Christopher Hamner: We're standing right in front of the World War II Memorial; how many of you have visited it before? Okay, great. I want to talk a little bit about why it's here and what it looks like, and then give you some time to explore a little bit. But I don't think you can really understand why the memorial looks the way that it does without knowing a little bit about a totally different memorial—the Vietnam War Memorial. So how many of you have been to the Vietnam War Memorial? Okay, great, just about everybody. What have your experiences been? Teacher 1: Very somber. Christopher Hamner: Okay, somber, absolutely. Teacher 2: Dark. Christopher Hamner: Yeah, no, it's somber, it's dark. Teacher 3: Emotional because it has the little book with the names and relatives. Christopher Hamner: Yeah, I mean draws you in, it can be incredibly emotional because it has become a destination point for a lot of the people who served in the Vietnam conflict, people leave things there, they'll take rubbings of people they knew—it's interactive in a way that not many memorials are. It has its own really interesting story; the story of the Vietnam Memorial goes back to the mid-'70s. It was a project started by a veteran of the Vietnam conflict who saw the movie Deer Hunter, which took him back to his own experiences fighting in the war. He said he stayed up all night and that the next morning he told his wife that he was going to dedicate himself to raising money for a memorial to the people that he had served with in Vietnam. The monument that you think of as the Vietnam Memorial, which is the wall—that V-shaped wall that sort of starts low and rises to a peak of I think 6 or 7 feet and has the names inscribed on it—is actually only one of three Vietnam Memorials that are in the same place. And in 2012, we know this as one of the most moving monuments, a place where people will come from across the country to connect with it. It was incredibly controversial at first, and that's a part of the story that we often tune out. But it has a backstory. As they raised money they began to solicit designs for the memorial. And I talked to you guys this morning when we were at the Grant Memorial, and we've talked a lot of times about all sorts of historical sources, that things are made, they don't just appear, and they're designed by a person or a committee who wants to get an idea out there. The Vietnam Memorial is a little unusual in that they opened a design contest nationally. And somewhat atypically they did the jury review blind. Architecture—architects and designers could put forth a plan for what the memorial might look like, and then they submitted it. They all went out to a big hanger like at Dulles Airport. But all the information about who had designed it and who they were and what their background was was all stripped off, so that the judges were only looking at the idea itself. And the design that you know of as "The Design" was one of the last two dozen and then one of the last nine and then the last three and it was ultimately the one that was selected. The selection and the unveiling of the design—before it was even built—went off like a bombshell. One of the groups that was most opposed to it was Vietnam War veterans. They were opposed to a number of things. One was the design of it. It is a somber memorial, it is black, it is anti-heroic, I think, in some ways. Did anybody see as we were walking over here on Constitution, happen to look over at the statue of the gold arm holding up a sword with flames? Okay, so what was that? Anybody catch it? Teacher 4: St. Michael or something wasn't it? Teacher 5: World War I, was it Second Division? Christopher Hamner: It was a monument to the Second Infantry Division and its losses in the First World War. You saw the arm holding up the flaming sword and then a list of all the battles that the Second Division fought in. That's much more of a kind of typical, classic war memorial. You put up a leader, or you put up something—a lion or an eagle or wreathes or something that has classical overtones and celebrates the heroism—and that is not what the Vietnam Memorial is. It was designed very specifically. The designer said that it was designed to get people to interact with it; it has the names of all of the people that were killed during the decade or so of the conflict. How are they organized? Teacher 6: The middle is the earliest and then it goes out to the side. Christopher Hamner: They’re organized chronologically in the order that the people died. So you cannot go and just alphabetically find the person that you want to find. That design forces you to look at a lot more of it than you would if you could just go right to the person you were looking for. You have to look over all of the names, or a lot more of the names, and it forces you to engage with it. What's the finish like, can anybody remember? Multiple Teachers: It's reflective. Christopher Hamner: The finish of the black marble is highly reflective. So as you're looking at the names you can also see your own face reflected in it. That's by design too. None of this was done accidentally. It encourages you to put yourself in the middle of these people and to think about the sacrifice and to think about it in very personal terms. The other thing that became a big issue with the design was the identity of the designer itself. Her name was Maya Lin. She was a 20-year-old Yale architecture student—so she was very young to win such a prestigious national competition—she was female, and she was Asian. None of those things sat particularly well with a vocal group of Vietnam veterans who felt that everything about the memorial was wrong—the location of it, the tone of it, the somberness of it. You can absolutely see where they're coming from. If you look around at most war memorials and you see that they celebrate heroism and glory and sacrifice, you might think this is not how I want my time, my conflict, to be remembered. This isn't what I want people thinking about. That was a really legitimate point, but it opens up this whole question of: Who is the memorial for?

