The Chavis Chronicles

>> I'm Dr.

Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., and this is "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> They had 17,000 Black people put on these Union uniforms.

They'd walk out on these battlefields.

In some cases, they'd face their master.

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we continue to look for ways to empower our customers.

We seek broad impact in our communities, and we're proud of the role we play for our customers and the US economy.

As a company, we are focused on supporting our customers and communities through housing access, small-business growth, financial health, and other community needs.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute -- our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural gas and oil industry.

Learn more -- api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American -- dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

>> We're very honored to have Dr.

Frank Smith, the founder and director of the African American Civil War Museum.

Welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Well, thank you very much for having me.

Glad to be here.

>> Dr.

Smith, you and I, we've known each other for decades, from the days of the Civil Rights Movement.

>> Absolutely.

>> And then you worked so hard in the city of Washington, D.C., to get home rule and where we are today.

But tell us, how did you get involved with the African American Civil War Museum?

>> Well, you know, I was in Mississippi with SNCC.

the Civil Rights movement there.

I was in Mississippi with SNCC.

>> Okay.

>> And, you know, I -- after three years at Morehouse College, I decided that I wanted -- At Morehouse, I was being a part-time student and a part-time demonstrator like you... >> Sure.

Exactly.

>> ...trying to keep my grades up, stay in school.

That wasn't working.

[ Chuckling ] So, eventually, I agreed to go to Mississippi with SNCC, and I stayed there for six years until 1968.

And I decided then to move to Washington, D.C.

And then I got here, and Dr.

King got killed.

I got here in January.

Dr.

King got killed in April.

>> April, yeah.

>> So now we've got a real serious problem here.

The community is burning down.

And at one point, I decided -- I thought maybe I made a mistake.

Maybe I should have stayed in Mississippi.

But -- But then, you know, a Baptist preacher said, "If you -- If you take a test, you ought to stick with it and wrestle with it.

So I decided to get involved in D.C.

politics.

>> Well, you know, when Marion Barry first ran for mayor, he was surrounded by SNCC people.

>> [ Chuckling ] That's right.

>> I mean, really, the transition from D.C.

not having any type of home rule to then begin to get some initial state of home rule was really made possible by SNCC.

On behalf of Black Americans, on behalf of all Americans, thank you for your service.

Thank you for your being on the front line in voting rights, on the front line of civil rights.

And it's amazing that, given your background, now, giving your experiences, that you've become -- you founded this particular and very needed Civil War Museum -- African American Civil War Museum.

When people think of the Civil War, they think that African Americans were just the slaves that needed to be freed.

>> Yeah.

>> They don't think about the fact that people of African descent joined in the Civil War to fight for freedom.

>> Well, you know, that's sort of how I got involved in this.

I was still in Mississippi when I met a man named Henry Reeves, who told me about his grandfather, who fought in the Civil War.

And as I said earlier, I've been at Morehouse for three years by then.

I thought I knew a little bit until this man sat me down and said, "You know what?

Sit down for a minute.

Let me show you something here."

>> Right.

>> And I wasn't sure I believed him at the time because I'd never heard of it.

But in time, I realized that this was a great story of Black people freeing themselves.

Long before you and I ever went on these battlefields and got put in these jails... >> Yes.

>> ...there were Black people who stepped out on faith because by the time Lincoln brought them into this army, he was losing the war.

And he said himself, "If I can win this war without doing anything about slavery, I'd do that.

The only reason why I would do anything about slavery is because I have to do it to save."

And it wasn't until he got -- >> That's right, because the South was winning the war.

>> Absolutely.

He got so desperate that he needed to do something about the enslaved people.

There's something biblical about that.

I'm going to get to that one day, Reverend, but there's something biblical about having to turn to the enslaved people to save what they call freedom and democracy here in America.

There's something providential about that.

One of these days, I'm going to figure that out.

>> Well, it's a part of American history that does not get a lot of focus.

>> Absolutely.

>> So that's what's so important about this museum that you founded and established.

Tell us about -- what year was the museum founded?

>> Okay.

So, I eventually get on the city council here in Washington.

I inherited U Street, which got torn up by the riots of 1968.

But before that, U Street was called "Black Broadway."

>> I remember.

