Monumental Myths

[movie projector whirring] [whirring stops] Do you think America is such a bad country that we need to be accompanied by a cadre of lies?

That we can't look our past straight in the eye, because if we do, our young people will get so turned off that they'll leave or they'll become anti-American?

These monuments deceive us, and they don't tell the stories that I think would restore good values.

The challenge with so many of these monuments is that they leave out more than they illuminate.

A lot of monuments, a lot of historic houses, a lot of museums and so on, make us more stupid about history in general and about that event in particular than before we went there.

I find that when people are told truthful things that have been kept from them, they're happy to get that, and then they look elsewhere for other truths that have been withheld from them.

So the very first puncture of myth in people's minds is the beginning of a journey for truth.

[electric guitar and snare drum] [music ends] History is sometimes embellished to present stories that fit America's ideological needs.

The site of Lincoln's birthplace does this in a couple of ways, beginning with the authenticity of the cabin he was born in.

It's my understanding it's the original cabin.

I, I, I don't know, it may be a replica.

But I, I, I understood it was the original.

I think it's important that visitors do know that this may not be the original cabin.

I think it's important that they know that we refer to it as a symbolic cabin.

I asked if it was an original, if it was the original cabin.

And, and the answer was that, that, that the National Park Service feels like that.

some of the logs are original.

They don't know which ones -- but that, that some of the cabin is original, and that it looks like the cabin that was here.

In 1895, uh, a entrepreneur purchased the Sinking Spring Farm, Lincoln's birthplace farm, and he hired a agent to go out and put a cabin on it.

And so this agent went off and found some cabin that was nearby and not needed, and he put it on the farm.

It went off to the Buffalo World's Fair, and there it was on display next to the Jefferson Davis log cabin.

Now, Jefferson Davis wasn't even born in a log cabin, but that's okay, never mind.

Then after that exposition closed, the guy who invented these two cabins took 'em off to Coney Island to display them there.

But on the trip to Coney Island, the two cabins got commingled and, that didn't stop 'em.

They put up one big cabin and they called it the Lincoln "dash" Davis Log Cabin.

And presumably they were both born there, I guess on, on separate days.

Finally, a wealthy magazine publisher bought the farm, speaking literally, and he hired a famous American architect to devise a suitable temple, really, to put the cabin in.

But when they did, they found, alas, the architect had miscalculated, and the temple was too small.

Architect knew just what to do.

He had the cabin cut down in size.

So the, this cabin, which was built to the approximate right dimensions of, of normal pioneer cabins, we don't know the precise dimensions of Lincoln's, but is now two-thirds as big as it should be.

And all it does is it makes for a bigger story 'cause it's a smaller cabin.

[off camera] Chiseled into the monument itself, uh, there are the words, "Here over the log cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born."

I think at the time that the cabin was placed in the memorial, it was truly believed that that was the correct cabin.

And today, after additional research, I think it's understood that there's just not enough documentation to support the authenticity.

And that's why the Park Service refers to it as being symbolic.

A more serious issue involves Lincoln's role in freeing Black slaves during the Civil War.

All my life as a child, that's all I ever heard, that Lincoln freed the slaves.

You look at the sort of iconography and Harper's magazine like, and Lincoln freed the slaves.

The textbooks will say, well, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and, and he was the great emancipator and, and that's how Blacks won their freedom.

What is really important is that the public recognize that Lincoln played a role in the freeing of the slaves, but that the slaves played a major role in freeing themselves.

Blacks won their freedom because for 30 years before the Civil War, they participated in a great movement of resistance, well resistance in the South -- underground railroads, fighting the fugitive slave acts, disobeying the law.

Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were the key players in the great movement for the abolition of slavery.

And I think by not accepting that notion, you create an environment where people begin to think, well, African Americans have always had things handed to them.

Um, it gets, gets carried into the notions of welfare and the like.

But if you then change that and you say, wait a minute, African Americans played a major role in their own freedom and more importantly, a major role in helping the North win the Civil War.

That changes the way people will come to thinking about African American culture.

