Hello everyone, my name is Apur Singh Gautam. I would like to thank Defcon Retain Village for having me here. I will talk about automating threat hunting on the dark web and the things that surrounds it. I presented this talk, I presented a short version of this talk at Grimcon and this is the extended version of it. So let's get started. I will switch off my webcam so that you guys can focus on the presentation here. Okay, so a little about me. My name is Apur Singh Gautam. I go by handle ASG Scorpion. I'm a security researcher. I started into threat intel hunting two years back and I've been loving it since then. I'm currently pursuing my master's in cyber security at Georgia Tech. Recently, during the summer, I was doing, I was a research intern at XC UC Berkeley doing research in threat intelligence. Some of my hobbies are gaming. I pretty much love rainbow sixies. I sometimes stream it also. I love hiking. I recently started into lockpicking and I am enjoying it. I contribute to the security community. It's like, it's my passion contributing to the security community. I'm a senior teaching assistant at Siberia. I contributed station X also and other local security meetups. And they are my socials. If you want to contact me or hit me up. So what's today's agenda? So we will talk about introduction to dark web. What dark web is, how to access dark web, what tower is, what is the difference between dark web, deep web, why you should perform hunting on the dark web. Before that, we will discuss what is threat hunting and why it is crucial to hunt on the dark web. We will discuss the different methods to hunt on the dark web. Can the dark web hunting be automated? What's the pipeline or the architecture of hunting, automating the dark web hunting? Then we will discuss a little about threat intelligence life cycle. That's how threat hunting on the dark web is analogous to threat intelligence life cycle. What steps are there that corresponds to this? We will discuss a little about operational security. That's opposite. And why is it important to secure yourself when hunting on the dark web. And yeah, that's it. So introduction to dark web. So I'm sure you must have seen this image a lot of times on the internet. That shows difference between surface web, deep web and dark web. So the surface web is the sites that are indexed by different search engines. That's Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. And the majority of the portion of the internet is deep web. Now deep web is any site, any website that is not indexed by the search engine. This can include your databases, your survey instances or any other different websites that you cannot search from the search engines. The third one is the dark web that we will talk mostly about today. And this is the part of the internet where you need some kind of software, special software to access the dark web. This can include anything related to drugs or weapons that's being sold on the dark web or some kind of research or books that's sold there. So dark web includes several forums and marketplaces where people sell different kind of things. So these type of things are sold there. So majority portion of the internet is deep web and people confuse it between dark web and deep web. So as you can see only 6% of the internet is dark web and 80 to 90% is the deep web. Moving on, so how do you access the dark web? So there are several companies or several organizations that offer their own dark web systems. You can call it, so the famous one is Tor, that's the onion router. The second is I2P, that's an invisible internet project and zero net is also becoming popular nowadays. So Tor has a dot onion domain, like the domain name ends with dot onion and I2P is dot I2P. Talking more about Tor, what Tor is and how it works is it's like a three layer proxy system. If you can see on the image here, there are entry nodes, middle node and the exit node. The entry node is the entry node is where your traffic goes to and then it goes through the middle layer and the exit layer and then goes to the destination. This way your identity is hidden and also only the entry node is publicly listed, rest of the nodes are not publicly listed. So it hides your identity, it hides your IP address and these nodes are volunteer based systems. So Tor has about like 6000 relays and I don't know the number about I2P but it is also becoming more popular nowadays. And the major thing about Tor is each node only knows the IP address of the next node or the previous node. So if we talk about here, the entry node doesn't know about the exit node or vice versa. So in this way the nodes location of the nodes are also protected. So there are many misconceptions about Tor, the dark web. The famous one is whenever we talk about Tor, people think about criminal or criminal things that goes on Tor. Yes, there is criminal side of Tor but there is a good side of the Tor also or the dark web. So it's really famous among whistleblowers or activists. There are many countries where free speech is limited. So they can use Tor like people from those countries use Tor to express their speech or express what they think. Tor also has access to many old literature or researches which is not available on the open web. And it's like safe even for journalists obviously. And so there are many popular sites like Facebook and MyTimes that has their counterpart on Tor. Like their .any website counterpart. So it's useful for whistleblowers or activists. The second thing is Tor is so many people think that it's illegal to access the dark web. So it's not illegal to access the dark web. It's illegal to indulge in these kind of activities like purchasing drugs or purchasing any other illegal things on the dark web. That is being sold there but it's completely legal to access the dark web. And it's like the last thing which I would talk about is many people think Tor is like really big. But if you talk about the uptime or the availability of sites there are very few reachable onion domains on the dark web. If you compare it with the clear web. So it's like Tor is the dark web is like very little part of the internet. So we will talk about the dark side of the dark web. I mean the criminal side of the dark web. So there are many forums or marketplaces on the dark web. These are some of the relevant sites that's relevant to security researchers or people who want to access dark web for their organization's benefit. So this is like some of them are credit card market. So where different credit cards are being dumped or remote access. So these are these forums include remote access storage or some kind of remote access tools or insider threats. So insider threats are it's like recent coming up a forum where insider like the people who are selling their companies secrets. They talk amongst themselves. So these