>> It was called Broadway for a reason.

Black Broadway was not in New York.

[ Chuckling ] It was in Washington, D.C., because U Street sits right at the foot of Howard University, which is the biggest Black college in the United States.

They got the law school up there, medical school, and things like that.

And in Atlanta, where I went to college, there was no law school, no medical school.

So if you graduated from Morehouse, you wanted to go to law school, you had to come to Washington.

>> Yes.

>> Or you had to come to Washington to go to medical school if you didn't go to Meharry or one of those other schools.

So most people end up here, and once you graduated from school, you'd say, "Okay, let's stay here."

So they built a home.

That's how U Street became really... >> Well, U Street has changed now.

>> [ Chuckling ] It has changed.

>> I mean, it's hard to recognize U Street from 40 or 50 years ago.

>> It absolutely has changed.

And it made a big difference in terms of the city itself.

But one of the ways I got the council to support me in building this museum was I convinced them that this was an economic-development project.

We knew that when we started this that we had to find something to make tourism work.

So we go to the archives, we get 200,000 names -- 200,000 names of African American soldiers who served in the Civil War.

>> Say that again -- 200,000?

>> 200,000 names.

There was not a city in the South with 200,000 people -- in Atlanta, Dallas -- any of those states of the Confederacy had that many.

>> Right.

>> So this was an army that was bigger than most of these towns.

As I said to you earlier, most of the soldiers on our wall are -- the state that gave the largest number of Black soldiers in the Civil War was Louisiana.

Very interesting.

Almost 25,000 from the state of Louisiana.

Almost 24,000 -- a little less than that -- from the state of Kentucky, which was number two.

Number three was the state of Tennessee, which has about 20,000.

Always my great -- to my great surprise, Mississippi is fourth.

They had 17,000 Black people put on these Union uniforms.

They'd walk out on these battlefields.

In some cases, they'd face their master on the battlefield, so... And these guys come back home when the war's over as war heroes, the same way you and I go back to our little communities in the South and everybody says, "You know, yeah, that's Ben Chavis right there.

He was -- He was in jail.

He spent time in the pen trying to get our rights."

Same thing with these guys -- they'd come back home, they're war heroes, and they get elected to office.

And they start colleges and schools and churches, and they build -- lay the groundwork for the Black middle class in America.

>> Well, that's a great story, Dr.

Smith.

Like I said, it's an African American story, but it's also an American story.

>> Absolutely.

>> And it's interesting that we live in a climate today where there's some that would like to erase that history rather than to raise that history.

We live in a climate today where there's a debate about whether or not slavery was beneficial... >> Right.

>> ...or detrimental to African Americans.

So tell us about the specifics of the museum.

What year was it started?

>> We started in 1998.

We've been at it for a long time.

We were -- For a long time, we were in a gymnasium that was attached to a school called -- named for Archibald Grimk, who was actually a young boy who was born in South Carolina.

He was too -- He was too young to fight in the Civil War because he was only, I think, 8 years old.

But when the war was over, Grimk finished his high school and eventually goes to college and goes to Harvard Law School, and then comes back to Washington.

And he's a founding member of the NAACP, too, by the way.

>> Yes.

I was talking about.

>> 1909, yes.

>> These guys that start out as enslaved people -- they end up doing great things, because all we ever wanted was an opportunity.

And I think some of what we're seeing now, to be honest with you, Dr.

Chavis, is that some whites are jealous of the fact that Black people have done so well here in the United States.

And I think that people are right to think that it was partially the election of President Obama that brought this whole thing to a head.

Now they know we can do what anybody else can do.

America is the most powerful and richest, most complicated government in the world.

If a Black man, Barack Obama, can run that government for eight years without a blemish, without any kind of -- you know?

>> Right.

>> When you think about it now, there have been times when we had exemplary presidents that we could brag about.

You and I have been here a long time now.

We know some of these presidents were better than others.

And without even -- If we stop right there, everybody will know what we're talking about.

But the reality is we can have great presidents of this country who can do great things to move this democracy forward.

We have to believe that, and we have to keep trusting in that.

And we have to keep participating by voting in these elections.

>> As the founding director, how do you sense -- since 1998, what has been the embrace of the African American Civil War Museum?

