i look at our country and i
think our country is a gift and and a burden and and if you want to play
a civic role in in the world which you do and i do and and
and and many people do uh
um it's a gift in this country to be able to do that
it's also a burden because of our history uh and an opportunity because of
our history but that that opportunity is what is i
think so important um you know i i remember early on in my career people
would say to me you're too political um and i would say if helping to make a
country better help it live to its ideals is political then i'm political
but boy that's the kind of politics i want to see
well and you know it's uh we're we're about debate in this country
we've been about debate since the since the the beginning and uh we're
you know true true inclusion in includes all all all voices in the uh in in in
the debate uh and if you do it face to face you learn
you learn something about people's motivations and and uh which are usually
pretty pretty close to your own motivations they may have a different
way to get there uh but they're trying trying to get us
get us to the next place uh as a better place for all of us uh i find um well
um what i do before we turn to questions i
i do want to ask you a little bit more about your family because i think it's
so important in in your history and it your your view of the world which i i i
share and admire it it is about all of us as a family and your your lonnie
bunch iii and and your father and your mother your
grandfather it's a great picture of your grandmother in the book um
uh yeah
talk a little bit about the bunch family the bunch of bunches that you come from
well you know what i'm always struck by is how an
individual or a couple can change the trajectory of the family you know my
grandfather lonnie bunch senior was a sharecropper and didn't want to be a
sharecropper and he and my grandmother found ways for him to go to college at
night at shaw college for almost 10 years and then for whatever reason he
wanted to be a dentist and he had to go he had no money so he went to new jersey
and in those days they had what they called rolling chairs and he pushed
people around um to make money and he you know basically opened a dental
practice and was a dentist for you know 40 years and what i realized is that
that changed the trajectory but as my father used to say
we had no right as lonnie bunch junior in the third to complain because this
guy was a sharecropper it took him 10 years to go through college my father
used to always say when he was a kid he would say you know to his father boy i
can't do this and his father would say yes you can um i work so you wouldn't
have to chop cotton and so i've always lived with that desire to sort of
make my grandparents smile that that their efforts their sacrifice
really shaped who i am and that i worked hard
to help others have the lives that i know my
grandparents wanted for me it's a great in in itself an
inspirational story so i elizabeth do we have uh some questions from from the
audience before we go away we do and and i'll start by just noting
that there's been lots of thanks for both of you in the chat
barbara commentator puts forth that this is a
conversation every american should witness
um so there's a there's a comment from her as well and a question
secretary bunch you had spoken about how museums challenge visitors to think and
reflect on issues through personal stories
and her question is about how to better engage people in spontaneous
conversations in museums because on tours sometimes there's only one person
who asks a question and and no one responds or joins in how can we
help museums encourage their communities to talk
i think some of it has to do when you're creating exhibitions think of those
spaces where you know that people will be able to engage
and would want to engage so that whether it's you know a specific artifact in the
african-american museum was putting some material from harriet tubman that really
would get people to talk about not just her but issues of gender and freedom um
there was a spot that i would ask people to stop in front of a cabin that housed
the enslaved and to tell the story that um
here was something that when it was the home of the enslave there was one door
in but when freedom came they immediately put a second door so that
having a second door was a concrete manifestation of freedom
those moments then allowed people to engage and talk and there were many
times i've seen people um i guess the best example is
the emmett till casket that we have in the museum i have seen people of all
races ask each other can they cry together because they want to share that
pain and they want to build on that to help a country be made better so i think
it's i think it's intentionality is part of the way to do this
that's great we do have a a couple more questions in our time remaining
um we going back to the issue
secretary bunche you mentioned this
pruning of the confederate statues that has been reoccurring in the news
recently a question asks
what do you think should happen to the statues that have been taken down since
there's been a lot of discussion about this where should they go and
how and should they be interpreted well you know i've been really struck by
um what i saw in budapest when they removed russian statues or soviet-era
statues and put them in a park and they were then interpreted because the notion
was that if you simply erase all the statues you're erasing some of the
history um but if you then interpret that so people understand that so when
mitch landrieu who is somebody the former mayor of new orleans who i have
great respect for he and i talked about it and when he removed confederate
statues he found a warehouse where people can go in look at those and have