are some of the relevant sites. Now coming to the cost. So how much it costs for some kind of for something to buy from the dark web. So as you can see it's really easy to buy these things on the dark web and it. So like SS and you can buy any SSN for one dollar or fake FB friends a fake FB with 15 friends mobile malware bank details. So our exploiter zero days. So it's like these type of things are easy to get on the dark web. That's why security researchers and other people are focusing more on the dark web. You might have heard about recent news like 500,000 zoom accounts sold on the dark web or 267 million FB user profiles sold on the dark web. So there are many data breaches occurring day by day and they are being sold on the dark web. That's why researching on the dark web is really important. These are some of the product listings from the forums of the dark web. This is how the products are being listed. You can see these are the average cost of accounts for different online services like bank services. What's the average cost of it or what's the average cost of service for video games. This is the average cost of tools that is being sold on the dark web. As you can see again bank and financial average cost is $74. So you can buy a brute forcing tool for some bank at $74. Now coming to why you should hunt on the dark web. Before that let's talk about what is threat hunting.  That's proactive search. You search for cyber threats from logs or indicators of compromise. That's IP addresses, emails, domains etc or textual data that we are doing when we are searching the dark web. So it's basically a hypothesis base because there is nothing concrete about the process. You take one use case and work on it and then you take another use case and work on it. And it goes iteratively in the same way. Many times there is use of machine learning or natural language processing. That's NLP and advanced analytics process in this. Because you need to scan through the textual data if you are hunting on the dark web. Or if you are hunting on the clear web also but for the textual data. So machine learning advanced analytics are useful there. So why it's serious. Why threat hunting on the dark web is really important. What's so big about that. So as I told you about again there are many forums, marketplaces, dump shops and where criminals. So what criminals or actors do they learn new methods and techniques on the dark web. They monetize their skills. They trade their exploits or tools or even drugs and weapons and communication. So they communicate with each other and they share their ideas for new attacks. A security researcher or a person who is researching on the dark web. He can find a lot on he can learn a lot while engaging within these communities. You can learn their techniques or TTPs that's the attack techniques and procedures. How they think about the attack, how they plan an attack. So if you do it correctly it can identify attacks in the earlier stages. That's planning and reconnaissance stages. And you can reduce the impacts that it causes. So suppose if your organization data is being sold on the dark web. There are different kinds of impacts that can cause to your organization. So some of the direct impacts are like personal information stolen or healthcare record stolen. Or even your company's straight secrets. And some of the indirect impacts are repetition of your organization. Revenue loss and nowadays the legal penalties that your data is lost. And you have to cover the cost of the customers. So this is like that's why this is really important to like to research on the dark web. Two hundredths on the dark web. On the same lines, these are the benefits of the threatening. So if you do it correctly, you can keep up with the latest trends of the attacks. You can get new TTPs that's tactics, techniques and procedures. You can identify insider threats. You can discover data breaches. The main thing is you can prepare your socks and incident responders to deal with the attack. Because they will know before only what are the TTPs attackers are using. So they can reduce the damage and risk to the organization by acting quickly on that. So coming to the methods to hunt on the dark web. So we will discuss about some tools that's used to hunt on the dark web. And then we will discuss about the human element that can be used to hunt on the dark web. So talking about the first tool that's really, really important for this is scrappy. So it's a web crawling framework. It's so famous. It's so important because it manages multi-threading automatically. So you don't have to spend too much time on the multi-threading part because it has already capabilities for multi-threading using one or two lines of parameters. The second thing is Tor. Obviously if you want to access the dark web, you need Tor. Onion scan is another tool that is used to search for onion websites. It can tell you if a website is up or not and the correlation between different websites on the dark web. Coming to Privoxy. So Privoxy is a web proxy before getting more into this.  So your ISP can have a blacklist to block their entry nodes. So you can't access the dark web. Or even if the ISP doesn't block it, he can see whether you are accessing the dark web or not. He cannot see what you are doing on there, but he can see whether you are accessing the dark web or not. So you might not want that. That's why you need some kind of proxy. And a majority of people use Sox proxy. So basic difference between HTTP and Sox proxy is a lower level proxy and it works on the Sox protocol. HTTP proxy only works on HTTP or HTTP websites, but Sox proxy can work on other protocols also. And there are different tools to use Sox proxy like T Sox, Polypo and Pryboxy. I've been using Pryboxy and it has been... So I don't have any problem with Pryboxy and it's good. So another thing is Scrapy doesn't allow you to use directly Sox proxy because it doesn't support Sox proxy. So that's why you have to use these tools like Pryboxy, T Sox, or Polypo to route your Sox through Pryboxy scripts. And there are other tools also, like there are search engines like Kilos or Recon where you can find different onion domains. Apart from using Sox proxy, you can also use VPN with Tor for extra layer of protection and encrypting your data. So getting more into Scrapy part, this image might seem a little confusing, but I will get into it step by step. So this is why Scrapy is really important and why Scrapy is so useful in hunting on the dark web. So for explaining this, I will explain it in terms of Python code. So suppose everything you see here is a different Python program. So Spider is a Python program. Downloader is a Python program. Middleware is a Python program and so on. So what Spider does in Spider... So in Spider Python program, you give your onion domain on