Christopher Hamner: So despite the fact that the Second World War was fought after—or before the Vietnam War by 25 years or so, the World War II Memorial was actually started 15 years after the Vietnam Memorial. To my eye, a big part of what the World War II Memorial is about is not being controversial. That they did not want to open a similar can of worms about how are we going to celebrate this, how are we going to commemorate it, who is it for? It bends over backwards and goes to great lengths not to be controversial. And in a way kind of just dilutes it to a point where it doesn't say anything controversial, but I also don't know that it says all that much. People have pointed out that it's very classically derived. Curiously it actually looks like a lot of the memorials that the German architect Albert Speer built in Berlin during the Second World War as part of the Nazi government. Which is weird, because it's a memorial that looks a little bit like the architecture of the country that it's built to celebrate the defeat of. But you notice it's got 50-some plinths and they each have wreaths. Has anybody who's seen this before noticed how the plinths are organized? Teacher 1: By state, that's all I know. Christopher Hamner: By state, so every state and then some of the U.S. protectorates, Guam, the Virgin Islands. When you’re standing you can take a little bit closer look, there's Wyoming, Washington, South Dakota, Nevada, Kansas, Minnesota. That's interesting as a historian in that the states really had nothing to do with the way the war was fought. In the Civil War that was more true, people went off with the people from their home state, from their home town. But the Second World War deliberately didn't do that. They mixed people from Iowa and Florida and Alabama and Massachusetts in the same units. So it's not like the states went forward to fight. And it's not like the state governments had much of a role in the Second World War. The Second World War was very much the federal government's achievement. So to organized the wreathed tributes, which are the big outer ring, why do you do that? Teacher 2: It could be honoring the dead from each state. Christopher Hamner: It could be. I'll buy that. Why not do it by the different military units that fought, you know, the First Division, the Second Division, the Fourth Division. Teacher 3: It could be just underscoring that it's the United States, as opposed to— Christopher Hamner: And the circle, I think, does that and pulls it together. Teacher 4: It sounds like they designed by committee. Christopher Hamner: Yes, which is exactly what this was. The committee was formed in the mid-1990s, there was a real push by members of Congress who were World War II veterans themselves, and who said—quite reasonably—that this generation is not going to be around forever; we need to celebrate and commemorate their sacrifice and their achievement while they're still here to appreciate it. Then the design went through a series of committee decisions, which the Vietnam Memorial didn't, you know the Vietnam Memorial is one person's vision. Partly the decisions here reflect a desire to make sure that there's just nothing controversial about it. If you put it in by state and there's really nothing to—that could possibly be controversial about that—because everybody came from a state or a protectorate—but at the same time it doesn't really say much about the war. It just sort of recognizes the fact that there were four dozen entities that are there. Then you've got the big arches—one represents the European Theatre, one represents the Pacific Theatre, the two big fountains, it's like the freedom palisade. But everything is, I think, kind of homogenized in a way to make sure that it's not too controversial. There's not much in there that would get somebody saying this is an inaccurate way to portray my experience. Teacher 5: The order of the states, is it like— Christopher Hamner: I have no idea, I have not been able to figure that out! Teacher 5: Well I was wondering is it the same thing like on the Lincoln Memorial. Teacher 6: No, there is an order and it's in the brochure. Teacher 7: It says they alternate to the right and left of the field of stars based on when they entered the Union. Delaware was the first state. Christopher Hamner: So it is the order that they entered, but it goes back and forth… Teacher 6: That's bizarre. Christopher Hamner: That's just weird. For those of you who were with us this summer when we talked about the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian. That was 1995, the big brouhaha about how are you going to display the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Air and Space Museum is right over there. And remember, that was a hugely controversial issue, they never wound up mounting the exhibit, several people who had backed it lost their jobs. That's in the recent memory of the people who are putting this together. Who I think wanted to make a memorial that could be the center where people could gather, something that was inoffensive to veterans, and to the families of veterans. But as a result I just don't think there's all that much there.

Christopher Hamner: Make your way around the outside and then the inside. On the inside there are reliefs that portray different facets of going to war—from the bombing offensive over Europe to the home front. Interestingly, everything is covered. Again, I think the goal was to be really inclusive and to try to make sure that everyone's war experience was represented in some way. There are two Easter eggs. There's a little surprising piece of graffiti—if you look for it you can find it—that is the one thing that breaks the very somber, classical architecture, you've got wreathes, you've got eagles, you've got very somber-looking white marble plinths. There's two pieces of graffiti that are hard to find, but that are much more about—are they in the brochure? That's cheating—but they're much more reflective of the soldiers' experience. Then the other thing to check once you've gotten down into the lower level is the field of gold stars, which is an interesting—[it] kind of borrows a little bit from the Vietnam Wall. There were about 56,000 deaths in Vietnam; there were more than 400,000 deaths in the Second World War. So it's obviously not possible to put every name on the World War II Memorial. So what they did instead, as you can see from here, it's sort of directly behind me, there's a fountain with a gold star for every 500 deaths. So each star represents 500 people who lost their lives fighting the Second World War. To me it has a really interesting effect. When I'm here I often hang out by the fountain to listen to tourist responses. One of the ones I hear the most is my first response, which is, "That's not as many stars as I thought." 400,000 is a huge amount of loss of life and sacrifice, and each one represents 500 families who are missing a son or a father or a brother. But for some reason the number 500 divides it in and it doesn't seem like as much as I would have thought, which I think is exactly the opposite of the intention they wanted to have. I don't know exactly how they made that judgment, but you might want to walk down and see what response you get to that. As a historian I've always thought it's just weird to have it organized by the states. It's very interesting to me now when I come back and visit and I'll watch people interacting with it, especially World War II veterans make a beeline right for their home state and there will often be World War II veterans standing around acting as interpreters and they'll be wearing their uniforms and they'll often ask if you'd like to hear a little from them. And they go right for their home states too, so on some level it's worked a lot. It's just to me it just doesn’t resonate because that's one category that didn't organize the war in any way. It would be like a monument that said, this part of the monument is for guys from 5'0'' to 5'3'' and this part is from 5'3'' to 5'6''—it doesn't really say much. The other question to be asking yourself is who is this for? It was expedited in Congress and the fundraising and the construction with the thought that it was very important to have something memorializing the sacrifice of the veterans' generation while some of them were still alive. That's not always the reason we commemorate things, memorials go up for different reasons. The Vietnam Memorial is a really good example because there's a memorial that at first the most vocal opponents were Vietnam veterans themselves who said we do not want that, that does not represent us. And in the 1980s, they said, well, it's not just about you. It's about the whole country's experience in Vietnam and the way it affected everyone besides just the people who fought. You can think about which parts of this are for servicemen and -women, which parts are for their families, which parts are for just regular Americans, what part of it is teaching—which is a useful tool that monuments do—and which part is just commemoration or celebration. But the most interesting way to look at this is in conjunction with the Vietnam Memorial and the Korean Memorial, which is another interesting outlier. Those of you that have seen that, it's like a large field of slightly larger than life figures, but the real tone there is realism. It is not a sort of idealized version of the war which you often see, especially with Civil War monuments when you're driving around DC—you'll see the guy on horseback and he's got the gleaming gold braid and the horse is rearing back and they look larger than life. The Korean War these guys are slogging across a field, they're in their winter gear and they look tired. You can see the weight hanging in their shoulders, they're humping pieces of gear, some of them have mortar tubes and machine guns slung across their shoulders, and you can see the fatigue in their faces, you can see the exhaustion in their bodies. That's a really different kind of portrayal. There isn't that level of realism here, there isn't that level of representation and I don't think they're trying to have that here. So different memorials that are all talking about the same basic thing—which is what does this country do when it goes to war?—still have really different designs. You can learn a lot about where the country was at the time the memorial was being designed and built by taking a close look at what it looks like and thinking about how it might have looked different.