[clinking metal and passing car] When you look at a monument, a memorial, you don't wanna just read the words, important as they are.

Sometimes what the artist is doing.

Sometimes the images make more of an impact than the words.

Monuments are created to be dramatic.

And by being dramatic, sometimes there's a great need to embellish.

There's a great need to sort of create a sense that this is a larger than life individual or a larger than life story.

Um, I just feel very strongly that while that's important for people to be able to find their heroes, I just don't think we need to do the embellishment.

I think the stories are strong enough.

All across the United States, we see white explorers, or discoverers as they're incorrectly called, towering over Native Americans who are often seated or lying down, or at least well below in the scale of things.

We also see conquerors just depicted huge on big tough horses.

Horses that never were.

So the scale an artist uses the business of who's on top and who's strong.

That can just make us think, well, yes, of course, of course it happened this way.

The best monuments should be able to tell complex stories.

But that means that the design has to both be visual as well as educational.

Monuments don't usually encourage you to stand back and say, Hmm, did this happen like this?

[V.O.]

Monuments often make Native Americans out to be naive without any concept of commerce.

The monument memorializing the purchase of Manhattan by the Dutch for $24 worth of beads typifies this myth.

It stands in Battery Park on the southern tip of the island of Manhattan.

Think about this monument.

The first thing that's amazing about it is just to look at it.

What do we see?

We see this newly naked Native American and this fully clothed -- even with a jacket on -- Dutchman.

Now I've been to New York City in August, and I can tell you that if this purchase that never took place, took place in August, that is one hot Dutchman.

I've been to Manhattan in February, and I can tell you if this purchase that never took place, took place in February, that's one cold Indian.

So what we're really seeing is we're seeing primitive and civilized and the whole story is really about poor, stupid, primitive, those Indians, they didn't even know what land is worth.

I mean, $24 won't buy you a postage stamp worth of Manhattan today.

Second of all, the Dutch never gave beads to anybody as far as we can tell.

There's the statue, of course shows them with some beads dangling that they're giving to the Indian.

What the Indians wanted and what they got with stuff they couldn't make themselves, particularly, metal kettles, steel axes, steel knives, guns and brightly colored woven wool blankets.

So for some fee, maybe something like $2,400, as far as I can tell worth of this stuff, the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Canarsies.

They bought it from the wrong tribe.

Now, you can go to Canarsie.

You can go to it on the subway.

When you come up.

You are in Brooklyn.

In fact, you're in East Brooklyn at the end of the line.

That's where the Canarsie lived.

Why shouldn't they sell Manhattan?

Wasn't theirs.

For centuries, thereafter, Europeans bought land from the wrong tribe, or they set up two factions within a tribe and they bought it from one faction, bribed them, paid those folks a whole bunch of stuff.

And then there'd be maybe a civil war or a war between two different Native American groups.

Therefore, the French or the British or the Dutch didn't have to fight the natives.

They were fighting each other.

And meanwhile the the land ended up in European hands.

[screeching metal] American mythology has been suggested as a possible alternative to simply American history.

And of course it would be true.

It's certainly not the history of working people, who are most of the American population.

It's a history of the people who have been in power in this country for a very long time.

So yes, we could use a truly American history.

History is without a doubt the only subject that the more you study it, the dumber you get.

College professors in math are delighted if you've had more high school math.

They'll put you in advanced math course.

But in history, this is not so.

You have to break the icons.

You have to break down the mythology, the lies, if you will, that you learned in high school and even in middle school and elementary school.

You're really better off if you didn't learn 'em in the first place.

I would argue there's an awful lot of opportunities to use history to understand educational policy, urban development, to understand industrial growth and change.

So in some ways, without using history, the policymakers in this country are solving the problems with one hand tied behind their back.

When I think about what are the functions of public history?

I think the biggest single function is to rouse the public to a state of patriotism or maybe better put nationalism.

And this doesn't necessarily mean nationalism for the country as a whole.

Maybe it's better put, nationalism for the cause that is being celebrated here.

