DOMETI PONGO: I'm Dometi Pongo, and over the past few weeks
we've been drawing parallels between the significant moments
in history and what we see happening today.
We talk about music, media, movements,
and today we're going to talk about memory, the importance
of preserving our history.
I'm honored to have the opportunity
to speak to one of our country's leading historians.
On the conversation with Lonnie Bunch,
the first African-American secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution and the founding director
of the Smithsonian's National Museum
of African-American History and Culture
Secretary Bunch, as I think about memory,
there's a-- an Adinkra symbol of West Africa
called Sankofa, that's, you know,
look back to see where you're going.
And I think that what has been so-- the greatest tragedy,
I believe, of America's enslaving of Africans,
has been the loss of that history,
and that black Americans don't have a way to touch and to hold
some of that history.
How has that lack of ancestral memory
permeated other sectors of the black experience?
LONNIE BUNCH: My whole career has been about remembering.
So for me, memory is one of the most important things.
And some of that memory is really just
rethinking our own experiences.
One of the things that really struck me when I was creating
the African-American museum is, as I was doing surveys
around the country, the number of African-Americans who
were embarrassed by their slave ancestors.
I was walking down the street one day and this old church
lady came up to me and said, I know who you are,
can I hug you?
Well, this was before the pandemic, so she hugged me,
and then as she whispered she said, you're doing good work,
but don't talk about slavery.
And so part of what I wanted was to craft an opportunity
for people to understand that one,
slavery shapes all Americans, and two,
that I want black Americans to know that rather than be
embarrassed, wish that we were all
as strong as our enslaved ancestors.
So part of what memory is is giving people a clear sense
of who we are, and more importantly, what memory is
really about, redefining America's identity,
redefining America so it has a truer sense of its history,
and that by having that truer sense,
it will give us the tools to live the life we're in today.
DOMETI PONGO: Can we unpack that a little bit more about the--
the anger at the representation of ourselves as slaves?
I remember when "12 Years a Slave" came out.
And I have so many friends that were like, I'm tired of seeing
myself as a slave.
I'm tired of seeing myself subjugated.
We should be done with these movies.
And I remember telling them at the time,
I had, you know, my nieces had just been born.
And I'm-- I'm like, yo, my nieces
probably won't watch "Roots."
You know, there needs to be a couple
of those movies for their generation
to update us on that.
But the counter argument once again is,
sometimes that's all we see.
All we see is us in a position of pain.
How do we reconcile that as we try
to remember that painful history, but not be,
you know, stilted in it?
LONNIE BUNCH: Some of the earlier works
show us as people defined solely by enslavement,
show us as people who are broken by it.
What "12 Years a Slave" does is really,
first of all, does something that is so important.
It humanizes slavery by telling it
through the lens of one person.
That, to me, is an example of how
we need these stories, because as a historian,
there are so many stories that we've never talked about,
so many stories that could really shape and rethink--
help us rethink who we are.
But I think it's also crucial to say that part of the challenge
is, if most people get their history through television
and film, then we've got to make sure that we have a more
active, a more bountiful sense of that history
so people can see the complexity of it,
rather than see it through one lens.
DOMETI PONGO: And I think we don't talk enough
about the history of slave rebellions, which we see a lot
at the Smithsonian Museum.
Can you talk more about it about the number
of revolts and rebellions that we've seen,
the long history of resistance?
LONNIE BUNCH: Let's look at it this way.
There's a great quotation from an enslaved person who
said once, you know, every time we'd come back from the field,
the number one conversation in the cabins were about freedom.
So in other words, nobody ever accepted
that they were enslaved.
And so what you see is rebellions on several levels.
One level is just running away, just risking the torture
from the dogs that chased you to basically say,
enough is enough.
I'm not going to take that.
Another form of rebellion, you actually
see people like Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner,
and others whose names we don't know, who basically said,
this is our opportunity to strike for freedom.
That meant it was a violent strike, but that it meant
that freedom was in the heart of these people,
whether many slave owners said they were happy and content.
But these rebellions tell us that's wrong,
that they really wanted freedom.
And then those that stayed on the plantation
sometime rebelled in small ways, breaking tools,
injuring animals, so therefore you had a day off.
So the key is to find those victories, whether it
is striking for freedom, running away for freedom,
or doing something that slows the work up.
Those are the ways you fight a system,
and those are the ways that African-Americans found ways
to make a way out of nowhere.
DOMETI PONGO: What are some of the artifacts
at the National Museum that give us a window
into some of those stories?
LONNIE BUNCH: Slavery is about confinement.
So you see a cabin where the enslaved lived.
There's a cabin that was from Edisto
Island in South Carolina.
And when it was used by the enslaved, it had one door.
Because the overseer want to see you come in and out one door.
As soon as freedom came, as soon as they became free,
the first thing they did was make
a second door so they could go out whenever they wanted.