which you want to crawl the data or which you want to get the data. So it gives it to the engine. Suppose the engine is just the program that manages every other Python program. So it gives the onion domain to the engine. The engine gives it to the scheduler. So what scheduler does is, here the multi-threading concept comes into the picture. Scheduler gets different domains and schedules it accordingly into multiple threads. So the onion domains goes into the scheduler. Scheduler gives it back to the engine and engine gives it to the middleware. So middleware program includes your proxy program and our login program. So what proxy program is in proxy function. So if we are talking about middleware, that's a Python program. There's a proxy function into it. So proxy function is where you will put down your privacy IP or Tor IP so that the request or response goes and comes through that proxy so that you can access the dark web. The login program, the login function is where you will put your user agents or cookies or... So for accessing the dark web forums, you have to... So nowadays for all the forums, you have to have a account to access the dark web or to access that particular forum. So to access the forum, you need some kind of cookies or also there are many forums, many high-level forums that implement captures and as Google doesn't work on the dark web. So these captures are like image-based capture or text-based capture that is easy to bypass. So you can use any machine learning capture bypassing service or any capture bypassing websites like death by capture or anti-capture to bypass the capture. So these all codes you will write in this login function in middleware program. Now your request or your traffic goes through this middleware program to the downloader. What downloader does is it's a simple program to extract the HTML and give it back to the engine. So downloader extracts the HTML and gives it back to the engine. Now engine gives it back to the spider. Now there is another function in spider that extracts the HTML entities that you want from the forums HTML like suppose forum name or document ID or the text-based data or author name who posted a particular content. So you get that and it is called items in Scrappy. So you get these items and it sends it to the item pipeline. Item pipeline is where your database is configured. So I use elastic search you can use any database whether SQL or new SQL and it directly saves the items to the SQL. And so the important thing to note here is that Scrappy. So as I told you before multithreading is automatically handled by Scrappy. The another thing is you don't have to give multiple onion domains to spider. So when the downloader gets the data when the downloader gets the HTML page from the particular forum there is a code you don't have to configure the code there is a code to get all the onion domains on that particular HTML page. So the scheduler automatically schedules the other onion domains to go through the same process again and again. In this way you don't have to give extra onion domains to the engine. And this is why Scrappy is like really useful in like crawling data from the dark web. And there are different so you can specify which domain to crawl and which domain to block and this way you can be safe from getting illegal data or getting illegal images. Moving on now comes the human part. So we discussed about the tools. What tools can you use to hunt on the dark web. There is a human element also that's called human intelligence or HUMINT. So it's the process of gathering intelligence through interpersonal contact rather by some kind of tools or technical process. That's why it's most dangerous and difficult form because you are directly talking to the actor on the dark web which is not safe and it's not safe because you don't want your identity to be revealed to the actor or you don't want your organization's identity to be revealed to the actor and it's important also because you can identify and respond to attacks much quickly you can do post attack investigation so suppose your organization there is a data breach on your organization if you want to confirm someone is selling this data on the dark web and if you want to confirm whether they are selling the correct whether they are lying about it or whether it is the truth so you can activate your human intelligence or activate the guy that is researching on the dark web to go and ask to the actors whether the data is correct or not so that's post attack investigation or you can also use it for new attack discovery so that's discovering new TTPs that the attackers are using or the attackers are discussing about you can assume as a high tech equivalent of what an FBI agent does when he spends months or years working to infiltrate a criminal organization that's why it's really hard to do it because you have to spend so much time on it and that's why it's risky for this you have to think like an actor how they communicate within these communities how they act within these communities another thing is like the source from this is really valuable to your organization safety moving on we talked about tools we talked about human intelligence part now comes the pipeline of the architecture of how you can automate these threat hunting so before that I would suggest to set up a different system you don't want your personal data system where you are doing threat hunting so you can set up any lab or VM whether physical or whether on cloud just isolate the network and install relevant tools like Scrapy, Privacy, Tor if you are if you are using elastic source or Kibana then Elk and different Python libraries that would be necessary for your task this is the automated architecture that I have been using it I will go it one by one and I have this automated icon for the task that can be automated and for the task that I don't have that's the only one I think Scrapy setup and design terrain and LP model so it's hard to automate that part so I will discuss it through so first of all you need to get the forums, forum links or market links so you can write a simple script to gather data from different search engines like I told you Rekon and other search engines where you can get all the forum links so that can be automated so another thing is using Sox Proxy like I told you you have to use some kind of Sox Proxy for this so you can get Sox Proxy's IP again you can write a simple script and get the Sox Proxy's that can be automated now comes the part of Scrapy setup so Scrapy setup is so here you will write your login functions here you will get your proxy setups and here you will like manage the settings of the Scrapy now you can't automate this because when you get the onion links different forum and links you have to go to the forums and sign in yes you can automate you can write scripts