 To get us started on the right path, we will first hear from someone who has been working on these issues for a long time, former National Park Service Director Robert Stanton. Bob first visited a national park he told me in the summer of 1962 as a college student at the historically black Houston Tillitson College in Austin, Texas. He got a job as a seasonal park ranger in the summer of, excuse me, got a job as a seasonal park ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, and he didn't just find a park there, he found a calling. So in 1966 he took a job with the National Park Service. For the next 33 years, 35 years, 37 years, he's dedicated himself to our parks and public lands in a variety of positions, ranger, superintendent, regional director, associate director. And in 1997, under President Clinton, he became the 15th director and first African American director of the National Park Service. While in office he took a particular interest in expanding diversity at the park service, both in terms of staff and services for minority populations. In 2001 he helped to launch the African American Experience Fund, the only national fundraising organization at the National Parks Foundation that supports and preserves African American history. He also provides consulting services to the National Resources Council of America to help increase cultural diversity in conservation. He has served as an executive professor at Texas A&M and a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale. He has been senior advisor to President Obama's Interior Department and now serves on the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation. In short, Bob Stanton is a park service pioneer and someone who is deeply committed to the issues we'll be discussing today. I'm honored to introduce him, Bob. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for that gracious introduction. Good morning. Let me hasten to thank the leadership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation for the very kind invitation for me to share in this very important summit with you. I also hasten to bring you ingredients on behalf of the chairman of the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation, Wayne Donaldson. And I should add that the National Trust for Historic Preservation by law is a member of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. So it's a pleasure and honor to greet you, but I hold my warmest greeting to the interns who are with us today and all of our young stewards. None of you are of my age. I know that because I'm living on somebody's bar time, but I am not too bashful to ask for a loan of additional time. But I'll ask all to join me in applauding the youth who are with us here today because they honor us. I know that we have a very ambitious schedule and I look forward to the interaction later on. And I'm not quite sure that I will have time to recognize this distinguished panel. I know they'll be formally introduced by Madam Chair later on, but let me with the power of the podium and the mic to take this prerogative of saluting them. I feel a little bit, as one would say, deficient and able to articulate their wisdom and their knowledge, so I look eagerly to their presentation. I returned to the Department of Interior the second time, having retired twice, to serve with the Obama Administration under the leadership of former Secretary Ken Salazar and subsequently his sister, Sally Jewel, who will be with you later in the week. But I remember how all of us were proud when President Obama issued an executive proclamation designated as a Cesar Chavez, a national monument in California. And Secretary Salazar often referenced Chavez. And I would want to recognize this distinguished panel in that sentiment. It was the prayer of Cesar Chavez, that grant us courage to serve for in service there is true life. Ladies and gentlemen, you have accepted the challenge of service. And we as a people in the nation are grateful to you individually and to your organization. Thank you for being with us this morning. As I reflected on providing you opening comments, which will be brief, and really the operative word here is brief, I thought about sharing with you some of the progress that has been made through the leadership of the trust, the council, our various land management agencies at the federal level, the state, municipalities, tribal governments, all other entities trying to address that present challenge of achieving diversity and inclusion in this noble endeavor of historic preservation. What you'll be hearing from those respective agencies and their representatives during the course of this conference. So what I've decided to do is to speak with you as a friend. There is a memorial on Massachusetts Avenue that honors a great philosopher, writer, poet, Geron. He would remind us that there be no purpose, absolutely no purpose to friendship other than deepening of the human spirit. And I had a college roommate that would remind me that a friend is one with whom you can think aloud. You're a part of me, I'm a part of you, we are friends. So I will just take these few moments to think aloud. Because I believe that if we are to continually to make progress for diversity and inclusion, not only in historic preservation and as some would say, heritage conservation or heritage preservation, we need to have a very strong philosophical underpinning. It's that philosophical underpinning that has served me over 50 years in conservation and preservation work. But I would also share with you a few minutes of the practical application of philosophical underpinning. The philosophical underpinning starts with a document that served us and continues to serve us well that became effective, I believe, 1787. It was not a perfect document and those who wrote it knew it was not a perfect document because inclusion and diversity was not really a mainstay of the document, but it had at its preamble the most inclusive pronoun that I know, it had the pronoun we. But those who wrote this document knew that it was not perfect, but they had the insight and they had the guts, if you will, to have a provision, Article 5, that that document could be amended. And on last accounting, that document, in attempt to move us towards a more perfect union, has been amended not 10 times, not 15 times, not 20 times, but 27 times. So fast forward 150 years under that document, think about what occurred 150 years ago. We will pause as a nation in December to understand the battles that were fought, the blood that was shed, leading to the enactment of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. Fast forward to 1896, while we were making progress under the 13th Amendment, the 14th and the 15th, and as President Lincoln reminded us in his inaugural address, to bind up the nation's womb. We were hoping that we were getting beyond