>> The monument itself in the museum are located in Washington, D.C., but these guys went back home after the war, and they're buried in battlefield sites in North Carolina and South Carolina and Georgia.

They built schools and churches, and their families still live -- in many of these cases, you know, most of us went back home.

You know, my family -- at one time, all of my brothers and sisters had left Georgia.

But now everybody is back with me, and now they give me a hard time about coming back.

>> About coming back?

Well, there's a move back to the South.

>> There is a move.

>> The thing is, there's also a move for the South to rise again -- the Old South.

>> That's right.

>> So this contention of voting rights, this contention of human rights, is just not -- I tell people all the time, the Civil Rights Movement today is just not in the South -- it's anything south of the Canadian border.

>> [ Laughs ] That's right.

>> The whole country... >> Absolutely.

>> ...is now enthralled in trying to figure out which way forward for America.

These museums, like what you founded, are so important just to remind us of our history, because, to me, I think we should learn from history.

>> Right.

>> Don't have to repeat it, but we have to learn from it.

>> Absolutely.

>> How are young people responding to the African American Civil War Museum?

>> Okay, well, so here's what we're doing at the African American Civil War Museum.

We have a partnership with the D.C.

Public School system to move every kid in the D.C.

Public Schools through our museum.

>> Really?

Oh.

That's great.

>> And my director of -- my curriculum director at the museum has worked with the D.C.

Public School system to find what they call "milestones" in the curriculum.

Each teacher teaches to a milestone, so we paired up some of our exhibits with those milestones.

So the teacher talks about it for a while.

The kid comes to us.

We reinforce it in exhibits.

They go back, and they reinforce it with the kids.

And I was at a museum association meeting a few weeks ago where I was one of the plenary speakers, and I said to them, "Every museum ought to do this -- not just us."

We've got 350 really good museums in this country.

Every museum has to reach out to their surrounding communities.

We can't just keep saying, "Well, these kids are -- you know, they're out of touch.

They're not doing..." We have to keep working with them.

We have to keep showing them that what they do is important and that their lives are important and this country can -- you know, they can take away a lot from us, but they can't take away our history.

They can't take away our history.

There's no way to do that because there's too many of us out here who have these stories now.

And, you know, we have 200,000 names at our museum.

We've heard from about 5,000 or 6,000 descendants already.

>> America has a tremendous, diverse history.

If we would just dare to share that history... >> Right.

>> If we just dared to learn that history, I think our nation, our democracy would be much more unified than some of the polarization today.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

>> What is your prediction for museums like the Civil War -- the African American Civil War Museum, to make a contribution to consciousness of people, to stress the importance of having an inclusive democracy?

>> Yeah.

Well, first of all, I don't think we should give up.

Let's start with that first point.

We shouldn't give up because we've made some great strides here in this country.

When you and I were in college, there were only 250,000 Black people in college.

And they were -- almost all of us were in Historically Black Colleges.

>> That's correct.

>> In the 2020 census, there was 3.1 million Blacks enrolled in college in the United States.

And we African Americans, you know, in your house and my house when I was coming up, education was a religion.

>> That's right.

>> It was like, next to God -- you had to go to school, and, actually, you had to go to Sunday school on Sunday in case you didn't get the right message during the school days.

>> Exactly.

>> So, and... >> Nobody was dropping out of school -- people were trying to drop in.

>> People were dropping in, brother, you know?

People, you know... And for those of us, especially in the rural areas where you were growing up, you got in the cotton cycle down there -- school's out half the time.

You were glad when school opened up because it got you out of the cotton field.

And so, it made a difference in our lives.

And we have made a remarkable achievement here in the United States, primarily because we believe -- we've taken advantage.

Let me say it this way, because I want people to continue to believe this -- that we have taken advantage of this opportunity for education.

Black people have done that, really, at a higher rate.

We have -- low-income Black people go to college at a higher rate than low-income white people do right now.

You know, we put our nickels and dimes together, our quarters and 50 cents, and if you're a good student -- when I was living on that plantation, if you were a good student, people say, "Well, don't bother him.

He's on his way somewhere.

He's going to be someone one day.

Leave him alone."

And I hear this in public housing in D.C.

right now.

Some kid who is doing well, some boy doing well at Park Morton neighborhood in this town.