for logging in or signing in using different accounts but I found it difficult to do this that's why I just I have been using it manually I have been doing it manually so like creating different accounts like 4 to 5 accounts per and then noting down that into the Scrapy like the username password and cookies into Scrapy so for this you have to do this also you need different scrapers for different forums because the architecture of forums is different for different forums that's why you need to do this step manually because you need to analyze you need to first login to the forum analyze it and then write a different function for each forum for the HTML elements that you want to access coming to the crawler part so the crawler parser analyzer and the ELK part it's all the part of the Scrapy that I discussed you before so these all are part of the Scrapy system I have just written it differently so you can understand what each part does so what crawler does is again it crawls HTML pages from the forums parser does it parses the HTML pages like getting the HTML elements like post post content author etc and the analyzer so analyzer part is the part you can write different function for this in Scrapy so what analyzer does is so suppose you got the data from the dark web forum now you need to use some kind of techniques to evaluate the content that is relevant to your organization or relevant to your threat model so we will discuss what threat modeling is in the later part of the presentation so for now just understand there is you can't focus on every other threat that's out there you have to focus on threats that is relevant to your organization so you need to do some kind of analysis to like get the relevant data from the dark web so here comes the NLP model that I have been using so you can design or train your NLP model in this way that it can just get you the content that is relevant to your organization suppose if you are bank you don't want to focus on tools or you don't want to focus on data breaches that's not relevant to your bank you most likely would want to focus on the dump shops that's where credit cards or debit cards are being dumped so in this way different organizations have different requirements and you want to focus on those now designing and training NLP model can't be automated because you need some kind of content before content relevant to your threat model and then you need to train your NLP model on that it's like somewhat like either you get the data first or you design your model first so it's like egg and chicken problem but nowadays there are many NLP models like CDID LDA where you can provide like some kind of context before training the NLP model so it's easy to do that and then you store the data into ELK so these all things can be automated so coming to the part after getting this data so what's the process after hunting now we'll discuss a little about threat intelligence life cycle so what threat intelligence life cycle is these are different steps that your organization takes to build a threat to like it starts from getting the data till presentation of the data so how threat hunting on the dark web corresponds to this so there are like five phases as you can see direction, collection, processing, analysis and dissemination what we are doing is we are doing direction phase from the human sources like you can see dark web, social media forums so in the direction phase we identify dark web forums we register on those forums we acquire access on those forums in the collection phase you use SCRIPY to establish access and collect raw data processing phase is also using SCRIPY so you parse raw HTML data you extract topics and authors and the analysis phase is where we use NLP the machine learning models to infer relationship between these data we get data that is relevant to our organization we link data sources we identify trends and hacks and leaks etc and dissemination phase is where we visualize the data in dashboards if you are using Kibana or other kind of dashboards we give out alerts and reports for our higher managers or the other people to see in our organization so this is like crux of what threatening on the dark web maps to threaten this in life cycle now threat modeling as I told you I was going to talk about this in the coming presentation so what threat modeling is it's like getting your organization's critical assets and focusing on your organization's critical asset so it's like understanding threats and how you can mitigate it when it happens to your organization particularly so you understand what attacker want what different critical assets you have in your organization what are different types of actors that can target you whether they would be hacktivist or insiders or some kind of criminal groups and know their capability so here you choose your target on the dark web whether you want to so if you are bank you focus on critical markets if you are some other organization if you want you focus on inside the threat markets or you focus on general markets so in this way choose your target on the dark web you prioritize risk as you can use parameter of pain for that so you prioritize risk and focus on IOC's that are relevant to your organization another thing is you don't just use one source to target like there are many many forums on the dark web you don't just focus on one target you focus on multiple targets apart from dark web you focus on multiple clear web sites also like pagebin or twitter or nowadays on telegram also many these many actors are communicating so you focus on the dark web also and the clear web also to get all the things you can for protecting your organization so again data collection processing you collect data from the clear web dark web so some of the sites are pagebin twitter reddit on the dark web it's forums different forums and different marketplaces you can do all this using the scrappy crawler and parser that we discussed before the analysis part in the threat intelligence model is you use like I told you before you use NLP machine learning or deep learning techniques some of them are like LDA bird GPT to gather information related to your organization you use you analyze you use social network analysis for analysis of different users on the dark web that post data related to your organization there's clustering of products according to categories for the clustering thing you classify different so there's like binary classification classification so that's how you classify different products being sold on the dark web so these all things come under analysis I will touch a little on MITRE ATT&CK framework so what MITRE ATT&CK is it's a knowledge base of all the TTPs that was built using real world observations so it contains different tactics techniques and procedures that the attackers have used all these years