[V.O.]

Across the country, civic leaders have paid tribute to Christopher Columbus by naming streets and cities after him... and by putting up statues.

Um, I learned in 1492 Columbus sail the ocean blue.

And we made little milk pints, uh you know, ships.

And it wasn't even until college that I learned the truth about it.

He's a symbol of the greatness of Italians and what Italians have brought to this country.

The Queen of Spain... she give the support for him to come and conquer America.

Sailed the ocean blue in 1942.

- No, 1492.

- 1492?

Yeah.

Yeah.

His true significance doesn't come from 1492.

He didn't do anything in 1492 that Leaf Erickson hadn't done in 1002 or so.

It comes from 1493.

'Cause in 1493, this man persuades the king and Queen of Spain to outfit him with 17 ships, with between 1000 and 2000 soldiers, with 20 dogs attack dogs, with horses, with armor, and he proceeds to take over the island of Haiti and rename it Hispaniola.

Now, this had never been done before in human history -- for one country to maintain and conquer a country on the other side of an ocean.

This was a first.

When he come in there on our country, he do come for good.

He come to steal.

Columbus worked a marvelous deal with the king and queen of Spain.

He was to get 10 percent of all the riches he brought back from the quote New world, but he also was to get 10 percent of everything everybody else brought back!

So it was, it was a great deal.

He wasn't able to enforce it all.

They changed the contract terms unilaterally.

But he did become rich.

[V.O.]

But Columbus ran into a problem during his first visit to the New World.

He couldn't find the huge gold deposits that he promised to his investors.

So the drive to satisfy the profits of his financiers drove him to awful acts.

He punished the Indians who wouldn't bring him enough gold.

He hacked off their arms.

He killed them.

And when he couldn't find enough gold, he enslaved them and brought them back in chains to to Spain.

He had to show his patrons something that represented wealth.

If not gold, human wealth.

Christopher Columbus started the transatlantic slave trade.

Now you have to understand the transatlantic slaves trade began from west to east.

It was a trade in Native Americans, or Indians, taken across the Atlantic to be enslaved in the Azores, in the Canary Islands, and in Spain itself.

And the only reason it didn't work is because Native Americans were not immune to the diseases that were already common in Europe and Asia and Africa.

[V.O.]

And then, there's the flat earth myth.

Everybody in Europe knew that the world was round.

The Catholic Church held it to be round.

Sailors especially know it to be round.

And there's this whole mythology about Christopher Columbus had to face down a near mutiny from his sailors who were afraid of sailing off the edge of the flat earth.

What do you want?

We wanna know whether youre ready to turn back and start for home.

-Yeah, yeah!

-And at once!

It's no business of yours.

But the answer is, no!

Alright, we are turn back and sail without you!

Come on, boys!

This mythology, it turns out, was established by none other than Washington Irving in about 1830.

He's the the guy who wrote the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

He's a novelist.

Well, in 1830 or so, he wrote a biography of Christopher Columbus.

Three volumes.

It was the most popular biography of the 19th century.

Stayed in print throughout the century.

And he told the story -- the flat earth story.

So the world did not become flat in 1491, just before Columbus sailed.

The world became flat in 1830.

[V.O.]

This map of the round world was commissioned by the Pope to be translated from Greek into Latin in Florence, Italy in 1410... eighty-two years before Columbus set sail.

[V.O.]

In Columbus's right hand is a decree.

The words are chiseled into the base of the statue.

By the grace of God and in the name of her majesty, Queen Isabella, I am taking possession of this land.

October 12th, 1492 Spain and Columbus got their authority to take the property and the lives of non-Christians from a papal decree called the Doctrine of Discovery.

The Pope cut a deal with Spain and Portugal.

He divided the world in half by drawing a line on a map, and gave title of the eastern hemisphere to Portugal and the Western hemisphere to Spain.

Well, this wasn't a deal that Denmark agreed to or that England agreed to.

And so France and England and Holland and Denmark, they want want in on the deal.