that infliction called slavery, but lo and behold, we were not prepared. Came the Supreme Court's decision, Plessy versus Ferguson. It is okay. It is okay as a people in the nation to live separately and presumably under equal circumstances. There was absolutely nothing equal about that. I lived under that document for 24 years in my home state of Texas. So while we speak about diversity and inclusion, we have to understand that we are trying to overcome a commitment by this nation to keep us divided. So we will not be able to overcome that in a short period of time. But we will always keep our eye on the goal of we the people of the United States of America in order to have a more perfect union. That is a philosophical underpinning. We will always have the we and I believe strongly in the Constitution and that we will strive philosophically to do that. But lastly, the practical aspect is that of leadership. What I have experienced, and what you will experience through the course of these discussions, is that there are two major principles, if you will, of leadership. One is a conviction that you can succeed. And the other is to have courage to try to succeed. And the courage and the conviction have to be deeply embedded in humanity and humility. And if you were to take a look at the decisions and actions made to move from segregation to integration now to diversity and inclusion, it was the courage of men and women. You ladies and gentlemen are heirs to their courage. The expectation is that you will take up that mantle, that you will be ambassadors, you will be those struggling to achieve diversity and equality and inclusion. Keep you eye on the prize, which is we, most inclusive of all, and yet stay true to the task of including all. So I will salute you again in the words of one whose legacy has served me well. He and I met at the National Park Service in the same year. Mine was through employment and his were through a perpetual commitment by the government to preserve and enhance his legacy. I speak of none other than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey Dutters, one of the greatest fighters for human rights, for women rights. He concluded after so many years of experience, we differ as a waves, but always one as a sea. That's diversity as inclusion. Continue my friends to achieve that noble goal. Thank you very much. Bob dropped his glasses, he was moving, and I thank you for that inspiration. So we're looking at the ways in which we're interrelated and in the ways in which our missions overlap because we all know the progress, we move toward progress more effectively when we're working together. And that was the genesis of bringing together the panel that's sitting here this morning. We will have part of an hour to talk followed by a brief period of questions and answers. I think someone will be at the end of the aisle accepting papers. We'll try to get to some of those questions now. And then at 1030, we reconvene at the World Café in the Palladium Ballroom and can integrate those questions into the facilitated program there. So we have with us today Sarah Warbelow, Legal Director of the Human Rights Campaign. Here to my left, Eleanor Smeal, President and Founder of the Feminist Majority, Publisher of Ms. Magazine and former three-term president of the National Organization of Women, Floyd Morey, President and CEO of Asian Pacific and American Institute for Congressional Studies, and former president of the Japanese American Citizens League, Sarah, and Tony Teherino, President and CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, Claudia Withers, Chief Operating Officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, such heavy hitters are all passionately dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights of underrepresented Americans, and thank you all for being here with us. Leading the discussion will be President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, our own Stephanie Meeks. Stephanie? Thank you, Marita, and good morning, everybody. It's great to have you here. To begin our conversation, I just wanted to take a quick look back at the National Trust. This question of diversity and inclusion, which Director Stanton gave such great voice to this morning. Thank you, Bob, for your opening remarks. It's not a new conversation at the National Trust. We and our preservation partners around the country have for many years been thinking and working towards creating a more inclusive preservation movement. For more than 25 years, the National Trust has had a diversity scholars program here at the National Trust, and we welcome them to our program this morning. We've offered training to diverse communities in preservation, advancing the preservation of place of narratives that are important to all communities in the country. We've advocated for diverse places and their protection. I'd like to point out that today our National Treasures Program includes diverse places, almost half of the places that we're working on represent diverse communities in the United States. And finally, we have been working to reach out to new communities, and it's really on that last point that we wanted to convene this panel today, because we've been working for 25 years at this topic, but sometimes feel that we're still talking to ourselves. And we're hoping today to learn from our panelists ways that we can bridge that gap and begin constructive partnerships with many constituencies beyond the traditional preservation community to save the places that are important to all Americans and our full American story. So with that, I wanted to ask each one of our panelists to take a moment just to introduce themselves and the organization that they represent. And if you would, reflect on a story from history that's important to your organization or to you personally, from which you draw inspiration. And for extra credit, because we're a preservation organization and we like to think about place, if there's a place that matters to you and to your story, we'd love to hear about that as well. And, Ellie, I wanted to ask if you'd kick us off. Okay. I'm Ellie Smiel. I'm the president of the Feminist Majority and also have been very active, obviously. And now I'm still co-chair of the advisory board. I was just thinking, I just came from Seneca Falls actually, the beginning of the month I was inducted into the women's hall of fame. And so a bunch of us went to Seneca Falls. It wasn't the first time. It's the site of the first women's rights convention. And I'm always struck by the importance not only of it and the National Women's Rights Park there, but also of Katie Stanton's home, Susan B. Anthony's home in Rochester, which I just was at. And how important they are for an inspiration to the next generation. And if you go into their homes, you see the conditions that they were working on. For