Suzannah Niepold: This, first off, is much, much bigger than the one we just saw. So what happens when we all look at the whole thing, to start with, is we forget and we miss out on some of the details, especially on the sides. So I'm going to start by asking you to divide in the middle, and have—actually this group is now a little bit bigger, divide in the middle. And have this group look at everything from this man over this way. And you guys look at everything from this woman in blue over this way. Look closely, notice as much detail as you can, you can talk amongst yourselves; try and figure out what's going on in the picture, and keep an open mind for now. We'll put it all together later. Speaker 1: What do you think that is behind him? Is that clouds or… Speaker 2: I think it's mountain? Speaker 3: What did you guys decide this looked like? A river? Speaker 2: Because it's sort of the same color as what's in the foreground. He's gotta stand on something. Speaker 1: He's right, you're right. And then the river—and maybe that's muddy. Yeah, I saw that. Speaker 3: And that looks like Little Boy Blue! Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that. Speaker 4: I'm not really sure what that is. What the woman—maybe Freedom? Speaker 1: Yeah, she's carrying like a wreath—that's what they used to wear. Speaker 3: And there's a steamboat— Speaker 4: Red is always a prominent color, and it's clearly in the center, so that must mean something. Speaker 1: Well, it's like blue and red. Speaker 5: It's like the muddy Mississippi? I don’t know. There's a steamboat. Speaker 4: I was thinking gold instead of muddy, but it could be muddy. Speaker 1: But it looks like it's harvest time. So all the work has been done, the food— Speaker 2: American bounty, the corn, the prosperous land. Speaker 1: And everything—at least these three subjects seem to be very relaxed. Speaker 2: Yep, not doing any work. Speaker 1: He's working, but it's okay, he's not being overworked. So there's a sense of safety, a sense of security. Suzannah Niepold: So, let's start with this group here, what's going on in this half of the artwork? Speaker 1: We were looking at—we started first on sort of the food. That it's harvest time, and then the people sitting on top of the cornucopia of food as maybe the food is the support system that allows them to feel secure and safe from want. And then we were looking at, in the background, at what we assume is water, but it's not blue—so is that golden? Or is it muddy to reflect the Mississippi because of the steamboat? And then we were looking at the mountain-slash-and/or clouds in the background and trying to decide what that was as well. Speaker 2: And didn't know if that was "Little Boy Blue." And the date is '47. Suzannah Niepold: And you saw that because the artist so inconveniently put that in the corner? Darn it! You noticed what's really prominent in this half of the picture is that harvest, the bounty, and it's all spilling out of the cornucopia. I like the way that you say that's maybe the support that makes them feel secure, and you used the phrase "freedom from want." Now what era is that from, too? Speaker 3: Roosevelt. Suzannah Niepold: Roosevelt, that's right, end of World War II. So that really fits right into this. And then you wondered also about this weird color, it's water because there's a steamboat on it, but maybe it's a golden color or a muddy churning color that made you think Mississippi, Old Muddy, that kind of thing. So you've situated it a little bit in place and time. How about this half of the artwork? Speaker 4: I grew up on a farm in northern California, so this really reminds me of home with the foothills, the coloring of the countryside, the live oaks along the ridgeline, and the mountains in the background. So that really reminded me of home and harvest time. Suzannah Niepold: So more harvest, American farm, American Dream. What else? Speaker 5: It looks like there's a struggle of some sort with the bull. It was at one point tied up, you can see the lasso around its horns but it's cut somehow. Suzannah Niepold: We talked about the farm; notice there's this struggle here between this man and the bull, he's gotten loose. What else is going on over here that we haven't talked about yet? Speaker 6: The African American gentleman on the fence there. Suzannah Niepold: So he's sitting on the fence, what might his role in this scene be? Speaker 7: I think the symbolism of him being "on the fence," it can go either way—he can help in this struggle, or he can—I don't know. Suzannah Niepold: Maybe, purposefully, he's literally on the fence as you noticed. Speaker 4: It looks like he was very content to watch, but now that the bull's broken free he's getting involved and coming in to help.

Suzannah Niepold: Putting the artwork together, how do you think the two halves fit?