so you use ATT&CK matrix to map the intelligence you obtained to understand the TTPs better and to protect your organization more so now coming to the operation security stuff so hunting on the dark web or if you are doing human intelligence stuff on the dark web you need to follow some set of processes so that you don't reveal your data reveal your identity or your organization identity as I talked before so what is OBSEC OBSEC is the practice of hiding yourself online so that you don't reveal your real self or compromise your own operations it's derived from the US military that's operation security you need to defend you need to hide your PIA that's personal information personal identifiable information so you need to you need to work on the dark web in such way that you don't disclose your full name or driver's license or bank account or even simple thing as email this is what you need to protect and that's why operation security is really important and it's also a hard thing to do because at the end of the day we are all humans and we like to be seen as knowledgeable and we like to impress others this all thing leads to gossiping bragging and over sharing with others that's why operation security is really hard and most of the time people think of it as a process so people think that I have to do human intelligence stuff now I have to follow operation security it should not be like that it should not be seen as a burden to perform or as another of your job task to perform it should be a mindset like you should always think about operation security before doing human intelligence or before engaging with actors so I will discuss some of the things that you can use to maintain a second in your daily lifestyle there are many other things so the main thing you want is hiding your identity so the first thing you can do you should do you should do is use separate system like I told or talked about before also use separate system where you don't store any personal information whether whether be it a lab or VM or some kind of system the main thing is to use Tor with proxy or Tor over VPN the main thing is maintaining different personas on the dark web so it's like I told it's an equivalent of an FBI agent going undercover so he has some kind of persona he has a backstory you have to do that you should have different personas for different identities that you have on different forums you should never mix it up that's why you have that's why you take extensive notes so that you don't mess up the personas and so you should always watch what you say and you should always think before posting you should so it's human intelligence is not a 95 job thing you can't just talk to or you can't just communicate to actors during your job time because they will know that you are doing this as your job so you can be exposed they can easily guess that you are a researcher and not a threat actor and that's why it would be a tip of for them that's why you have to do this work 24 by 7 it's not like you have to do this work on the weekends you have to do this work after your work hours it's a 95 job thing and you have to develop appropriate language skills because people don't talk formally like actors don't talk formally so you have to develop appropriate language skills or slang skills also there are many forums like there are different Russian forums or German forums so you might need to develop that language skills like learning Russian and learning German another thing to note is changing time zones suppose if you are in US and you are accessing or you are engaging in a community on a Russian forum you might want to change the time zone to Russia because it would be a tip off to the actors that you are a security researcher that you are not a real actor so these are some of the things that should be noted before doing a mental intelligence stuff on the dark web now that was it so concluding all this we discussed related about the dark web what dark web is how to access dark web we discussed about dark web forums and marketplaces what different products are being sold there what is the cost model around that we discussed about threatening on the dark web how you can hunt in the dark web we discussed different tools and the main tool was creepy that is the main framework that we are working on to hunt on the dark web we discussed about human intelligence how it can be used or how it should be used to support your tool based tool based data collection we discussed about the pipeline or the architecture that can be used to automate the dark web hunting we talked little about a threatening life cycle how threatening on the dark web maps to the life cycle steps and we talked about operation security and why it is so important and why it is so hard to do operation security again some more points to notice it is obviously threatening on the dark web is hard but it is worth the effort you do not get intelligence on the dark web you should always keep operation security in mind and like I said before you should look on more than one resource you should look on forums you should look on clear web forums also like apaisvin telegram as an example and you should look on different other forums on the dark web also it takes a lot of resources and a team effort you cannot do all these things alone so we have a team for this and we talked a little about usage of mitre attack framework and how to map your how it can be useful to map the TTPs map your TTPs to that these are some of the resources that I suggest you to read if you want to know more about the dark web stuff or dark web hunting stuff the major ones are recorded feature insight digital shadows they release their blogs or white papers regularly so read them and you will understand what all things are there on the dark web so yeah that was it I think thank you so much I hope you all like my presentation and you can contact me on twitter or LinkedIn if you have any doubt or if you want to discuss about this stuff more on indiscord to answer all your questions so yeah thank you