example, Susan B. Anthony didn't even have electric lights, very small quarters. And yet they, from these humble beginnings, they changed the world for all of us. And I also am always struck to how little funding there is for women's history. And we have to do better. And I'm so glad that you're having this inclusion panel because we're half the universe. And it has an impact on children on the next generation, but I think it has an impact on this, on all of us because you see it inspires you. Their ideas inspire you. And I congratulate the trust for having just bought Paulie Murray's house in North Carolina. Paulie Murray was one of the founders of the National Organization for Women, an African-American woman who her own life story is a miracle. I mean, in reality, here she is from very humble beginnings, but a lawyer, the first African-American woman priest, a woman who fought for the rights of all people for the LGBT community long before it was a strong, you know, when people didn't dare to speak out, she spoke out. She led. But also I think people knowing this history also knows that some of the mythology around our movements must be corrected. And they can only be protected, corrected if you tell our stories. I mean, it's always said that our movements, and we represent a lot of them here, are divided. We're not divided. And I think the reason that the press, for example, for the women's movement always would describe us as a white women's movement, which was never true. We had African-American women, Latinos, Native American women, women from all classes participated in our movement for change. But I think it's part of the mythology because divided, we can be conquered together telling our stories. It is the story of the United States and the future. And so I congratulate you for pushing inclusion, but inclusion is more than a word diversity. I have trouble with it. It is the reality of our lives and the lives not only of our country, but of the world. And I think you've got to make sure everybody's included and represented. Great. Thank you. That was so well said. And congratulations on your induction. That's a well deserved honor. Just a small footnote to what Ellie said. We haven't bought the polymory house, but we're working with the foundation to protect it and to restore it and to make sure that her story becomes very well known because it's a hidden story in our history. And I agree with you. It's a really impressive one once you learn it. Floyd, let's just go around the circle here. I'd love to take care of you. Sure. Let me say amen to what you said. Thank you. You know, I'm just a country boy that was born in a place called Sandy, Utah just before World War II. And during that time, I remember relatives coming to our home living for a number of years. And, you know, I was just a little child, but they talked about camp. And, you know, as a child, camp, you know, it's a fun place to be. And I really did not understand what camp meant until many years hence. A few years ago, my wife and I were traveling back from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, and we decided to take a detour and visit one of those campsites. It's called Topaz. And Topaz is in the western desert of Utah. And as I, you know, as you look across the desert, you imagine people actually lived here during a three-year period of time during World War II. Of course, as now, a lot of emotion came to my body, and I shed some tears there on the site. And I think this is what understanding history, understanding places is to many of us. This spring, I had the opportunity to march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And what an experience. I began to think back, to kind of try to feel what happened during that period of time and what it meant to me today. So, as we look at history, as we look at sites, you know, to many people, they're an intellectual place in geography. You know, there are 10 internment sites in the United States, a number of other prison sites that occurred during that time. But as one goes to experience exactly what happened there, it becomes a very heartfelt experience. Experience is that young people of today feel when they go to these sites. I've been involved in preserving a number of these sites, going way back several years, a couple of decades, four decades when I was in the California legislature, designating Manzanar as a state historic site, working with the Clinton administration to designate Minnadoca in Idaho as a national monument, then working with the Bush administration to designate Tulee in California as a national monument, and then most recently working with the Obama administration in designating a little place in the island of Oahu, little known where Japanese Americans were in prison during World War II, Hano'ula'uli campsite. And to people and families and relatives and posterity, this means something. And for us of color, who have often been kind of set apart, you know, I was always kind of ashamed of who I was after World War II until I understood these sites and what these historical moments meant. So my involvement in the Japanese American Citizens' Leagues from most of my life has centered around preserving a lot of these sites. And one of the most recent accomplishments was to pass HR 1492 back in 2006 that provided some substantial funding to preserve these sites and to educate the public regarding what these sites were. So we need more of this, as has been stated, funding is very low, minority participation in sites is extremely low, and we are part of that history. We need to be shown as part of that history, and these sites throughout the country need to indicate that. So thank you. Floyd, thank you very much. I'm Sarah Warble, I'm with the Human Rights Campaign. Human Rights Campaign or HRC is the nation's largest LGBT advocacy organization, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. I know not everyone is familiar with that terminology, so I'm going to use a lot and want to back up and make sure people know a little bit about it. You know, our movement, like all of those represented here, is that constant balance between rebellion, that pushing back, that fighting for more, and the quiet inclusion. Those moments when the world changes, but in such minor ways. So important for members of our community, and yet almost indistinguishable in the greater moment. In the beginning, so much of what we are known for is Stonewall. And Stonewall's important. It was a seminal moment, but it wasn't the first. In some ways, maybe it wasn't even the most important. Stonewall at the bar needs to be preserved, and it's done well. But we also have places like Compton's cafeteria in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. It was the very first place where transgender women pushed back against the police. When police came to arrest them, to ensure