Speaker 1: It's like a new Manifest Destiny, too. You've got Liberty right there on the cornucopia, and this seems more the wildness of the West. Like the Manifest Destiny picture that we've all seen before, you kind of move from progress to more wild.

Speaker 2: Almost two Americas, where on the one hand we have this security, we've won World War II, life is great; but then the bull being loose and still offering a threat is sort of there's still challenges out there that we need to face.

Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so there's still that struggle of two forces there in the middle.

Speaker 3: The right side seems very calm and serene, the boy is sitting very relaxed, and his eyes are almost closed. And the two women looking very peaceful, and she's almost falling asleep. On the left it's chaos, there's this raging bull.

Speaker 4: And the bull, doesn't it represent economy? Don't we have [on] Wall Street the big brass or whatever bull down there? And then there's this man on a horse waving in the background, and I'm not quite sure—he seems happy, but he seems to be saying goodbye; he doesn't seem to be coming, he seems to be leaving or passing by. So I don't know if the country's struggling with—cause after World War II, we're coming out of the Great Depression, and what does this new economy, the GI Bill being in place, I don't know if any of that—but yet, maybe we're moving from one base economy to another?

Speaker 5: The other thing with 1947—because African Americans were allowed to fight in World War II, but then they came back and they weren't given their rights; somebody said he's kind of like on the fence, and is he on on the fence because he's like, "Am I free? Do I have rights?"

Suzannah Niepold: Right, so pre-Civil Rights era. One thing that's interesting if you look to the bull, and maybe that's a symbol and maybe that means something else. One symbol we've seen him used for is the economy and the global market. Is there anything else that stands out that as though it might not belong on a farm in America in 1947 or doesn't look quite like it comes from that era?

Speaker 6: Maybe the cornucopia?

Suzannah Niepold: Yeah, I don't think you'd expect to—you probably, growing up on a farm, wouldn't have a giant cornucopia in your backyard?

Speaker 7: No, but it is a symbol that stands for something else.

Suzannah Niepold: Ah, so again a symbol that might be standing in for something else. Anything else that doesn't seem middle—middle America farm?

Speaker 8: Well things aren't all going to be on the same farm. It's agriculture from across the country. You're not going to grow grapes in the same place that you grow wheat in the same place that you grow pumpkins and—

Speaker 9: The other group pointed out the two women. They're not exactly wearing farm clothes. And the big cape—I'm not sure what's in her right hand.

Suzannah Niepold: So one woman almost compared to the Statue of Liberty, so maybe they're more symbolic than realistic as well. Now, we've covered up the label, but looking at a bit of information gives us some clues. Not only was it painted in 1947, it was painted by Thomas Hart Benton, who's a Missouri artist. But he called it Achelous and Hercules. If we look back at our Greek mythology, we see there's a myth of the fight between Hercules—who might be a familiar name, usually students have heard about him; he's the son of Zeus, he's half god, strong man. The myth is that he is fighting over a girl, he wants to marry Deianira, and he has to fight for her hand in combat with Achelous—who is a river god. He takes on many forms depending on the type of river; so if he is a winding river he's a snake, and if he's a charging river he is a bull. So here we have a symbol, maybe not of economy but of the river. And it's a battle between the river and between man. So knowing that, what do you think the artist may be trying to say? Why is the struggle between man and the river important in this setting?

Speaker 5: Irrigation projects?

Speaker 10: Flooding.

Suzannah Niepold: Flooding, irrigation.

Speaker 1: Transport of crops.

Suzannah Niepold: Right, transport. So all of this—if you notice this harvest, we need to harness nature to create that. But sometimes it fights back, right, someone mentioned flooding. Benton was living in Missouri on the Missouri River during some very severe floods. So when he was commissioned to paint this for a department store in Kansas City, he chose a scene that he thought the people in that area would respond to of man conquering the bull. Because what happens is Hercules rips off the bull's horn and that's what turns into the cornucopia, so that's how California got its symbol.

The label I didn't want you to read makes a connection to the Marshall Plan. The idea that Europe was starving after the war and America was very proud of its bounty and its ability to feed the world. So that's one connection you can make. I didn't want you to read it ahead of time because I didn't want that to be the only connection that you make.

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: 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.