Christopher Hamner: Somebody who's been to the FDR Memorial describe that one.

Teacher 1: An experience.

Christopher Hamner: Okay. What does it look like? How big is it.

Teacher 1: It's huge.

Teacher 2: It's larger than life.

Teacher 3: It's the different acts or time periods in his life.

Christopher Hamner: So how much—it covers a fairly large spread of ground. It covers different phases of his life. The centerpiece is. . . ?

Teacher 4: Him in his wheelchair.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, exactly. He's in his wheelchair, I think he's got his dog Fala—which is always a crossword puzzle answer—F A L A, if that comes up. Why is this here if we have a perfectly good memorial over by the Tidal Basin?

Teacher 5: The money? They had extra money.

Teacher 6: This one was earlier.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, this one's first. That's a good question, but this one is actually first. And this is the one that FDR suggested during his lifetime. He had been elected president four times; it seems more likely than not that he might someday get a memorial. When asked what would be an appropriate way to commemorate his life as a public servant, I believe he was in the Oval Office, and he said a block of marble the size of this desktop with my name and my birth date and placed at the National Archives. He thought that—which I think is very understated, he picked the location, he picked the design, and that's exactly what you've got. The FDR Memorial at the Tidal Basin is totally different—in so much as he told us exactly what he wanted, it kind of flies in the face of his wishes and his explicit instructions.

There's a further twist there and if you remember back to the second week when Michael O'Malley came in and talked about political theater. The centerpiece of the memorial at the Tidal Basin is FDR in his wheelchair. For a president who went to such enormous lengths over the course of his entire political career to never be photographed in his wheelchair. Remember Professor O'Malley talking about how he would set up rails so he could appear to walk to the podium, so that he could carry himself to the podium, he had a car outfitted with hand controls. This is not just someone who did not make a big deal about the fact that he was in a wheelchair; this is someone who went to great lengths to disguise that fact.

Christopher Hamner: That’s a great point to talk about: Who is this memorial for? Is it for the person; is it for the generation for whom he was such a central figure? There's a whole generation of Americans and he guided them through the Depression and the Second World War, is the memorial for them? Is it for us, for contemporary generations who are trying to place him in a historical context? Those are really useful questions and they're transportable. You can ask these questions about any monument in any place.

Christopher Hamner: Why do we do that?

Teacher 5: We've got to teach now. The other memorial is supposed to be a teaching memorial. This I think was probably done fairly close after his death—

Christopher Hamner: I would imagine.

Teacher 5: It's not designed to teach.

Teacher 7: I know! There's a little marker right there that explains. It was put in by his friends of his to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his death in 1965.

Christopher Hamner: Is that the right thing to do? To go…when somebody says this is how I want to be commemorated and you go and say yeah, alright, we're going to do something different.

Teacher 7: It depends on who it's for. If you're doing it for that person, yes. The other memorial is not for him.

Christopher Hamner: So who is it for?

Teacher 8: Everybody else.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, that could be a glib but accurate answer.

Teacher 5: But it's for people who didn't experience New Deal programs. At this point—I had the reality check that I am now wholly in a totally different generation than my students this year. Their great-grandparents fought in World War II versus my grandparents. And that their grandfathers fought in Vietnam whereas my father fought in Vietnam. So you've got so many people that are so far removed at this point that this isn't going to teach them about who Franklin Roosevelt was.

Christopher Hamner: Is that what a memorial is supposed to do?

Teacher 5: That's I think what the goal of the other memorial is.

Christopher Hamner: This is where you get into the sort of interesting, undefined territory of what do we want to use this space for?

Teacher 1: There's a contrast. I think that FDR was rather shortsighted when he said I want to be remembered this way. Because I do believe that there is a teaching technique, the teacher in me comes out, but those are memories. If I wasn't an American, if I was not a history teacher, if I was just walking down the road, this just looks like a gigantic tombstone for some schmoe. Therefore, there is no memory being projected and I think that you have to honor him. I love that idea—that "I was a simple man"—but I think he was being shortsighted because we will not remember him without knowing the great things that came with him.

Christopher Hamner: I think part of the power of this is exactly how understated it is. Particularly in a city where there's Logan Circle, there are huge statues, 15-foot-tall statues, of Civil War figures that people have totally forgotten. Here is someone whose place in 20th-century history is immense and there is a kind of disconnect between the immensity of his contributions and the really plain nature of this. To that extent I think it does have some power because there's so many statues around here that are so overly grandiose and kind of hit you in the face with the importance of what they're celebrating and you think, not that important, not that significant in the long run. Whereas this, if anything I think Roosevelt's reputation has been burnished by historians over the years and this is incredibly plain and understated.