that they were not able to participate fully in society. The women at Compton's cafeteria pushed back. They said we're done. We've had enough. Today if you walk past that space, it's just a vacant building. There's no plaque. There's no memorial. There's no nothing. Most LGBT people, let alone most of our allies, have no idea what Compton's cafeteria is, and why it's important. At best, it's a footnote in history. And if we don't talk about these places and these spaces, then they don't get included in our history. And while there are history books out there that include LGBT people, almost all of them are for adults. There is not a willingness in this country to allow our youth to learn about LGBT people, to learn about our history, to learn about our future. And preserving sites like Compton's cafeteria increases the likelihood that there's a willingness to include us. A willingness to talk about who we are, what we are, and where we're going. Some of those quiet moments are ones that seem exciting in the moment. The Supreme Court deciding that same-sex couples have a right to marriage nationwide. But it's also a quiet moment of inclusion. It's an important part of our history, but it is only a moment. I bet many people here don't remember Lawrence versus Texas. It was a case that happened over a decade ago. It was the moment in which same-sex couples no longer could be criminalized for their relationships, thrown into jail because of who they are. And yet it is, at best, a flash moment for most Americans. A lot of the places where change happens are difficult to preserve. The Supreme Court is for all of us. Every single one of us up here has had major victories. At the Supreme Court. Every single one of us up here has had major losses at the Supreme Court. But we need to find a way to talk about the Supreme Court in that broader context. It's a place that is both a beacon of hope and often a deliverer of severe devastation for our communities. And so I think we need to look at that huge range of places and incorporate the fullness of our stories into the history books. Not just history books for adults, but history books for everyone. Thank you, Sarah. I think only Floyd needs the handheld. So you're okay with your lavalier. Shortest remarks ever from a Latino man. We're just pretty verbose. So we actually started at the White House in 1987. President Reagan was stretching Hispanic Heritage Week into Hispanic Heritage Month. So going back to your question, that's historically where our organization actually started, which isn't a bad place to start. Since then, you see some of the same challenges that were going on back then and way before then. I'm reminded when you were talking, Floyd, about the case of Westminster versus Mendes, which was a case, the preceded Brown versus Board of Education, I think, by six years. And it was desegregating California schools. And it started at an internment camp where a Japanese family had Mexican laborers that were working there and they became very close. At one point, a Japanese man gave land to the Mexican family, the Mendes family, among others. And their children had to go to school very, very far away. It was the same thing as it was in the South with other groups. You couldn't drink out at the same water fountain. You couldn't swim in the same pool. You couldn't jump into the same fountains. You couldn't do anything that it was completely segregated. And you couldn't go to the same schools. So this family used to have to walk very, very far. And at one point, they said, there's a school right nearest in Westminster County and we're just going to try to go there. When I think about how a lawyer from the NAACP worked with the family to be able to desegregate the school system and then you had Justice Warren, who at that time was a governor of the state of California. And you talk about what Mr. Stanton said when he was quoting Frederick Douglass from the great state of Maryland where I live right now, when he was talking about how all the waves might be different but you're in the same sea. Well, all those waves rolling at the same time can make a really big splash on the shore. And you're talking about three different groups that came together, actually four, if you count Justice Warren, to be able to come together to desegregate the state of California. For me, the most interesting thing when I go to Delano, when I go to Coachella and all these other places is where some of these movements started. These kitchens in these tiny houses, garages, you're looking at fields where they would just kind of take a break from work and talk about an actual movement that they were pulling together and how it started from there. Those are places that I think of when I've traveled around this country and see where movement started and how simple it is. And it gives you that idea that anything can happen at any point. If you're thoughtful, if you're dedicated, if you're brave, if you take chances. And if you're willing to do all the work, give all the credit to make something happen. Now I'm thinking of 15-year-olds with laptops. A 15-year-old kid in his or her room can reach more people than Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez-Good in a lifetime combined. And you think about where we're going. We should preserve every single bedroom for some 15-year-old kid for the impact that they potentially can make with the use of technology. But thank you for having me here. Sitting on this panel is a real privilege for me. Tony, we're glad to have you here. And I have to say I have a 15-year-old son and I'm pretty sure we don't want to preserve his bedroom. Claudia, please introduce yourself. I'm Claudia Withers. I'm the Chief Operating Officer of the NAACP. It is, I think, the oldest civil rights organization in this country. We were founded in 1909. And we were founded at a time which is eerily reminiscent of the times we're living in now. At a time when there was disenfranchisement. At a time when there were lynchings. At a time when there was employment discrimination. And a group of, a biracial group of advocates came together and issued what was called the call, literally. It was a document called the call, to get people together to talk about the issues that we're facing. People of color and those who supported them at that time. And the group included folks like WB Du Bois, Mary Church Churrell, Ida B Wells Barnett, and a host of folks that we don't know by name, but who all came together with the same mission to ensure equality for everybody and to eliminate racial discrimination. In thinking about a place, I think also for the NAACP, I think my colleagues have mentioned a lot of places I was thinking about. I think about, in addition to Edmund Pettus Bridge, I think about the house of Amelia Boynton, who was one of the marchers who was injured during the Bloody Sunday