And they all steal, uh, and take over various parts of the Americas.

Uh, it was the first great imperialism in the history of the world.

At the top of the pedestal, an inscription says, "To Christopher Columbus, discoverer of America."

Christopher Columbus never reached North America.

The only part of what is now the United States that he reached was Puerto Rico.

[off camera] So in 1492 there were some 100 million natives living in the Americas.

Should they be credited with discovering America instead of Columbus?

Yeah, I suppose they should be, um...

The problem is we don't have a date when they came over.

So, it's easier to celebrate, you know, Christopher Columbus and when he came over.

Sure they discovered it, but they didn't do a thing about it.

They didn't go over to Europe and say, Hey, look at this land we discovered.

They were just there in the first place.

About 25 years ago, A couple of native, a batch of Native Americans tried to make this point, and I think they did make it.

Adam Nordal, who is an Ojibwa Indian and some other Native Americans, took an Alia flight to Rome and they discovered Italy!

Here's my opportunity to go over to a land where the doctrine of discovery originated from, the Vatican.

And the idea was to lay claim of discovery of their country of Italy -- just to turn things completely around.

I stuck a spear in that ground proclaiming my discovery of this new land for the American Indian people.

When I'm introduced to the Pope, he's standing there and I'm walk forward and measured steps.

And as I walk slowly toward him, he raises his hand with this big beautiful ring on it.

Well, I understand what that's all about.

And as he raises his hand to me, I raise my hand to him.

And I'm wearing a big, beautiful ring.

Now there's an audible gasp in the Vatican because here's our two guys holding their rings out to each other to kiss.

The cardinals, the bishops, the Popes aid, there's gonna be an international incident between his Holiness and the Indian.

And the Pope broke the ice.

And one of the things he said to me, I've read a great deal about the American Indian people and I know what you are doing.

[off camera] Did your meeting with the Pope resolve the issues between Native Americans and the Catholic church?

No.

Because the Vatican never apologized to Native Americans for the crimes committed in the name of the Church against our people.

Today is Columbus Day, a national holiday set aside to honor the explorer who 512 years ago made landfall in the West Indies.

It's a day in which Italian Americans take special pride, and others take exception.

[trumpets, drums, and cymbals] Christopher Columbus was born and generated Italy.

He sailed from Spain in 1492 with the blessing of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, after numerous attempts to convince Queen Isabella that to reach India and East, one could sail towards the west, since he noticed that a ship's mast was the last visible sign of a ship in the horizon.

The Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria took more than two months.

He set sail on August 3rd, 1492 from Palos, Spain.

Columbus's first impression, impression of Native Americans was very favorable.

[off camera] Why aren't you guys celebrating?

We're not celebrating because we don't agree with celebrating genocide.

The genocide of indigenous people who where massacred in the millions on this continent.

[drums and cymbals] I think that, uh, it's, it's proper to celebrate it.

And I guess I don't quite understand all the controversy.

Why there's such a big controversy.

Uh, so that's, that's where I'm coming from.

[off camera] What do you think about Christopher Columbus as an explorer?

I think that Christopher Columbus was in the service of imperialism.

Christopher Columbus was a mercenary.

[drums, cymbals, and whistle] I think it was a little bit of a poetic justice and it coming out that Christopher Columbus probably wasnt the first one here.

in that founded America.

Kind of hard to find that out, but I think it is the truth.

The truth will set you free.

Isn't that the saying goes?

Yes, the past is the past.

But the past lives with us.

Uh, the past affects us.

Our memory of the past affects us.

People often tell me, you can't judge the past by the standards of today.

You're being presentist.

I think that's B.S.

By which, of course, I mean bad sociology.

For instance... Are we applying today's morality, the morality of the 21st century about slavery back to Columbus or back to other slave traders?

Well, I can tell you a bunch of people were against slavery back then.

It's not just we are so smart and we're so moral now.

We're against slavery.

All of the slaves were against slavery, but a bunch of white folks were against slavery too.

I personally would like to see more attention given to Bartolome de Las Casas.