Kareen Hashinov vs. Kasper Rude is the first semi-final for the men's US Open for 2022. And both players have had different roads to get to this semi-final stage. Hashinov started the tournament off as the 27th seed and took on American Kudler in the first round. And after dropping the first set, he came back to winning 4-3-6-6-1-6-2-6-2. In the second round, he take on the Brazilian Montero and again he had to fight through in 4-6-3-6-3-5-7-6-4. In the third round, he take on the exciting youngster from the UK, Draper, who had just beaten Oje Aliasim. And after dropping the second set, Draper had to retire through injury, giving Hashinov the win 6-3-4-6-6-5-retirement. In the fourth round, he take on the 12th seed Karinja Buster, who had had a very good US Open series. And after taking two of the first three sets, Hashinov had to battle in the fifth. Eventually getting through 4-6-6-3-6-1-4-6-6-3 to advance to the quarter-finals. In the quarter-finals, Hashinov would take on the number 23 seed Nick Kirios, who just took out Daniel Medvedev, the world number one in defending champion. And after going up two sets to one, he had to fight to the death as Kirios tried to come back, eventually getting through in 5-7-5-4-6-7-5-6-7-6-4 to advance to his first semi-final at a slam. Kaspar Root came into the tournament seated 5 and would take on Kyle Edmund, the Brit who hadn't played for a long time. And this showed as Root won in straight sets 6-3-7-5-6-2. In the second round, he'd take on the exciting unseeded Dutchman Van Rijtoven, who had a great run at Wimbledon. And after dropping the first set, Root had to battle back, eventually prevailing in 4-6-7-6-4-6-4-6-4. In the third round, he'd take on the number 29 seed Tommy Paul, who had been in very good form throughout the US Open series. And after trading tie breaks in the first three sets, it turned into a classic, with Root eventually winning in five sets. 7-6-6-7-7-6-5-7-6-love. In the fourth round, Root would take on the lucky loser Moutay, who got a second chance after a few late withdrawals, and had to make the most of his second chance. And after dropping the third set, Root would eventually cruise through 6-1-6-2-6-7-6-2 to advance to his first US Open quarter-final. In the quarter-finals, Root would take on the number 13 seed Baratini, who had played very well at the US Open the previous few years. But Root came out on fire and would get through in straight sets 6-1-6-4-7-6 to advance to the semi-finals of the US. These two have only played the ones before on the clay a couple of years ago in Rome, so we can't really look too much into that one. Root got the win that day, so maybe has a little bit of confidence from that, but it's a totally different match up this time around. If Hashinov's going to win, he needs to serve well. He served OK against Kirios, he did struggle on the ground strokes in some of his movement, but if he serves well, gets those three points and do what Baratini couldn't do, he can get the win. If Root's going to win, he needs to make Hashinov move. He moved Baratini around with some success. He also needs to be aggressive Root and serve well, served out and lights out in the first couple of sets against Baratini and stick to the game plan. Because when he went away from that game plan against Baratini, it started to go wrong, so he needs to stick to the plan and move Hashinov around. This is going to be a really fun match up. Someone's making their first US Open final and both players probably unlikely to get to this stage at the start of the tournament. But I'm going to go with Root. I think he played so well against Baratini and if he replicates that against Hashinov, he's going to get the win in maybe four sets, maybe even five sets. But let me know down in the comments below who you think is going to win this semi-final.


Hi, I'm Ruben. I just started Changer Technologies in Pune a few months ago. So feel free to talk to me about it after the session. During this session that I'm going to hold, I will talk about mostly backbone and then synchronized models using Socket I.O. What that means is using Node.js in Socket I.O. you might know. It's very easy to exchange data between different clients and the server. And I want to explain how to use backbone models to only write one model for both server and clients and then have them synchronized or updated throughout your application. This will be beneficial when you're, for example, making an application where two or more users want to work on, for example, one document or one model, whatever that might be. So I will give a nice example also during the session. That's it.


Good morning. I'm delighted to be joined today by Peter Holmgren, the Director-General of the Centre for International Forestry Research, C4, and Tony Simons, the Director-General of the World Agroforestry Centre, also known as ICREF. Today we are marking the special occasion of the United Nations International Day of Forests. What is the state of the world's forest? Should we be worried? I think we should be grateful and delighted because forests and trees are contributing so much to the development that we need. More than one billion people get a big part of their income from the forests. A lot of the ecosystem services, the water we drink, sustaining agriculture, reducing hunger, a lot of this is happening through forests and trees. Often we take forests and trees for granted. There are very few things that live longer than humans and trees is one of those. Trees are the ultimate intergenerational gift and we don't really value them until they're gone. So we've got a net loss of trees at the moment and we've got to reverse that and that will come about through forest protection, better forest management, and planting programs that recognise the value and utility of those trees. So CFO has just launched its new 10 year strategy and ICREF will be doing the same and both will have strong links to the new global development agenda. Why the linkage? The Rio meeting in 1992 defined a lot of things, particularly related to the environment. We have the three large environment conventions. We also have what is now the UN Forum on Forests and CFO was created in the same spirit with a lot of focus on the environmental issues of forests. But since then CFO has worked in a broader fashion, looking at the policy arena, looking at the governance and the issues related to people and forests. This is really the spirit by which we are now launching our new strategy, where we are aligning ourselves to not one, not six, but all of the 17 sustainable development goals that the United Nations member countries agreed to. As Peter said, the contribution to the CGR3 high level goals of poverty reduction, reducing hunger and reducing environmental degradation are fundamental to the thread and aims of both of our institutes. And here the 100 million people that are going to be lifted out of poverty, the 150 million people that are going to be reduced in hunger and 190 million hectares of degraded land will be restored by 2030 from the efforts of the CGR, CFO and ICRAF contribute substantially to all of those. And what we're going to see now is a much more focused direction on that impact. We have the opportunity now to bring forestry into the full sustainable development framework. If you just take one of the goals in the sustainable development framework, water, forests and trees are essential for managing the planet's water. Probably the most important forest product in Jakarta is safe drinking water, which is harvested from the forests outside Bogor where we're sitting at this point in Seaforce campus.