March 50 years ago. She passed this past year. And we started, at the end of the NAACP this summer, America's Journey for Justice. And the journey started not at Edmund Pettus Bridge, but at Amelia Boynton's house. Because she represented the millions and host of folks who were on the ground in working for issues of equality and justice. So I think about those folks and those places. The NAACP is one of the few organizations that has boots on the ground, as my boss likes to say. We have branches across the country. And at each of those branches, at each of those places, meeting places, are important resources, touchstones for equality and justice. I think also about the Supreme Court. You're right. The Supreme Court has been both Boone and Bain for those of us who work for equal justice. So we had Plessy v. Verkerson. We had Brown v. Board of Education. And most recently, we've had Shelby v. Holder, where the Voting Rights Act was essentially gutted. And we're now having to almost start from the beginning in ensuring that all of us, not just African-Americans, but older folks who don't have the right IDs, young people who can't use their college IDs, disabled folks who can't get to voting places, are losing their ability to change the world, which is what the NAACP was about at the very beginning. So I'm thinking about the court. I'm thinking about places like Amelia Boynton's house. I'm thinking about historically black colleges and universities as sources, as places, for certainly activity and action, but also of reflection. Ellie mentioned Paulie Murray. Another thing that we don't know about her is that she was one of the authors of some of the seminal thinking behind the briefs that went into the Brown v. Board of Education case as a law student. She came up with much of the original thinking behind those lawsuits. So again, I'm thinking about what Howard did, Howard Law School did, to generate the intellectual firepower for the important work that we need to do around equality. And I'm thinking about the church as a black institution. One of the founders of the NAACP was a member of the AME Zion congregation and a minister. And we think about the source of that power, the black institution as a political institution, the church. And we think about what happened at Mother Emmanuel, where folks came together in a church that has a storied reputation as a church that was a part of the civil rights movement and now, unfortunately, also reflects a source of tragedy for us. So I'm thinking about a range of things that my colleagues have talked about as places from which we can have stories. But with the NAACP and its colleagues, I think we see a thread where we need to continue to challenge the paradigm, where we need to figure out how to use those places and stories about those places to certainly reflect, but also to move forward. My boss, Cornel William Brooks, the CEO, always says that we need to venerate but innovate. So we need to figure out how to use those places to educate ourselves but to spur us forward. Claudia, that's beautiful. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Those were great stories that you told and touchedones and gave us a sense of how your organizations are approaching the world. And I want to build off of something that you were just talking about, Claudia. We've celebrated in the past year a number of 50th anniversaries, including civil rights legislation in our country. We saw President Obama walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Now we know with Floyd. Floyd was there as well. We saw President Obama create a national monument at Pullman in Chicago, which he talked about both as a civil rights story but also as a workers' story. You're sitting here today in front of several hundred people who lead preservation organizations. And what I'd like you to have you talk about is what narratives in our country are not told enough? We talked a little bit about some of the places that are touchedones and the stories that are important for your organizations. And I'm just curious, with this audience in front of you today, as we're looking for places to save that make the connection that so many of you talked about being important, what are the narratives that we need to make sure that we're bringing to the fore? Would you like to go first, Sarah? Sure. For the LGBT community, many, many people, most of you in this room, probably know someone who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The LGBT community is a small percentage of the population, but we're spread equally throughout. We are of every race, every class, every religion. Virtually every family has someone in it whose LGBT. But our trans brothers and sisters are often those that are most overlooked. And so part of our history and part of our narrative is one of inclusion of the transgender community. And it's the importance of learning more about people who are transgender, the struggles that they face. Today is actually a kind of difficult day for us. We lost in Houston last night. On the ballot was a measure to protect LGBT people from discrimination. It was also so much more. It provided protections on the basis of race, on the basis of religion, on the basis of sex, veteran status. And it was sheer hatred for the trans community that led to the defeat of that ordinance that provided so many critical protections for so many people in Houston last night. And so it is educating and doing a better job of helping people understand who the trans community is as part of our narrative and our history that is so critical moving forward. Other narratives, Floyd? Yeah, one comes to my mind. Recently, we've had the Mike Brown situation. We go way back to Los Angeles area. I can't remember his name. Rodney King. And the incidents that occurred there, the damage, the fires, one forgets that in the midst of all of this was a very large Asian-American community that was destroyed recently in Baltimore and then in Los Angeles, the Koreatown then. So I think there are incidents that happen that we forget about other people that were involved. And in this case, Asian-Americans were very much part of that whole incident. And I think we need, and we could do something to preserve that memory that Asian-Americans had to bear. Thank you. Other narratives anyone want to share? Ellie? On the, oh, I have a mic on. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking of, most people don't know, Seneca Falls occurred in 1848, but in 1978, there was a women's conference in Houston that had 20,000 people and that adopted a very progressive and human rights agenda. It was huge. And when I tell people what happened, they don't know. Well, we should commemorate that in Houston so that we can not only go to our beginnings, but what happened in 1978, where we're going forward. I agree with you that we should record the hardships and the injustices, because there's a lot of them. I do think we have to record the victories and what is possible as well. And I'm thinking of places. So you're gonna get me thinking of every place where you could preserve a place. But I do think when you walk in someone's shoes, be it a horrible injustice or a triumph, it inspires you for action and to make the world a better place. And so I think all of us are gonna have to think of places as well as people to commemorate. But I also think in doing it, we should think of people from all walks of life. I mean, I happen to be in the activist walk of life, but we have people from all of our communities who've been great doctors and great scientists and who've contributed to education. So I think we have to have a diversity of also ways to improve the world. You don't all do it with a great speech. You do it with many different ways. And I said the great speech, because I didn't mean Martin Luther King, but it came into my brain. And Coretta Scott King, by the way, is a leader in her own right. And when I tell her story, like Pauli Murray, who is the founder of now, Coretta Scott King hosted the second convention of the National Organization for Women and was very actively supportive piece of gay rights. Certainly women's rights. And I think her story should frankly be there too, because she was a tremendous contributor. And by the way, on the commission for the Houston Convention, that big convention of 20,000, Coretta Scott King, was herself very, very active. And she was on the international commission that was appointed by Jimmy Carter. I'm so glad you mentioned Houston. We're going to be in Houston next year. So note to our conference staff, we should elevate that story when we're there next year. Thank you very much for that. I said at the outset, we're gonna, in about five minutes, start taking questions from the audience that you'd like to ask the panel. So please write them down and pass them to the end of your row. Somebody will be coming by to pick those up. Tony, I wanted to come to you. I'll post an answer to the question really quickly, though, but because I think the role of the worker, mostly immigrant workers, that many have lost their lives, many have built these buildings over the years, and most of them immigrants, that you're now preserving. And I think that gets lost a lot when you're focused so much on the building in terms of who built it. The other thing is that transition from one of the workers to then being an architect that is now constructing and having a vision for how they're gonna look, how these structures are gonna look, and how to preserve them. And I think that's the shift that we need to make, because, look, the building industry, I'm on the board of the National Building Museum, is very diverse in terms of the people that are working on them, but it doesn't get so diverse when you're talking about your industry in this field of preservation. And I think it's important that that shift takes place. So I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt your question. No, that's great. We're a nation of immigrants, and making sure. I would love to see a real tribute to the immigrants that built some of these historic buildings. And when I look at the post office pavilion that is right outside of my old post office pavilion that is right outside of my building, and I stand out on a beautiful terrace, and I see the Trump signs everywhere. A man who reviles immigrants and said horrific things about specifically Mexican immigrants and Mexicans themselves. Everyone I see working on that building is an immigrant from Latin America. So I think we really need to think about the important role the immigrants play. Very good. I was gonna ask you a question, Tony, actually building up. Yes, let's go. We actually all agree with that. I wanted to pick up on something you said earlier about technology. I thought that was a really powerful statement. My 15 year old son has access to more people than Gandhi. Oh my gosh, that's a little frightening, but true. And I said at the outset that one of the reasons we wanted to have this summit today is not because this is a new conversation for us, but that we hope that this will be an accelerant so that we can do even more and reach more people more quickly than we have over the past 20 years. And so Tony, starting with you and then others, be curious to hear from you how we can do a better job reaching out to your constituencies. What about the saving of place, the elevation of these narratives that we've talked about today? How can we get your communities involved in this dialogue so that we're all working together to make sure that these narratives are lifted up and that these places are protected for inspiration and to be our touchstones going forward? I think it's also youth. It's not just necessarily broken out into different races. So I think youth is very important to preserving your preservation movement. And right now, the first step is simply trying to. I've never felt that there was a call from your industry, from your field, for Latino community that I've seen so far, even though we play a very important role in that. So the first step is reaching out and also making it relevant. How is it relevant to a young black man, woman, a young Latino, young Asian to be able to feel connected to what your mission is? And technology is a great way to do it, but you also have to look at what the community looks like. You have no choice. I just wanna make that very clear. Right now, it's a minority majority in schools. It is more of color than not. Right now, one out of four students almost is Latino. That's not necessarily reflected in teachers. That's not necessarily reflected in any industry. Latino community is gonna double by 2040. And it's already, it's almost 18% of the entire population. Seven out of 10 new jobs will be filled by a Latino. What are those jobs gonna be? Are they gonna be building the buildings? Are they gonna be in terms of developing a vision for what it's gonna look like? And that, I think, is the challenge. You don't have a choice. You have to reach out to minority communities. It's not the right thing to do. It's a value proposition. And it's changing the paradigm. We started out by talking about the fact that in the past, we were trying to change a paradigm and we're still trying to do that. And indeed, much of the conversation in the, certainly among Republican candidates, is to try to hue back to a time when the paradigm was not at all like the reality is today in terms of who our citizens are. I wanna pick up on something you already do, which I think is one potential way of reaching certainly young people of color. This is the Hope Cruise. The young people who work on preservation projects around the country is one way of certainly connecting job opportunities