Now, people say, who?

Bartolome who?

He's the guy who wrote down Columbus's journal.

He became the defender of the Indians, and he participated for decades thereafter in trying to make sure that Spain respected Indian rights.

I don't think there's a single perspective that we have now that wasn't an issue at the time.

The past is just like the biological past.

We are all shaped by our families, our medical history.

Um, and in some ways, the more we know about our own medical history, the smarter decisions we can make about our own life and our own health.

Same thing with history.

That these things aren't just dead.

Um, the way that I heard stories about how my grandparents were treated during the era of Jim Crow segregation shapes who I am, shapes how I react to things.

My point in bringing up these... um hidden facts of American history is not simply to go back.

Not simply to be sorry about what happened.

And not even to condemn people like Columbus or Andrew Jackson or Theodore Roosevelt.

It's too late for that.

They're gone.

The events are gone.

The point of going back and looking at those things is to see what they teach us about the present.

[newscaster] In Romania, Thousands gathered in free press square today in Bucharest to watch the removal of a statue of Lenin, the provision government.

[V.O.}

When people of foreign countries have thrown out their dictator rulers, they've also toppled the monuments representing them.

[loud explosion] [news reporter] It will be an enduring symbol of the fall of Baghdad.

A huge statue of Saddam Hussein.

[V.O.]

Americans haven't done much toppling... with one exception.

The most toppled statue in America is the monument to the Haymarket riot in Chicago.

On May 4th, 1886, laborers gathered to demonstrate against the police's killing of two workers the previous day during a strike for an eight hour workday at the McCormick Reaper plant.

When most of the crowd had left, a police captain raised his arm and shouted, In the name of the people of Illinois, I command you to disperse in peace.

The police then began clubbing people.

Someone in the crowd threw a bomb, killing six police officers.

The police opened fire killing seven protestors.

After a controversial trial, which gained worldwide attention, four of the organizers were sentenced to death and hanged.

Though evidence never proved they were responsible for the bomb.

Throughout the world, Mayday has become Labor Day in remembrance, the Haymarket events and is celebrated on or near May 1st.

The US and Canada celebrate In September.

On May 4th, 1889, the third anniversary of the riot, a statue of the police captain with his arm raised was erected as a memorial to the slain policeman.

Workers protested that the monument was one-sided, and over the years it was relocated several times to prevent it from being toppled.

That ended on May 4th, 1927, the 41st anniversary of the riot, when a street car jumped its tracks and hit the statue.

The disgruntled driver said he was tired of seeing the policeman with his arm raised.

The second toppling occurred on October 5th, 1969 when a radical group called The Weatherman put dynamite between the statue's legs and blew them onto the nearby expressway.

On May 4th, 1970, the statue was rededicated.

On October 5th, The Weatherman, now calling themselves The Weather The Weather Underground, blew it up a second time.

The city recast the legs again and moved it to the top of police headquarters, until they realized their safety was at risk.

The statue now sits in the atrium of the Chicago Police Academy and may be viewed by appointment only.

Today, a new monument representing both labor and the police sits on the original site of the riot.

Now, some people want to topple offensive monuments.

Or just deface offensive historical markers.

And they have a point.

I mean, some of them are so wrong that maybe nothing is better than them.

But another way to do it would be to add layers, to have an apology on the landscape, if you will, that apologizes for this offensive historical marker or monument or whatever.

So the person coming there is really a challenge to think because they not only see how somebody thought in 1898.

They also see how somebody thought very differently in 1998.

[V.O.]

During the last year, the Civil War, Black Union troops charged into battle screaming, remember Fort Pillow!

But if you visit the Fort, you won't find out what the troops were remembering.

The Parks brochure says that Union casualties were heavy, especially among the black troops.

But it doesn't explain that twice as many black died compared to White soldiers.

An exhibit in the museum titled "The Controversy" includes a New York Sun article that describes the massacre.

The exhibit implies that the article is Northern propaganda.