I asked him one day, how did he get out of there?

He said, "Well, first of all..." He said, "First of all, I don't run with those guys.

I stay with my own people, first of all.

And secondly," he says, "they say, 'Look, leave him alone.

He's trying to get out of here.

He's doing something.'"

So I asked him, how did he walk through those bad neighborhoods to get to school every day?

Because even the people who are doing the wrong thing, they know who's trying to do the right thing, and they try to help them move along, too, and help them out.

They're not trying to pull them down because they want to see somebody get out there and do well.

So we've got to reinforce that kind of activity... >> Right.

>> ...support them, make sure that they continue to be an example to the people around them, and then make sure that we have some opportunity for them to go to school, too.

These cities have to do something to help these kids go to school, too.

I could talk more about that if you want to, but I've got an idea about that which I'll share... >> Well, you know, one of the reasons why we have people like you and others on "The Chavis Chronicles" is because there's so much bad news out here, we need some good news.

>> Absolutely.

>> We need some people like yourself, who not only have an idea and a dream, but get that fulfilled in their lifetime.

There you are -- you're the founder and director, and in your lifetime, this has become a fruition.

This has become a manifestation.

And because of the African American Civil War Museum, now people are going back to get more of that history.

>> Right.

Right.

>> You say you've identified 200,000 names... >> Right.

>> ...of Black soldiers that fought in the Civil War.

I mean, that's a tremendous asset.

>> Three out of four of these guys were enslaved when the war started -- three out of four.

So I do this with young kids.

We count one, two, three, four.

The first three of y'all would have been slaves.

And so these guys literally fight their way from slavery to freedom, and then they go back home to the places where they'd been enslaved, and they become the leaders of the -- building schools and the colleges and churches and things like that.

>> What is your sense of the future?

Do you see the museum, the Civil War Museum, taking on greater significance?

The reason why I ask that -- because there's some thought that D.C.

has too many museums.

>> Yeah.

>> They're trying to reduce the museums.

And then, there are some that want to dictate even what's inside the museum.

>> Right.

Right.

>> What's your response to the climate of -- holding on to the importance of museums in the nation's capital?

>> Well, first of all, let me say that I think we've made a lot of great progress here.

And one of the reasons why people are picking on us is because they think we -- that we've gone too far, we've gotten ahead of -- which is really just absolutely incorrect.

People have been ahead of us for so long.

These museums are just almost all new, in the last 20 or 30 years -- African American museums are.

And all of them, like mine, took forever to build because there was so much opposition and so much pushback.

You know, for that big museum on our Mall -- you know, Strom Thurmond held that up as long as he was living.

I told John Lewis one day -- I said, "John, you're going to have to outlive Strom Thurmond to get that museum built."

And it looked like he was going to live forever, so... And soon after he died, then we were able to get it passed.

So, these fights are historical because these things do so much good.

And I think that's the first thing I would say.

And secondly, I would say that, for the young people, you know, keep believing in yourself, believe in God, and believe in your community and your family and stick together on this thing.

We'll get through this.

We've lived through hard times.

If anything in the world, we have shown people how to live through hard times.

We've shown people how to live through slavery and Jim Crow and still progress to the point where we've got an African American elected president of the United States.

And so it's important for us, I think, to keep believing and keep on working for our -- And we've got this study that says that for -- that children who go to museums do better in school and in life than children who do not go to museums.

>> Is that right?

>> That's right.

Absolutely.

But it also says low-income kids don't go to museums.

I didn't even have to add that part.

So you probably could have guessed that was... So that's one of the reasons why we're pushing to get our story out into the school system here.

And I challenge all these other museums to do the same thing with the school system around them, because we ought to use this -- what we call economic tourism or cultural tourism -- to benefit the community.

It ought to uplift all of our communities.

And you see that in this community where we are now and the U Street community.

When you said earlier that it didn't look the same like it -- as it did before -- it doesn't look the same.

But as our colleague Jesse Jackson once said, a rising tide ought to lift all boats.

So how do we make this rising tide lift these boats?

One, we've got to help to train these young people that there's something in these museums that look like them.

You see a story of somebody like First Lady Michelle Obama in our museum, who was -- whose family started out in slavery in South -- down in South Carolina, a place called Georgetown, by the way, South Carolina.