Teacher 2: How would we not remember him? That's the other component of it.

Teacher 1: Time. Time kills it.

Christopher Hamner: I think about the Martin Luther King Memorial. He talked during his life a lot about how he was a part of something, that he was not the Civil Rights Movement, but that he was a part of a larger wave. I think that that was an important statement in part because it indicates his humility but also because it underlines the rightness of the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't one person saying okay, now the country's going in this direction but a large segment of the country saying this injustice has to be corrected. I'm not sure how comfortable King would have been to be singled out with a statue of him covered with his quotes.

On the other hand, to not do something is sometimes sending as powerful a message as to do something. To have the National Mall, which celebrates Lincoln and Washington and Grant and a lot of white elite political figures, and to not have part of the Civil Rights Movement and the African American leaders who helped push it through, that's a conspicuous absence. To not put anything is kind of an interesting—that makes an interesting comment, too.

Suzannah Niepold: Just having lived in this country, you have all the background knowledge, all the tools you need, to analyze this and have some understanding of maybe what the artist is trying to say. It's a good starting point. I want you to use a really basic looking tool called the "Observation/Interpretation Chart," has anyone done anything like this before? Okay, yeah, it's pretty familiar. The goal is just to separate what you see from what you think it means. But it's more challenging for kids than you might think. Hopefully it will give them the tools they need to write a good historical argument, because you're essentially coming up with all your evidence, and then using that evidence to make an argument. So let's just start. Our goal is just to make a long list of observations based on this piece. What is it that you see here? Multiple Speakers: License plates. Suzannah Niepold: License plates. Okay, that's a— Speaker 1: State names. Speaker 2: Does spelling count? Speaker 3: Not for the HSA. Speaker 4: Somebody said state names. Speaker 5: ABC—yeah, alphabetical— Suzannah Niepold: Alphabetical order. The plates are in alphabetical order by. . .? Multiple Speakers: State. Speaker 2: Or district. Suzannah Niepold: There was some stuff over here I missed. Speaker 4: Common colors—white, blue, yellow, green. Speaker 5: It's "We the people of the. . . ." Suzannah Niepold: Ah, so it spells something out on the license plates. Speaker 1: It's the Preamble! Suzannah Niepold: The Preamble of the Constitution. Speaker 5: It's like each license plate has a state theme. Suzannah Niepold: How does it have a state theme? Speaker 5: On some of it. Like Alabama, "Heart of Dixie." Not all of them. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so some of them have text— Suzannah Niepold: What else do you see on individual license plates? Speaker 6: A year. Speaker 5: Yeah, the year. And the artwork behind, depending on if it's just the plain—some are just two colors, some have three colors, some have like a picture behind it. Speaker 7: It's on the seat of a car, right? That somebody flattened out. Suzannah Niepold: Ah, so looking at the background reminds you of a seat of a car. Speaker 7: Like at a rest stop, or that you'd see in a diner or a drive-in or something. Suzannah Niepold: What do you see that makes you think diner or drive-in? What is it about the— Speaker 4: The metal on the outside of the cushiony seat. Speaker 5: And the color coordination. Suzannah Niepold: So the materials in the background make you think of the diner/drive-in or car seat. Speaker 8: How about six, five, six, six, five, six, five—in terms of how many license plates are in each row. Suzannah Niepold: So there's a pattern, there's not always the same number of license plates in a row, but it does alternate sort of sixes and fives. Speaker 2: Some have natural features on them while others are political statements. Suzannah Niepold: So the types of things chosen by the state, some are natural features and some are political. Speaker 5: It looks like some of them actually have—like Alabama has a tag on when they had to renew it and some don't, like if you look at Colorado, there's no dates on Colorado. Alabama's actually—it depends. And the number one color of the license plates—the background—tends to be white. The dominant color. Suzannah Niepold: That's good. A couple of people are noticing the dates on them, some of them have them, some of them don't, there's a bit of a range. Speaker 10: On most of the individual plates the words don't make sense by themselves. A couple do, like Hawaii is "none" and South Dakota is "this," but for the most part if you just look at one plate it doesn't really make much sense, it's just a couple of letters or numbers. Suzannah Niepold: So, looked at individually it's rare that a single license plate will have a word on it that makes sense. Is there anything else design-wise that is common to the license plates? Speaker 2: They're rectangles. Suzannah Niepold: So all the same shape. Speaker 3: They're bolted in with four bolts. Suzannah Niepold: Bolted in with four bolts, and those bolts are in the same location, right? Speaker 7: Deal with mass production for cars. Suzannah Niepold: There's evidence that these were mass-produced instead of custom made. Alright, are we ready to start moving into this column? Thinking about all of this as evidence, what do we think the artist is trying to say? Why did he put these license plates together to spell out the Preamble? And what does that tell us about our country? Speaker 2: Because all of them together is what shows us what our country is made of and really is the foundation of the nation, that we can't really go back to the Civil War era—we're not divided, we have to be all together. Suzannah Niepold: It's putting them all together is, how did you say, the spirit of the country? Speaker 2: Spirit of the country, basically what makes us make sense. Suzannah Niepold: So we are indivisible, we've come out of the Civil War and we're still part of the Union. Now what—: Speaker 4: It's obviously the shift to car culture, and that, you know, we are a nation of highways that are interconnected and the car is the way we get to places, we move from the cities to the suburbs, we move from Route 66. It's become—we're a nation of cars and highways. Suzannah Niepold: So his choice to use license plates is not random? Multiple Speakers: Right. Suzannah Niepold: He's really using that material to make another point about how we're a car culture. And that's another connection, right? As you mentioned, the highways connect all the states. Speaker 5: I also think it brings out the individual characteristics and history of each state, but yet we're all, as everyone has said, connected and that's what makes us strong. Yet, we each have flavor and things that are unique that make each state special. Suzannah Niepold: Great, so everyone had the theme or the slogan that you noticed, the symbols, whether they're natural environment or political symbols. The "flavor" is a great way to put it, but as he said, we're all indivisible; we're all part of the Union. I think maybe that pattern emphasizes that as well.