What the museum doesn't display is a New York Times article in which right after the battle, a Confederate general told the Times correspondent that it was against the policy of his government to spare the life of negro soldiers or their officers.

The POWs at Fort Pillow, first of all, had a heck of a time becoming a POW.

Because when they tried to surrender, many of them were shot at the spot.

[gunshot] The Confederacy saying there would be no black POWs really comes out of two things.

One is a real fear of what would happen when former slaves join the Union Army and turned their rage against their master.

So one of the ways to control that is to try to send a message that if you do join the army, you will be given no quarter.

And the hope was that that would um, clamp down on Black enlistment.

I suppose it also properly a realization that that the Norths enlistment of Black soldiers meant that the North would now have a military advantage that it didn't have before, which turned out to be true, because the Black soldiers were crucial in the last stage of the war.

The other piece, part of that though, was also the notion that in the minds of many Southerners, these people are still property.

They are not equals.

So, therefore, you do not want to accord them the rights that you would accord an equal soldier.

So, it was really a way of reinforcing the attitude of racial inferiority.

You know, the point of looking at the massacres of Black people is to ask the question, While we're not committing massacres anymore, do we still look upon Black people as not us, as different?

Because we have, as a people used, as American people, used the Civil War as that great moment to say, even when we killed each other, we ultimately could come back together.

And that's why we always celebrate those pictures of old Confederate soldiers and old Yankees shaking hands at Gettysburg in 1913.

But all of that reunion was based on erasing the African American story out of the Civil War, and erasing the fact that that reunification of North and South came at the expense of the Black community.

There are some indications that given the past of, of, of this fort and of this property as a park, that it has more of a very strong Southern slant to it and very pro-Southern.

And we're trying to, trying to get beyond that.

The real challenge is to tell a Civil War that includes a Northern story, a Southern story, an African American story that will ultimately allow us to get to an American story.

Monuments don't tell the truth for various reasons.

There's reasons to distort.

For one thing, only one side is usually telling the story.

It's usually a monument being put up by the, a labor union or being put up by African Americans or being put up by neo-Confederates.

That is people who, who still favor the Confederacy side of the Civil War -- put up by one group.

They don't have a real interest in telling all sides of the story.

It's particularly too bad on historical markers.

'Cause historical markers come with two sides.

Monuments are selected to reflect national or regional or local identity.

So they're really important because they tell us what people want you to remember, what they want you to believe, not necessarily what is really important to you, but what's important to those people who are creating the myths of your identity.

The real question is not whether the government is involved, but how it is involved.

And whether the decisions about monuments and decisions about historical markers are made by a small number of people in the government, or made by a real cross section of the American people.

Clearly we need an educated, thoughtful public.

For that reason, the government should be involved in telling complex stories complexly and thoroughly.

And at some places we do do this.

We need to do it at all places.

[V.O.]

A February, 2021 New York Times article posited that if humankind vanished tomorrow, an aliens arrived from another galaxy, they wouldn't be faulted for believing that the whole of human history was composed of men on horseback.

The National Park Service lists 152 monuments in the United States, which range from buildings to volcanoes to canyons.

Only three -- or less than 2 percent -- are dedicated to historic female figures.

Several recent initiatives are making progress to correct this imbalance by representing -- on digital maps and the landscape -- the important contributions of women.

The most frequently honored woman is Sacajawea, a Shoshone woman who is instrumental in Lewis and Clark's northwest expedition.

A recent survey counted 16 public statues in her honor.

Installed in 2018, the Gwendolyn Brooks Monument is located in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago.

A poet and author, Ms. Brooks was the first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Her poems reflected everyday people and problems in the belief that poetry could change lives -- and the world.

Amelia Earhart, the first woman to pilot a plane over the Atlantic Ocean broke through barriers for the acceptance of women in the workplace with her aeronautic and engineering achievements, and her women's leadership lectures.

She's represented on the campus of Purdue University, in the Kansas State House, and the National Statuary Hall of the US Capitol.

The Francis Willard House Museum in Evanston, Illinois pays tribute to a founding member, and eventual president, of the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, which advanced important social issues.