And then she goes from there to become the First Lady of the United States.

She and Barack Obama worked magic.

>> So there's a connection between former First Lady Michelle Obama... >> Absolutely.

>> ...and Blacks who fought in the Civil War.

>> That's right.

Absolutely.

On her mother-- >> From the Civil War to the White House.

>> To the exhibit is called "From Slavery to the White House."

I put the slavery part in there because I want people to know... >> Yes.

>> ...it does not matter where you start out -- what matters is where you end up.

You have some control over what your life -- what you do with your life.

You had some control over what you did with your life.

>> Yes.

>> I had some control over mine.

>> Exactly.

>> We make these choices, and we have to make good choices.

This is the first lesson that we want to teach these young people, first of all.

And then secondly, yes, you can overcome bad circumstances.

You just have to stay true to your God, stay true to yourself, keep going to school.

>> Is there a special exhibition about Michelle Obama's family?

>> There is a -- There's a special exhibition about her family, and we have had contact with many, many of her family members on Zoom calls and other things.

We have one of the dresses that she wore when she was in the White House -- that's going to be on display in our museum.

We hooked this thing up, man.

We've got interactive exhibits in there.

You can touch stuff, and it'll talk to you.

And we have Fannie Lou Hamer up in there in the children's exhibit singing freedom songs, where the name goes up on the wall like karaoke.

We're going to let these kids make some picket signs and walk around in the museum.

We're going to train the next generation of freedom fighters.

And these museums have to do this.

They have to do this to earn their way in this country and in our communities and our society.

So, it's an exciting prospect.

>> From your firsthand experience, what's been the response not only of Black youth, but what about white youth or Latino youth, from the different racial groups?

What is their response when they are exposed to this history?

>> Well, you know, that's an interesting point because we are in Washington, D.C., in the nation's capital.

We are well known now internationally, quite honestly.

And -- But our exhibit clientele looks like the average museum in D.C.

-- more than half of our people who come are white.

So it's a teaching opportunity for all of us.

It's a teaching and a learning opportunity, and that's what museums can do.

The museum can deliver things that really can't be done anywhere else, because we tend to concentrate, and we are able to get everybody in the doors.

So... >> So, Dr.

Smith, given your storied history and the success of the African American Civil War Museum, today, as you look forward, what gives you your greatest hope?

>> Well, I think that young people -- you know, when we're going through this -- and you know this from your own experience -- when you're going through something, it's very hard to be -- to pull back and see some good in it, because all you see is the bad looking at you in the face every day.

And especially now in our city, with this occupation of all these soldiers and stuff on the streets.

But you have to be able to see through this fog and know that, on the other side of it, that America stands for something, I think, that is special, and that is that we stand for the possibility that somebody like Michelle Obama family had started out somewhere on a cotton field down in South Carolina, and three generations later, they're living in the White House of the United States.

This doesn't happen anywhere else except in the United States of America.

And I can tell you right now, as much as the naysayers want to push this back, there's no way to defeat that.

That's an idea now that's planted in the hearts and the minds of people.

And that's why all these people now are trying to get in here.

These people at these borders -- people are not marching, trying to get into every country in the world.

They're trying to get in the United States because they have heard that something magic happens here -- in one generation, you can come to America and become middle class.

Well, Black people don't quite work that way.

We got to work a little harder and stay a little longer.

But if you're a white European and you come here, in one generation, you can become middle class.

You can't do this in those other countries.

So there is something special about this country.

That's the reason why we ought to stay here and fight for it and try to make it better.

And I think we've seen for all of our history here that we can make it better and that America will respond because, as Dr.

Martin Luther King says -- said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward freedom."

>> Dr.

Frank Smith, the founder and director of the African American Civil War Museum, thank you so much for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you very much for having me.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, visit our website at TheChavisChronicles.com.

Also, follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we continue to look for ways to empower our customers.

We seek broad impact in our communities, and we're proud of the role we play for our customers and the U.S.

economy.

As a company, we are focused on supporting our customers and communities through housing access, small-business growth, financial health, and other community needs.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute -- our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural gas and oil industry.

Learn more -- api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American -- dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.