for young people of color and also getting them to think about historic preservation is not just something that old people think about, but as something that can give them something to hold on to. In terms of technology, the NAACP actually has probably the strongest social media footprint of any civil rights organization, which was much a surprise to me because I've only been with the Association a year. And we reach hundreds of thousands of folks on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and we lift up what our partners do as well as what we do across the country. So that's an opportunity to talk about what Hope Cruise do, what historic preservation issues are and how they affect young people of color. And so that's a way. And it integrates the issues that we've all talked about of workers, of equality, of access. The labor union partners that we all have in our organizations are getting a pretty big hit both in the courts and in rhetoric about the role of unions and the roles those institutions have played in ensuring equality. So there's lots of different ways through the mechanisms of social media. In terms of the projects that we work on that we'll reach out to young folks who might not have thought they were included in the conversations that we have. I know the current conversation is around the issue of Black Lives Matter but I would posit that the groups on this podium represent folks who've worked on the notion of Black Lives Matter and all lives matter for a while. And while it's important to lift up what these incredible young people are doing it's also important to connect it to a continuum of what young people of color have been doing all along and what all advocates for justice have been doing all along. Anyone else, Floyd, you wanna speak to this question? First let me apologize for the bainer malady that I seem to have today. But, that's that aside. You know, we are very fortunate in the Interior Department today to have a director of National Parks that is very understanding and very sensitive to the people of color. Had the opportunity to work with John since he was Western Regional Director. But as you look within the ranks of Interior and Department of Parks, we need to do a lot better job in including people that understand and are sensitive and are going to want to work on some of these kinds of projects. So. Yeah, it's their park service. So I think there's some internal work that can be done. A lot more of it can be done to really be more aggressive in finding minority students, minority employees that can help us tell the story from now on. Great. Many of you have talked about the challenge. Claudia just raised it again of the difficult chapters of our history and knowing what to do with those. I think there has been a tradition in our country to not tell those stories. But it's really come to the fore in the last. Oh, it's happening right now in certain parts of the country where the school board is saying we don't want to talk about the problems. I mean, that's Fahrenheit 451. This is insane. Right. So this is, it's very much a challenge. We've been at civil rights for 50 years, at least longer, but I'm sort of officially in our country, but we're still challenged by this and it's really raised its head in the last couple of months related to Confederate war memorials, for example, and to know what to do when there are emblems of our history that are offensive to part of our country. So I'd love to hear you talk about preserving difficult chapters and even those that may be offensive. And what are your thoughts on that? What is your guidance for us in the preservation community? Would you like to start, Tony? Yeah, I don't want to put you on the spot, but since you were just speaking. I see them all the time when I'm driving and I see a Confederate flag on the back of someone's truck. Right. It's a very big reminder. When I see a hat for a political campaign that says we want to make America great again, I think they want to make America white again. I think that there's a... All right. I think we're reminded every day it's not just in the historical context. I think it's in the now. When I saw the unaccompanied miners leaving the worst countries in terms of violence in the entire world in Central America for these borders as refugees, the same way we're trying to place Syrian refugees. These are refugees coming from Central America. And we turn our backs on them. There were buses that were... People were threatening to turn over and turn back of children. Militia were going down there to protect our borders. National guards were being called out. That's exactly it. That's the first thing I thought of was in that movie in terms of the buses being turned away. So I don't need to look back to see our history, our ugly history. I'm seeing it right now. That being said, I'm optimistic that I believe in youth. I think a lot of times as much as we need to connect back historically, I think we also need to trust youth to lead. And whenever I hear you're the next generation of leaders, you're tomorrow's leaders. That's just a passive aggressive way of people our age telling them to wait their turn. They're leaders of today. We just talked about the potential impact that they can have over technology and ingenuity. They're not cluttered with what's happened as much. They have a much broader sense of what needs to be done. So I'm optimistic, but at the same time, we're living in our past right now every single day. I think that's a really important message. And as we look for sites that are going to tell our story, we don't have to look beyond today's headlines to do that. Yeah, thank you. Marita, do you have some questions for our panel? I do, and I certainly have more questions than we can answer. So I'll note one and draw a couple of them out there. And as I said, we'll feather these back into the World Cafe discussion at 10.30. One notation was that our Native American community wasn't represented on the panel, and that there are questions that might come through that person having to do with preserving sensitivity to spiritual beliefs, for example, as we grow. I will say we did attempt to fill that empty seat, but point well taken. Another set of questions really came about having to do with in that case, too, people who don't exist, sites that don't exist, people don't exist anymore. How do we even get these places into our register? Something we were asked to be sensitive to. So say, how does social justice fit into the work of historic preservation specifically? Not just diverse people within sites, et cetera, but the actual work of social justice. Another person amplified that by saying how do we really bring the challenging aspects of our collective stories forward? Stephanie, do you wanna start with that, or anyone else here? Well, it seems to me that when you articulate