Now, that may sound really small, but think about it--
you've lived your whole life enslaved.
What are the things you say immediately
that say, I am my own person?
Making a door is a major statement of freedom.
DOMETI PONGO: Even back home, you know,
I take trips to Ghana very frequently.
I take groups of black Americans there with me.
And there's part of the ritual when you go to Cape Coast
where Elmina, the slave dungeons,
there's a door that used to be called the door of no return.
And when you get to the other side of it, in modern day
they put up a plaque just above it
that says the door of return, because never
in their wildest dreams did they imagine that black folks would
be able to go from one side of that door
and back through it, back to freedom,
as we look at this history.
So it's very symbolic, and at the same time, very tangible.
But something that's complex about memory is that not only
do we have these artifacts that remind us of, you know,
black brilliance, but then the artifacts and monuments
that remind us of black pain and black subjugation,
a lot has been made about the tearing
down of Confederate monuments.
And some make the argument that some of them
should be left up so that this country can't
run away from its racist past.
Where do you stand on that?
LONNIE BUNCH: Well, I'm a firm believer in the pruning
of monuments, that history and memory was
never meant to be permanent.
It should evolve over time.
But what I would like to see is, I would like to see more
history brought to bear, so as when we think about what
monuments we tear down, we understand
exactly what we're doing, we know
exactly why we're doing them.
So I am a firm believer, coming out
of a culture that has had its history erased,
I never erase history.
But what I want is to tell the unvarnished truth,
to have African-American history as the great corrective
so that we understand truer who we are, warts and all.
DOMETI PONGO: Along a similar note,
there have been conversations about renaming
the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
I've talked to folks who were there on bloody Sunday,
and they say, no, giving that bridge
a peaceful name is to erase what we experienced there.
We need to know in that context of who
Edmund Pettus was so that we know what the space represents.
What is the conversation that you've been
having around that as well?
LONNIE BUNCH: You know, to be honest,
I am someone who would like to sort of keep the name Edmund
Pettus small, but on that big overpass,
I'd love it to say John Lewis.
They call him the voice of conscience in the Congress,
I think he's a voice of conscience in America.
And I think that for, you know, more than 50 years,
he has not only fought the fight for civil rights,
he's fought the fight for fairness across the board.
So I would argue a bridge full of pain, a bridge that
was ripe with hatred, what better symbol than John Lewis
to remind us of the courage it takes to fight that pain,
to cross that bridge.
DOMETI PONGO: For so many of us, memory has been
a matter of life and death.
You know, I think about the passing on of the "Green Book"
so that we know where to go.
I think about the talk that my dad had with me on prom.
You know, I thought I was doing something big.
He let me drive a Jaguar to prom that night,
and he sat me down and said, listen,
you'd be taking a big risk, being so young,
and driving this nice car.
And we had the conversation when I
was younger, but not as seriously as we did on my prom
night.
And it marred my whole evening, because I spent the whole night
looking over my shoulder.
I was nervous and I didn't feel like I
had the same right to space that the other kids in my school
had.
And when we talk about memory, can you
talk a little bit about what--
how memory has been passed down in your family,
and how preserving these memories, even the painful ones
about the "Green Book" and about these sundown towns,
how endemic that is, how much a part
of the fabric of American and black culture really is.
LONNIE BUNCH: And how much a part of our own personal
lives these stories are.
You know, the "Green Book" was a book that helped people find
where blacks can stay, where they can eat,
and it was ultimately published by, what was then, Esso Gas.
And when I was a kid, my father would only buy Esso Gas.
Right?
And I remember one time we were running out of gas.
I'm like, I am not going to push this car, and he's like--
and I said, there's another gas station.
He said, it's not Esso.
And for him, Esso was not only the place that published
the "Green Book," but as he said, in his youth,
in the '30s and '40s, Esso was the only place
to let black people use the facilities.
So to him, this was a way to always
thank them because they treated him fairly,
and he always used Esso.
So for me, now learning that story,
really helped me understand both my father,
but understand a lot about the kind of circumstances
they went through.
And I think that, you know, I can tell stories to my kids,
they're probably bored by now, but I think that the most
important thing is to realize that one, by passing
on these memories, what you're doing
is helping people understand you better,
but really helping them understand themselves,
to see the kinds of struggles and fears
and moments that were transformative for an earlier
generation.
And it should inspire the current generation
to look for their own transformative moments,
by remembering them, the pain, the joy,
but more importantly, they allow us to know who we
are, for generations yet to be.
DOMETI PONGO: That was beautiful.
Secretary, thank you so much for having
this conversation with me.
LONNIE BUNCH: My pleasure.
It was great to hang out with you guys, and you know,
we should cause some trouble together
sometime when this thing eases.
DOMETI PONGO: I hope so.
LONNIE BUNCH: All right.
DOMETI PONGO: All right.