In the late 1800s.

Willard worked hard to broaden the organization's reform movement to include such things as women's suffrage, women's rights and education and labor reforms.

Under Willard's leadership, the WCTU grew to be the largest organization of women In the 19th century.

New York City pays tribute to Emily Warren Robling for her key role in the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge.

In 1872, her husband, Washington Robling, chief engineer of the bridge, became disabled.

while working on the bridge tower excavations.

Emily stepped in and took charge of his communications, studied his plans, copied and revised his specifications, instructed his assistant engineers, negotiated contracts, and corresponded with reporters and the bridge trustees.

When the bridge opened in May, 1883, Emily was in the first carriage to cross the bridge.

Later that day, she hosted a reception at her home, which was attended by US President, Chester A. Arthur.

From the earliest time in America's history, women have fought against discriminatory norms and laws that have limited their free choice to express their talents while advancing the quality of life for all Americans.

Today, women are working hard to rightfully add their stories to the American story.

The final stop on my trip was the mother of all monuments, Mount Rushmore.

The closer I got to the monument, the less it seemed anyone was willing to talk about it.

Actually, were doing a piece on moniments, we're doing a piece on monuments.

-Yeah, I know that.

-A film.

Would you mind if I ask you a couple questions about like your opinion?

As long as you shut the camera off.

Any way we could keep it on?

- I don't want on it.

-Okay.

Mount Rushmore has been coined America's Shrine of Democracy.

But this is ironic not only because of the park's history, but also because of how the park's image is protected today.

You can do guided tours at the times, starting at 10:30 and then lasting until 4:30 -- 10:30, 11:30, 12:30.

And you can just meet the Ranger right there in that main viewing terrace.

He, of course, needed someone with that vision, that imagination and artist.

And this is when he contacted a man by the name of Gutzon Borglum, who was a pretty well- known artist at the time.

Gutzon Borglum was carving a Confederate memorial onto the mountain there when he received this letter from Doane Robinson asking him to come here to the Black Hills to find out more about it.

Any other questions before we move along the walkway?

So once again, everyone, thank you very much for joining me here on the trail today.

Enjoy the rest of your day at the memorial.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Have a good day.

Any questions?

Yes.

[off camera] What was Gutzon Borglums affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan?

What was Gutzon Borglums affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan?

I'm not sure about that.

I've never read anything about that myself.

[off camera] Maybe you had to join to get that job down in Georgia.

[crowd laughing] I don't believe that the issue of Gutzon Borglum as a Ku Klux Klan member needs to be a part of the story at Mount Rushmore.

I think that definitely should be told.

No doubt about it.

If he's an ex KKK member, he definitely needs-- that should be known.

They should tell the dark side as well as the bright side.

And at one point he became not only a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but really a high up leader advising part of the Klan membership.

Uh, you see the elements of democracy is just to have the opportunity to be a Ku Klux Klan member I think would be part of the Democratic philosophy.

I think that's a...

I think it's a nice melting pot of this country to be able to say, I'm, I'm a Ku Klux Klan member, and I can still put Abe Lincoln on the, on the rock.

Mount Rushmore's story, as I said, is about the development of the memorial.

And our themes do not dwell a lot on Borglum as a, as a life... what his life really was like.

Do you think tour groups or just people like us that show up here?

should at least know anything about his background?

In my opinion, no.

It's not that important.

Where he was born.

Those kind of things.

Yeah.

I'd be interested in that.

He's done a great thing.

It's, it's beautiful.

I mean, why cover it up?

Everybody's talking about now let's be open, let's be more diverse and everything.

Let's talk about it.

Maybe some good to come out of it.

Maybe we can learn from history.

Thats what we're supposed to do.

Another thing that should be told at Mount Rushmore is the fact that this monument is on Lakota land, which we guaranteed to the Sioux forever.

After the 1876 treaty that was signed at Fort Laramie, the Native Americans were given the Black Hills.

The government had no land to cede to us.

We were the original people.