Hi, everyone and welcome back to the forum webinar series. I'm Leslie Kanan, a senior field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and I'll be moderating this webinar today. In case you don't know, Preservation Leadership Forum is a professional membership program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The webinar series is made possible by members of Preservation Leadership Forum and we sincerely thank those of you who are here with us today. As part of the work of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, we have been working to highlight the people, places and stories associated with Brown v. Board of Education. Today is the first in a series of conversations we will have to broaden our understanding of this landmark case. Throughout this year, we will have conversations with Sites in South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and BC. Today's webinar features Cheryl Brown Henderson, the founding president of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research and one of the authors of the recently released Recovering Untold Stories and Enduring Legacy of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. We will talk about the experiences of the Brown family and Topeka and their role in the Brown v. Board of Education, as well as the work of Ms. Brown Henderson to expand our understanding of the numerous sites and communities and people associated with the case. Towards the end of the session, my colleagues Pam Bowman and Kendra Parsons will provide updates on the current work of the National Trust to highlight all the communities associated with this case. Before we begin, a few technical logistics. We will take questions from the audience during the webinar. Please send questions via the Q&A function directly to panelists. You are welcome to submit at any point during the webinar but we will be waiting until the Q&A session to answer questions. You are also encouraged to communicate to all participants throughout the presentation through the chat function. Following the program, we will send out a recording today's webinar directly to the email you used to register. And finally, all forum webinars are archived in our forum webinar library. So the start two years ago, Representative James Kleinberg invited the National Trust to help find a way to recognize all of the communities associated with the Brown people for vegetation. I have been working with Pam Bowman, who's the Director of Public Lands Policy and Kendra Parsons, a field officer to travel to South Carolina, DC, Virginia, Delaware and Kansas in order to talk to site stewards and community members and ultimately to come up with an appropriate way to work to highlight the people, places and stories. We will talk more about that towards the end of the program but first I wanna show you a short video about the Brown Beboard of Education. I'd like to welcome Cheryl Brown Henderson, who is one of three daughters of the late Reverend Oliver Brown and along with, my apologies, the Reverend Brown who in the fall of 1950 along with 12 other parents in Topeka, Kansas, led by attorneys for the NAACP, filed suit on behalf of their children against the local Board of Education. Their case joined with cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, DC on appeal to the US Supreme Court and on May 17th, 1954 became known as a landmark decision Brown Beboard of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Cheryl is the founding president of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity Excellence and Research and the owner of Brown and Associates Educational Consulting firm. She has extensive background in education, business and civic leadership, having served on and shared various local, state and national boards. In addition, she has two decades of experience and political advocacy, public policy, implementation and federal legislative development and is the recipient of various awards and recognition for work to preserve sites associated with the landmark US Supreme Court ruling of 1954. Miss Brown Henderson, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, I appreciate it. And so if I could ask you first, could you please talk about the Brown family and their role in the Brown Beboard of Education? Before I do that, I want to welcome everyone that's joined us today and thank the National Trust for historic preservation for this webinar. I was honored to have served on the board several years ago but I also want to set some context for what we're going to also be talking about later, the legislation that is hopefully going to officially connect the sites. Back in 2012, myself along with reps who bring to the Elliott and Davis, the Prince Edward County met in DC to strategize on how we could make that happen. And the outgrowth of that was a meeting with Congressman Clyburn and I see that Congressman Clyburn together with Chris Coon, Senator from Delaware have done just that. So we are absolutely thrilled. Initially, the idea was to perhaps place it under the new American history and culture but the Smithsonian does not have that type of infrastructure. So we're pleased to see that it's happening and it's happening under the Park Service was has that kind of template already in place. We're just excited about bringing everyone together. So, so going back to your question about Brown v. I believe you asked about our involvement in Brown and how it emerged in Topeka, is that correct? Yes. I always think about Brown v. Board in terms of myths, challenges and unanticipated consequences. People sometimes don't realize they talk about Supreme Court decisions in the abstract. Whether it's Tinker v. Des Moines or Keramatsu versus US or even Miranda v. Arizona. You don't think about it in terms of real people but we are real people. And when we hear the names of the Supreme Court decision that bears our name, we immediately think about our father, for example. And it's an interesting paradox because you don't have any claim to that and people do use the court decision for various purposes. Brown v. Board Community Garden, for example, but I just want you to know that because we are people, it does evoke a visceral response when that happens and it is a peculiar place to be. People ask all the time, what does it feel like? Well, sometimes wonderful, sometimes not so good, sometimes embarrassing based on how people have chosen to use the title of the case for their own purposes. But our family in Brown in terms of the myths, the story had been put forth as early as 1953. The Brown v. Board was all about Oliver Brown who sued the school board because his daughter Linda could not attend the neighborhood school, which was segregated for white children only. And that happens not to be true. And that's the mythic part about Brown v. Board. Brown v. Board of Education, first of all, was more than a century making. First school to set gaze in the country was 1849 in Boston, Robert versus the city of Boston. And in that 105 year period, there were numerous school desegregation cases. California, Arizona, Delaware, Kansas, mostly litigated in state Supreme Court and some of them successful before Brown v. Board. The uniqueness in Brown was that by the time the inter-boycott he