Suzannah Niepold: What's going on in this picture? Speaker 1: Relaxing after a hard day of work. Suzannah Niepold: What do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 1: You see both of the gentlemen sitting there who are sort of resting, as well as this younger gentleman over here. The little girl looks like she's kind of tired too. Speaker 2: The boots. Hanging. Suzannah Niepold: There are boots hanging here, okay. Speaker 3: He's got like work clothes on, and they look undone. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so these look like his work clothes, how can you tell? Speaker 4: There are holes in them. Dirty shoes. Speaker 5: He's smoking a pipe. And the gun resting on the knee of the older gentleman. So maybe they were hunting? Speaker 6: They may be calloused, his hands [have] different coloration. So just outdoor work. Suzannah Niepold: So signs that they spend their time working outdoors. We noticed this man is smoking a pipe, this man is holding a gun. The pipe might add to the sense that they're relaxing after a hard day, and the gun might be an indication that they've been out hunting. Speaker 5: The black one looks like a hunting dog, the yellow one doesn't. Speaker 7: And there's another little one over underneath that the boy's playing with. Suzannah Niepold: This is one that's a little bit harder to see, especially if you're looking at this in reproduction, but there's a little tiny dog over here and then the two in the front. What makes this one look more like a hunting dog than the other two? Speaker 8: It looks like a Labrador. Suzannah Niepold: So it’s a breed we associate with hunting. Speaker 5: The yellow one looks like a herding dog. Suzannah Niepold: The title—which some of you might have noticed, we're not doing as much to cover it up this time—it's called A Dog Swap. What does that tell us about the picture? Speaker 7: So he's saying goodbye to his dog. Speaker 3: Or he's thinking about whether to go through with this or not. 'Cause he looks very pensive and the other guy looks like he's waiting for him to make up his mind. Speaker 8: He certainly has his gun there to make sure that he's— [laughter] Suzannah Niepold: You did something when you said waiting, you went forward a little bit, and I think that this man is leaning forward, which indicates that maybe he's waiting for an answer. As you said, this man is looking more pensive, more thoughtful. Speaker 1: Maybe that's why the little girl is sad? Maybe that's going to be her pet they're giving away. Speaker 5: Look at that little puppy, don't give him away! Speaker 1: They're going to give the black dog away because you can see he's kinda like comforting him, like don’t worry you'll be okay. Speaker 3: I think the little boy is interesting because he's kind of like fading into the background. Speaker 7: He's looking away. Suzannah Niepold: He's looking away, he's faded into the background a little bit. Why do you think the artist might have done that? Speaker 9: Maybe he's attached to the dog. Suzannah Niepold: Oh, he's attached to the dog. So why is he facing away? Speaker 9: It's his dog. Suzannah Niepold: Now what else is the little boy doing? Speaker 7: Playing with the other— Speaker 10: Focusing on a new dog. Suzannah Niepold: Yes, he's playing with this one. Speaker 10: Out with the— Speaker 9: Somebody's already said, we're getting a new dog. Suzannah Niepold: So he's coping with it by turning away, playing with the little puppy. Why do you think the choice of dog is important to this family? Speaker 7: It looks like they're in a field—so maybe, if the other dog is, like she said, a herding dog then it would be more working for them, for their livelihood, I guess. Speaker 10: Maybe this is a stretch, is that a fishing net? Suzannah Niepold: So they're using the land, they've got a fishing net. Speaker 8: You can see fencing in the background. Speaker 9: You've got your cabbage and collards up front. Speaker 7: One would assume that makes it a community kind of situation where people are helping each other; perhaps they are dependent on each other. Hunter-man brings meat, and this family farms. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so maybe it's a community exchange. Speaker 3: Some kind of sharecropping. Suzannah Niepold: What else can you tell about their daily life and the condition of their home? Speaker 1: A dirt entryway. Speaker 7: You can tell in terms of relationships, Mom's in the doorway kind of hovering in the back with what looks to be the older daughter. So the women are kind of back away from the decision making of this or in the home, so to speak. Suzannah Niepold: So the decisions are being made by the men, the women are a bit farther away. Speaker 7: Yeah, because even the boy is outside. Suzannah Niepold: Someone mentioned sharecropping, this painting is from 1881, the artist is from Warrington, VA, so not too far away. So if this is painted after the Civil War, a little bit even after Reconstruction, what do we know about the lives of these people? Speaker 8: They're very, very tough. Suzannah Niepold: Tough how? Speaker 8: They're having to make their own way in a segregated society where nobody's looking out for them. And sharecropping—very tough, very tough occupation. Suzannah Niepold: Tough life. As you noticed in the beginning, probably working outside, working the land, getting food however they can—whether it's growing things, fishing, hunting. What are maybe some of the advantages though? Multiple Speakers: Free; self-sufficient; freedom Suzannah Niepold: Self-sufficiency, freedom. Speaker 9: Autonomy. Suzannah Niepold: Autonomy. Speaker 7: You have the ability to build relationships, remember we were talking about the community. Before you could be sold off and not have a family and not be a part of a family. Speaker 3: And they're trading property that they have now, which before they would not have been able to. Suzannah Niepold: So they have property. So the dogs maybe represent that. Someone mentioned family; I think that's very important that you have a family group together.