those who have been excluded, you bring social justice into the conversation around preservation, because those who pick have the power. So if we bring a social justice lens to deciding what places and who to venerate, we're articulating, we're sort of using that power. And it's important to have that prism, to have that lens, a social justice lens, as you decide what to work on, who to work with, what places to lift up, what issues to lift up. And so it's important for everyone, no matter what community they come from, to think about it in that perspective, to think about not just the group I represent, but the intersectionality that must be brought to the conversation, whether it's around race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, it's gotta be a part of the conversation. So that's how social justice fits from my perspective. Can I just make a comment on a program that the Japanese American Citizens League did with support from the national parks? And that was a program we called Bridging Communities. Racial profiling is a very major issue today. And so what we did, we developed a program to bring the Japanese American students and Muslim American students together to talk about the history of Japanese American internment. And then we took them to one of the sites and they spent some time there to examine what happened there and how it might apply to today. And I think it has been a very excellent program, but received very well by not just the students, but the parents, particularly of the Muslim students, because they see the parallel between then and today. Thank you. You were specifically asked by someone to talk about some of the things you've done to really increase diverse participation at your site. So thank you for that. Someone asked how we ensure that we have diverse decision makers inside our organizations. What reflections might you have on that? I have one. Every single board I'm on, I'm the only Latino on that board. And I think anyone here, anybody of color here, females, LGBT, any ethnicity, any ethnicity, get used to being the only person on a board. In your job, you have a huge responsibility. It's not just fiduciary. It's not just making sure that the organization's running well. You have an additional responsibility as a person of as a minority to make sure that you're not the last one on that board, to make sure that you're a voice for everyone that you represent. And I wish it wasn't like that. I don't necessarily think every group is represented by one person, but every time you walk down the street, every time there's somebody on TV, every time something's on the news, we are represented by that person. And I think that it's very, very important that you carry that responsibility with you when you sit on these boards. I was on the board of the National PTA, representing one out of four students in the country, basically, as the only Latino board member out of almost 30. It's really, really important that you take that role very, very seriously and think about how to make change and represent your communities, as well as the overall organization, but you have an additional responsibility. Thank you. This is a question that came to you directly, Ellie, because you've mentioned the really diverse engagement in the feminist movement. And the question is, how do we make sure that story is told that it's often not told? And so a picture emerges that's actually not clear as clear as it should be. That's right. And I think that the word intersectionality, maybe as some people might not know the word, but you have to see people in all their dimensions. And most of the remarkable people have included in their lives that integration of all the issues. None of us are unidimensional. And the only thing I would console is that I wouldn't get used to being the only one. You make sure you bring others in. Well, that's what I said. Oh, okay, I missed that part right here. But what I'm trying to say is we shouldn't accept the unacceptable. And if you want to institutionalize diversity in the National Trust, I feel ignorant to advise, but maybe there should be a permanent committee that's responsibility is inclusion. I mean, there may be one for all, but or that you put this that you make sure that you never describe any human being as unidimensional. I mean, I think that it worries me that part of our lives are lost. I mean, for example, I don't know really of woman's rights leader of my age or even a little younger that wasn't extremely active in the civil rights movement. In other words, we didn't see these as social justice movements are intertwined. And our Dolores Huerta, who's on our board, a lot of people see her only as a United Farm Worker, co-worker. She's a leading feminist leader in her own. I mean, if that's all she did, it would be exhausting. But she does everything else. And so I think that the intertwining should not be forgotten in everything that you do. For example, with Pauli Murray, make sure she is multi-dimensional because this woman was a dynamite in so many different areas of social justice movements. But I'm sure you'll do it. So I'm reassured being here. Thank you. I have an eye on the clock and I'll just, the things we're not getting to is really one question about how we preserve a site. When the integrity of the site comes into question, we might not be fitting all the rules that allow us to move forward. I know that point will be part of panel discussions later today. How is climate change affecting the preservation of diverse communities? That's been a discussion that's abroad and will be also part of the discussion here. This goes to diversity, I suppose, of place itself. Why is the trust being housed in a new building rather than in what we'd call a historic building? Which is something I like to talk about because our history is ongoing. And I'd say the Watergate's pretty historic. And also, all of us were asked to kind of share ideas as we meet with people about funding. Just how are we funding ourselves? So I think we got actually to the meat of most of the questions here. I will just say that a diversity summit is really pointed toward humanity. And the point that all of us are actually involved in everyone else's movement here. Everyone else's fight for human rights is sitting on this stage and is really sitting in our communities. And as we advance our cause through whatever neighborhood revitalization, through historic sites, through people, that we remember to look for all the stories. Because we were all always here. That's what Stephanie and I have started to say. We were all always here. So whatever we're involved in, let's make sure we've discovered the intersection of that core story with the other stories represented by people here on the stage and not on the stage. Thank you very much and have a good day. Thanks to our panelists. Thank you.