We were the original landholders-- the landlords.

Then the Custer Expedition came through, and many people followed the Custer Expedition because they had found gold in the Black Hills.

And as more and more people came into the hills, the Cavalry tried to keep, you know, the Indians and the and the white people separated, but they couldn't do it.

No, actually the role of the cavalry in those days was to subdue and to subjugate the Indians.

To put them on reservations.

If they were off the reservation, they were hostiles, and you could kill 'em.

So then the, the native people really weren't given the land.

Uh, there was eventually a court case that settled that and actually provided them a monetary figure for the land.

Uh, but the Native American people have never accepted that buyout.

And the land, the money is still in escrow in the federal government.

I don't know why you can't add that story.

I don't see what that hurts.

They wouldn't talk about it because it's such a controversial issue, and it's never been settled.

So it's not something if they brought it up during their program that they could easily answer or easily solve.

It's interesting when people present a certain point of view of history, it's not controversial.

As soon as you present the other side, they call it controversial.

They have so much on the building of Mount Rushmore, and we celebrate, you know, the individuals that did that.

Add a little more to understand why this is contested space for certain populations of our, of our country because of what they envision those hills versus the way the hills are now used.

And also if you do the loop, you'll stop down here at the sculptor studio, which is really nice.

It houses Gutzon Borglums last working model from 1936.

[inaudible presentation] Anybody have any questions?

If you can create an environment where people can talk about these difficult issues, then it makes it easier to solve other problems down the road.

To criticize the, you know, whatever the government does is not anti-American.

It's anti-government.

And it's pro-American.

It's pro the people.

It's pro the country.

If we can think about how we have gotten to this state in all of our glory, in all of our disasters, whatever -- the mix that we are, then we could bring about the America of the future more intelligently.

["MY COUNTRY" rap sung by Laon Camps] The textbooks, the statues talk about virtues Learn the whole story player Then you choose Were told were a great country founded on democracy Lying about the past that's hypocrisy In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue In 93, he stole all he could see A scientist, a seaman a discoverer?

He's nothing but a tourist looking for gold -- with a blood thirst Yeah, the truth hurts in this blue verse But the troopers asked me to chew words 'Cause I'm true -- word You tell me the way things work is fair If I don't like it, there's an exit is over there But au contraire, mon fraire, Ill make you a dare Try to walk in my Tims to see if fair is fair My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty of thee I sing -- whatever Huh, ha, ha, ha, ha Ah man, man, man history.

You know You know they just looking at us This is real history right here.

No doubt Get along with this second verse Uh ha -- yeah Call it what you want but I call it a mystery.

Their version of a past, it's call history But -- that's his story.

Bear arms to mercy And when I tell my side is controversy Monuments for racist, killers and thieves Oh, and why you at it, hand over your keys It's propaganda distortion, its idiotic But when I tell 'em it's wrong, I'm unpatriotic Unpaid, you got it Government broke a treaty They greedy to get their pockets meaty Stole the Black Hills from the Sioux Nation Put Indians on reservations Man named Borglum chiseled four faces to worship the white Anglo-Saxon races Amazing bases Its patriotic bull**** galore I'm talking about Rushmore Ask questions there, its Mount Hushmore Yeah, you know their talking about unpatriotic Im not being unpatriotic, just trying to find out the truth That's right.

You know?

Yeah.

History This is a little third verse action.

Check this out Yah Our past has censored Cheap like penny pinchers Truth indentured.

Special interest ventures Frustrated Confederates during the Civil War, attacked Black troops sent them to heaven's door I'm supposed to be cool, calm, support, and mellow Forget about what happened at Fort Pillow My word is fine-tuned like a cello Do you understand what I'm saying?

Hello... When you read the plaque on a statue it's lying at you This gumshoe was here to prove it's not all true I hope I knock you outta your seats, and realize this is the real history of our American peeps My country, tis of thee Sweet land of mythology Of thee I sing Of thee I sing Thats right -- you know Right... [song ends] To learn more about this program, visit Trinley Pictures.com.

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