Suzannah Niepold: This is a work that I find really interesting because even though it's really an everyday scene there's a lot of maybe kind of misconceptions that feed our interpretation of this work. So I'm interested to see what you can make of it. What's going on in this picture? Speaker 1: There are no men. Suzannah Niepold: There are no men, so it's all women. And what else? Speaker 2: These little girls are fighting. Suzannah Niepold: How can you tell that they're fighting? Speaker 2: Because the one girl is yelling at her, wearing red, and the little girl in blue has her hands at her hips and is like nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah. So, you can tell they're fighting. Suzannah Niepold: So the artist gives us some really clear body language. The girl in the red top sort of leaning forward, mouth wide open, the other girls have kind of squinchy faces. Speaker 3: It seems like school, like parents dropping their kids off or picking their kids up or something. Speaker 4: The moms don't look real happy. Suzannah Niepold: So there's not any sort of bright smiles on any of the women's faces. How about the scene as a whole, what do you think the mood of the whole picture is? Speaker 1: Well, could it be Sunday? Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm thinking it could be Sunday. Because the mother has a flower on her lapel. It could be Sunday. Suzannah Niepold: Without looking at the title, which is going to give it away, how can we tell if it’s a school-related thing, as you first thought, or a Sunday, like church perhaps. Speaker 6: There's no religious imagery in it. Speaker 3: A couple of them have books, but the books are different colors, and they don't say Bible. There's nothing that looks churchy, there are no crosses. Speaker 1: There's nobody wearing hats, that's churchy. Speaker 5: None of them are wearing hats. Speaker 2: Not all of them. Speaker 3: There's one woman in a hat. Speaker 7: Is that a graduation hat? Suzannah Niepold: You know, that's one of the misconceptions again because it has that kind of flat top. But if you look at it closely it's not a mortarboard, it’s a fancy hat. Speaker 7: They're all wearing dresses. Speaker 8: I was thinking '50s. Speaker 5: Girls didn't wear pants back then. Speaker 6: If it's Sunday, where are there husbands and sons and brothers? Speaker 5: It could be a Women's Day; I've gone to Women's Day events before. So it could be Women's Day. Suzannah Niepold: Someone mentioned there are no churches in the background, can you identify any types of buildings in the background? Speaker 5: I don't know—it looks like a school. Suzannah Niepold: But which part looks like a school and how can you tell? Speaker 7: The left. Speaker 5: But a lot of churches are in schools. I went to church in a storefront, so—back then, I don't see a storefront, but I used to go to church here in Maryland in a school. I think it's probably a school or a church event. So it doesn't necessarily have to be "school" because people don't always go—in urban settings, people don't always have access to a church building. They do church in different buildings. Speaker 2: I think their skirts are too short for church. Speaker 9: That's what I was thinking, that one girl kneeling— Suzannah Niepold: Some of the evidence I hear for school is that this fence was built maybe to control people, to keep them in, so maybe the playground is inside the fence. As you said, there's no men, it's all women and female children. The clothing will throw your students off, they're not used to an everyday scene where everyone is in dresses or everyone is dressed up. What else is going on, what else can you find? Speaker 4: It reminds me of Baltimore with the red brick and the stoops and the Federalist architecture. Speaker 6: The obvious thing to me is that there's black and white children and that right central there's an African American woman holding the hand of an African American child and what appears to be a white child has her arm wrapped around that woman. Speaker 3: It seems the African American women are the ones caring for the kids. And maybe the mom's coming to get her? Speaker 5: But they're not wearing maid uniforms. Suzannah Niepold: So the adults, unless I'm getting this wrong, are all African American—or the ones that I can see. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 4: She's raising her hand. Suzannah Niepold: But there are children, there are Caucasian children. Speaker 5: Well, wouldn't the Caucasian children be with their nannies? Speaker 9: That's what I was wondering, are they nannies? Suzannah Niepold: Are they nannies, or what other roles could they be filling? If it's a school scene— Multiple Speakers: Teachers. Suzannah Niepold: If this is a school, what do we know about the school based on the people that we see. Speaker 5: All girls. Speaker 6: It's mixed. Suzannah Niepold: It's mixed, it's not segregated by race, just by gender. Speaker 5: I don't know, African American people are all different colors, so when I see someone who's lighter I don't assume they're white. Suzannah Niepold: That's true, sometimes you can get into dangerous— Speaker 5: I'm not saying they are or aren't at this point, I'm not saying that. Suzannah Niepold: You're right, so we can leave it as an open question mark. But there are certainly children with—just literally white, not even peach-colored. Speaker 6: Right, because that girl with her hand up stands out to me in the back. She's like waving; I can't tell what she's doing. Speaker 7: It's almost designed to draw your attention. Suzannah Niepold: The title is School's Out, so whoever said end of the daym whoever said school, they're borne out by the title. It's 1936. What part of the country would we imagine this to be? You said it looks a little like Baltimore. Speaker 10: Gotta be in the North. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, why does it have to be in the North? Speaker 10: Because of the integrated school. Suzannah Niepold: And why does it have to be a big city? How can we tell that about the image? Speaker 4: Because of the Federalist architecture. Speaker 6: And that's a lot of people. You wouldn't have that many children of that age in a small town school. Suzannah Niepold: This artist—one of the reasons that we always put the birth and the death dates and locations of the artist is to try and give you a sense of where the scene might be and what their background knowledge is. Allan Rohan Crite spent most of his life in Boston. So we think, based on an interview with him, that this is a South Boston school in 1936. If you look at the history of segregation in the schools—because he is an African American artist, this is an African American show—is that the schools were desegregated in the 19th century, but the neighborhoods weren't. So because the schools were just organized by neighborhood they were still vastly majority African American school or white school. So here you see maybe a few who either are light-skinned or are white, but certainly the majority are African American.