it interpreted so i would argue that um even with the pruning i would love to
see some of these preserved i've always thought that in the
african-american museum we should have some statues but they're awfully heavy
so i hadn't planned on those but uh i just think that the notion is that give
people an opportunity to see how these are part of the culture that has shaped
them but help them understand what are the blind spots within that
interpretation
another question elizabeth is there anything
we do a question from daniel um secretary bunch again you had spoke of
trying to make the nation a better place and earlier museums and libraries roles
in engaging with their communities so how
do we address community involvement uh in you know this polarizing time in our
nation how do we um address individuals in our
communities that you know may be willfully ignorant or you know
unable to be swayed well i think first of all the notion is
you only sway people when you can engage them when you can bring them into the
debate so that um creating opportunities um that
intentionally bring people of different points of view together because they
trust the library because they trust the museum um is there risk absolutely but i
was really struck by um
there was a time when i remember being part of a project that brought in senior
citizens of different political points of view to engage with young kids over
literature and it was amazing how people debated but they came together as a
group because they trusted what the library was able to do so i think that
the key is that there are strategies to do this it's not something one does
without intentionality recognizing what this means but i would argue the reward
is greater than the risk the risk is oh you might be identified
as being political but the reward is there are very few places where people
cross political racial and gender lines museums and libraries are those places
so let us take advantage of that opportunity
you you mentioned uh emmett till before and and
we had in kansas city an example of what you're talking about
that was built around emmett till there's a man named alvin sykes in
kansas city who passed away this uh this year um who was a community activist
he became involved eighth grade education a musician african-american
uh and he became involved in the emmett till bill and the campaign
he was a key part of the campaign simeon wright uh was it was very close to him
um to to to get the bill passed that
created the cold case section of the civil rights division of the justice
department and looked at all the older uh unprosecuted uh or
failed prosecution cases civil rights cases
and the key moment for for him and for passage of the bill was convincing tom
coburn who was a senator who was probably the most conservative member of
the senate uh to take away his fiscal block on funding on funding the
bill and he alvin did that by sitting in his
office for about six weeks uh until until covent would talk to him
but we brought coburn and alvin to the library to have a conversation
they had a conversation about how this happened
and and basically it came down to tom coburn
actually you this incredibly conservative guy used the word love
about alvin sykes this community activist
um uh that that he found love in in alvin psych's soul and i i'll tell you
there was not a dry eye in an audience of about 300 people mixed audience in
in kansas city missouri listening to this and it's that kind of conversation
which is about human beings being human um that that that museums and libraries
can do and and it's very hard to find a place for those conversations today
but that's our challenge and that's our opportunity
elizabeth do we have another
question we have one last question we can end on and then we can go ahead and
wrap up right in the hour so we'll end with um
this discussion about uh diverse cultures in our nation there are
so many different experiences and stories
from communities in our nation both now and
throughout our history and how do we embrace and uplift diverse
cultures and stories without stepping into an area of cultural appropriation
well you know part of the challenge of cultural appropriation is not talking to
the cultures that you really want to explore and so i think the notion of
finding the kind of collaborations the kind of partnerships
that would allow people to feel comfortable that you're sharing their
culture you're sharing their story in a way that's respectful i was always
struck early in my career i got to know a man named tom mckay at the wisconsin
historical society who went around wisconsin and worked with diverse
communities and got them to engage with each other um in a way that changed the
way wisconsin's history was explored and so i've always thought that that is work
it's difficult it's challenging what it really means is for this to work you've
got to have a long-term mutually reciprocal relationship it's not one
exhibit it's not one public program it's a really it's a commitment to um that
being part of the lifeblood of a cultural institution would be a museum
or a library
i think that's a great place
to to end so um lonnie i want to thank you so much for
for for this conversation uh it's inspirational you are an
inspirational leader in the cultural world of uh of this of this country and
i'll say to uh to use your your words about uh about your mother uh but
transpose them a little bit you're a gift not a burden thank you very much
thank you so much i really appreciate this
thank you everyone and as a reminder this event will be recorded and that the
chat and the the transcript will be available for closed captioning
as well thank you so much at this time we'll end the webinar take care everyone
mommy thank you thank you