Suzannah Niepold: So again, just take a minute to observe the detail before we talk about it. What's going on in this artwork? Speaker 1: It's looking kind of at a study of Africa, of African culture. Suzannah Niepold: What do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 1: The books that I can see from here are about—you've got Africa and Asia, The Soul of Africa, the book there Africa Since 1413. Suzannah Niepold: So the book titles are turning into a bit of a clue about the artist's intention or message for the entire work. And something that really pops out to you is Africa. Speaker 2: Americans in particular like W.E.B Du Bois and the language that of course then was used, so you certainly see like the African American experience. Suzannah Niepold: It's an African American experience but tied back to Africa, which is appropriate since we are in the American Art Museum. Speaker 1: Then you have some odd ones that seem out of place, like Pushkin. Speaker 3: And some of covers seem more worn than others. Suzannah Niepold: Some of the books are maybe more worn, more well read than others. Are there any in particular that look more worn? Speaker 3: The Du Bois book. Suzannah Niepold: Because the title is wearing off a little bit. Speaker 4: She has then N and the A Encyclopedias of Knowledge, Culture, and I don't know what that word is on the bottom shelf. Suzannah Niepold: Yeah, it doesn’t always give you the title. So there's a repeated theme in the encyclopedias, that the volumes on the shelf refer to the N words or the A words. Speaker 1: Well the n-word is right there. Suzannah Niepold: Yes. And that is an issue, obviously, if you're using this in schools, and if you want to talk about that we certainly can. I use it only on a kind of case-by-case basis depending on the teacher and the class in school. But this can be kind of a major point of discussion with kids, the language that's used in the text. What more can you find? Speaker 5: I think I'm in debate on "sob," if it's really "sob" or if it's son of a— Suzannah Niepold: So there are these words here that could be read as "sob" or could be read as "S.O.B." Again, with prior approval from the teacher I have taught that acronym to about 300 8th-graders at this point. Doing well! What else do you notice about the words, how are they painted? What are they? Speaker 4: Her thoughts. Suzannah Niepold: Her thoughts. Where do we recognize that as thoughts from? Where do we get that? Multiple Speakers: Comics. Suzannah Niepold: Cartoons, comic books, so that's one kind of influence on this artwork. What more can you find? Speaker 6: She seems to be looking out somewhere. We see this window here, I don't know if she's looking at someone or out the window. Suzannah Niepold: How can you tell where she's looking? Speaker 6: Well, I mean just from the way her face is turned, her eyes are directed someplace other than— Suzannah Niepold: Everything—her face and her eyes are directed up here and directed away from the books. Speaker 7: I don't think it's her house. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, tell me what do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 7: I just look at how she's dressed, she's got on heeled shoes, she might—from where I'm thinking—just be visiting and all of a sudden inspecting somebody else's library. And then she just starts pulling off these books, and then she turns and maybe she just has a question or a strong feeling. Suzannah Niepold: Ah, strong feeling. Well, we see her thoughts. Speaker 4: So she may be listening to someone and thinking. And then she's also sitting on the floor, you're right, she's dressed up, but she's sitting on the floor. Speaker 3: What about those two books on the second shelf? The Slavery of Freedom and Black Women and White America almost as like questioning of the future, what's been lost? Speaker 8: I see bookshelves like this every ay at the office because you're always trying to figure out who the occupant is based on what they're reading. One of the things that kind of connects the books for me is this idea that Africa is interesting and significant as long as it's impacting white people. Africa becomes interesting when we start exporting slaves, Slavery to Freedomm you know it's the ownership of African Americans that makes it important. It's not interesting in and of itself, but only in its implications. Which would make me say either "sob" or "S.O.B." Suzannah Niepold: Yes. That's interesting, first of all because by looking at a bookshelf we can tell a lot about the identity of the owner of the bookshelf, who has arranged or even curated that collection of books. And also that so many of these are focused on Africa after European contact and the impact on this country. All of these books, I don't know if you've ever read any of them, but they are all real. We did end up featuring this in one of our programs I work on with 8th-grade students because the teacher, when selecting works with me, came up and said my parents had the same bookshelf. Not literally the same bookshelf, this very kind of fragile—maybe it's meaningful that the artist put this one spindly leg out there so that the whole history is going to just crash down. But she really related to this and she wanted to kind of bring some ideas together in her classroom and she was comfortable bringing out some of the more uncomfortable history, which, depending on your class and your group and how well you know them, you may not be. So this is one of the more challenging works, but the result, the product we got, we had students write about this work, were in the end deeply meaningful and they found real relevance to their own histories here. So we found it worth it in that situation.

Suzannah Niepold: Some of you jumped right into this, but what's going on in this picture right here? Speaker 1: Segregation. Suzannah Niepold: Segregation. What do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 1: The big wall in the middle of the room. Suzannah Niepold: Big wall in the middle of the room. What more can you find? Speaker 1: Not equal. You've got the fan on the one side; the bartender is on the white side. Suzannah Niepold: The bar tender is on the white side of the bar; the fan is on that side of the bar. Speaker 2: Is the bartender holding a paper? Speaker 3: Yeah, I was trying to figure that out, it kinda looks like a face. Suzannah Niepold: What about his face? Speaker 3: No, this looks like a face, like, I feel like it's one of those cartoons, this is like the nose. We're trying to figure it out. Suzannah Niepold: Yes, it almost looks like there's a profile in possibly the newspaper he's holding; the shadow creates the image of a face. If that was intentional, what do you think the artist was trying to do there? What could it mean? Speaker 4: Have the white man looking at himself and actually reflecting upon what he's created, essentially. Looking at himself in the mirror, so to speak. Suzannah Niepold: Looking at himself in the mirror and reflecting on what he's created. And what has he created? Speaker 4: A segregated society, inequality, and divisiveness. Speaker 5: Unhappiness from the looks of all the people. Suzannah Niepold: So divisiveness, unhappiness, inequality. Are these kind of separate but equal? We talked about the fan and about the fact that he's sitting on this side of the bar. Is there anything else you notice that's different about the two sides? Speaker 3: There are physically more people on that side versus this side. Speaker 6: Am I mistaken, is this a woman on this side? Suzannah Niepold: In red, I believe. I would read that as a woman. Speaker 6: Okay, so that means something—I'm not sure what. Speaker 7: I don't know whether the character is either—I think he's dancing. Suzannah Niepold: The man with his hand up this way? Okay, that's one way to sort of read that pose. Speaker 7: And then over his shoulder there's another face. Suzannah Niepold: So there's maybe someone facing him and dancing with him. What does that tell you about this side of the room? There's a woman here, and maybe a second woman dancing with the man. Do you get a sense of the mood or the personality of this side as opposed to this side? Speaker 8: This one looks much more happy. This one, everyone looks angry or shady, or like something's going down. Suzannah Niepold: Shady, what do you see that makes you say shady? Speaker 8: I mean, this guy's like looking over his shoulder, that guy has his hat pulled down. And this side as much as it's not equal, they don't have the fan and things, I feel like they're having a better time. It's almost like they have their own—it's a different type of freedom. Suzannah Niepold: So some of the expressions and poses on this side are very—hat pulled down, over the shoulder, kind of angry looking or "shady," as you said. Speaker 9: The back of the bar's like lopsided—I don't know if that makes sense. Suzannah Niepold: How—well, tell me about the lopsided idea. Speaker 9: Well, it's not equal—it's not straight, I don't know. Speaker 10: I think it's really the white guy's perspective, too. You can tell that he's over here, if he's looking at it. So he painted himself on that side of the picture. Suzannah Niepold: So the artist put himself on the white half of the picture so that the person looking at it sees off to one side. We're not looking at it straight on, with the wall just being a thin shape, we're seeing the line of the wall. Speaker 1: A lot of bars have mirrors on the back, so, actually, the artist could be sitting— Suzannah Niepold: Yes, could be facing the mirror. Speaker 10: What's the year? Suzannah Niepold: 1941. Speaker 11: And the doorways, maybe it's just the angle, but the doorways are shorter—one's larger than the other, it appears. Suzannah Niepold: But we notice there's two doorways. Speaker 11: There's two doorways, exactly. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so what else does that tell us? Multiple Speakers: They have separate entrances. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so separate entrances. Almost trying to create two entirely separate spaces. What's interesting about the date this work was created is that Lawrence, as a Northern artist—he's born in New Jersey, he moves to Harlem, spends most of his life in Harlem. This is his first trip to the South, so it's his first experience with segregation. And he chooses to paint this. This is the year after his famous Migration Series, and if you know that series you know he's painted the South a great deal; he's kind of told those stories but he's never actually been there himself. So this is representing his first experience of being in a segregated place.

Suzannah Niepold: Next to this is another Jacob Lawrence, he painted this as a study for a mural for New York State on the theme of "Community." Notice again, it’s hard to see unless you come up a little bit closer to it. How is the mood of this piece maybe a little bit different from the mood of this piece? Speaker 1: It’s a little bit lighter; everyone’s together. Suzannah Niepold: Lighter, everyone is together. There’s not that big wall in the middle. Speaker 2: Lots of smiles. Suzannah Niepold: Yes, really exaggerated smiles on the faces of the people. Speaker 3: A sense of cooperation, people are bringing their tools, somebody’s already started working. Suzannah Niepold: So it’s a cooperative, productive environment of creation. Speaker 4: It’s not so much social, versus professional—for lack of a better term. Suzannah Niepold: And then the other contrast we can draw on this wall is this piece over here. This is later, this is 1962. And it’s interesting having it in the context of other works by African American artists, especially dealing with civil rights, because it is, of course, very different—it’s abstract. How can you read—in fact, come up closer, I'm sorry to make you keep moving, but you really need to see. What do you notice about this piece here? Speaker 1: Red, white, and blue. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so red, white, and blue—we associate with America, American flags. Speaker 2: We’re looking at regionalism here in the United States? I don’t know. Speaker 3: Each color is in its own area. Suzannah Niepold: So how would you—where does the United States fit into this? Where do you see that? Speaker 2: Red, white, and blue, but then I can take West Coast, I can take the North, the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast. Suzannah Niepold: So are you saying that you see the shape of the country? Speaker 2: If you wanna see it you can, yeah. Suzannah Niepold: That is the joy of abstract art, right? No, you’re not the only one to see the shape of the country in the colors; so maybe we’re looking at regional differences. Knowing that this is about civil rights, does anything start to emerge with the colors? Speaker 4: Upside-down peace symbol? Speaker 5: Abstract Klansmen. Suzannah Niepold: Can you point any out specifically? Speaker 5: I don’t know, that kind of strikes me— Speaker 6: Horsemen there, and this turns into flames when you put— Suzannah Niepold: So then the white maybe represents the white robes of the Klan, what might the other colors start to represent? Blood, flames, smoke, absolutely. So the red, white, and blue is kind of transformed into something very different. The title of the work is “Evening Rendezvous.” Why choose the title “Evening Rendezvous” rather than, you know, "Meeting of the Klan"? Speaker 7: It sounds a lot better. Suzannah Niepold: But it sounds better in what way? Speaker 7: I mean, it doesn’t sound bad. Speaker 3: Nothing bad is happening. Suzannah Niepold: Nothing bad is happening, it’s part of what’s going on. Speaker 8: They did things in secret; if people knew they were coming, they’d probably run.