was established in 1909, their whole purpose was to demand adherence to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and make sure people of color had access to all constitutional rights and privileges. And in doing so, now they set out to make it happen in different ways. Finally, when Thurgood Marshall, let me go back a minute, because even in Kansas before there wasn't NAACP, African-American parents were challenging this notion in court of segregated public schools. So the Topeka case came on the heels of what's known as the web case, which was over in the Kansas City area. And the president of the Topeka NAACP, McKinley Burnett, watching what was going on over in that part of the state, attending state meetings of the NAACP, it was very aware of the need to make this change. The Kansas legislature allowed segregated schools, but only at the elementary level. The only exception was if requested by parents, as in the case of Kansas City, Kansas, and Sumner High School, which was a black high school. But every place else, it was not legal to have segregated schools except elementary schools. If you were a city of 15,000 or larger, Topeka met that template. So in Topeka, the NAACP was pursuing the integration or desegregation of the elementary schools. The junior highs and high schools were already integrated. So how we got involved in Brownlee Board and the myth of this whole thing, McKinley Burnett, the NAACP president, made a decision on part of the chapter. After two years, 1948 to 1950, attending every single school board meeting, taking petitions signed by hundreds and sometimes thousands of parents wanting to integrate those elementary schools and being ignored. So finally, in May of 1950, he cautioned the school board that they had been given two years of opportunity to make this change, and they hadn't seen fit to do so. In the summer of 1950 then, the end of the ACP with a legal counsel, John Scott Charles Scott and Charles Bledsoe, and the secretary of the chapter, Lucinda Todd, decided they would organize litigation and they would challenge what the school board had refused to do. But they were challenged in federal district court, not state supreme court, but they needed plaintiffs. They needed parents of elementary age children. So all across the city that summer, going to churches, talking to friends and neighbors who may be African-American, trying to assemble a group of parents. Brownlee Board was a class action, which is why it is so disturbing when people try to find that role solely to my father. And of course it happens not to be true. So by the fall of 1950, they have 13 families that have said, yes, they will be plaintiffs for the end of the ACP's case against the school board. My father was the 10th person to sign on. It was not his idea. He was not the first person. The first plaintiff in the local case was Lucinda Todd, who had been a teacher pre-Brown and because she married, could no longer teach in those days. And was also the secretary for the chapter. So she was at the meetings. So she immediately volunteered to be a plaintiff. She was the first plaintiff in Brownlee Board Topeka. So in the fall of 1950, the parents were instructed by the NAACP to locate a white school near your home. We lived in integrated neighborhoods. And often there would be a school in that neighborhood, but it was for white children only. And therefore off limits to the children in that neighborhood. People need to understand that African American parents in Topeka or children were not anxious about leaving their segregated school. They weren't pursuing access to the white neighborhood schools because the African American schools were excellent. The teachers in those schools held more advanced degrees than their white counterparts because there was no other outlet for that masters or post-masters work. They were excellent schools. So the Topeka case was not about educational quality. Children rode buses to school. So the case was not about riding school buses and getting to school. None of that was true. At the time, Topeka had 22 elementary schools, 18 for white children and only four for African American children. So regardless of where you lived, you as an African American person, you had to wait to find out where your child would be assigned, what school they would be assigned to. So Charles Scott, one of the attorneys for Brown was a personal friend of my father. He came to our home and asked my dad if he was willing to join the case that the NAACP was putting together. This is not something my dad did. Not something he thought about. He was asked to join. And his only question was because when he looked at the list of who had signed so far, they were all moms, married women, all makers who had signed on, not concerned about employment issues as their husbands may have been. My father was a welder for the Santa Fe Railroad at the time and was studying for the ministry. So he was a union member. Didn't have to worry about employment repercussions. So after some contemplation, dad said yes and he was a 10th person to sign on. So by the fall, they had their team of 13 parents. They were told what to do, take your child, children of witness, find the white school closest to your home and attempt to enroll your child. So every instance, the parents did just that. They would sit their children in the vestibule of the school or the hallway. Parents would go and have a conversation with the principal, which would always be the same, we believe. So the parents were asked then to come back to the NAACP and report about what happened as they went to these schools. So there were eight white schools named in Brown v.  Those were the three children attending Monroe. So again, you know, people get this thing about, it was only Monroe and Brown and that's just not true. So the eight white schools that were part of Brown v. Board were Clay and Gage and Randolph and Lohman Hill and Parkwell and Quincy and Lafayette. And then the four black schools, McKinley, Buchanan, Washington and Monroe. All of those were part of Brown v. Board. So it really is an irritance when people try to make it first of all about our family and secondly, only about those two schools when in fact, you know, it was much broader than that and it does a disservice to those fellow litigants when that happened. So in February, February 28th, and I'm gonna wrap this part up is when the case was filed, February 28th, 1951. That's when it became known as Oliver L. Brown at all versus the Board of Education at Topeka, Kansas and it was appealed to the United States Supreme Court that was another at all edit to the end of it. And for those of you that are not aware, E-T-A-L is an abbreviation for the Latin words et alia, meaning and others. Unfortunately, because it's legal shorthand which relegates hundreds of people to historic footnotes whose names and faces we may never know, which is why the book that Leslie mentioned, we published because we want people to know, you know, who these folks were in their five cases, what their sacrifices were. So anyway, what's been important to us is just that, that we are proud that dad's name, you know, Oliver L. Brown is etched in history, but it comes with a responsibility. And that responsibility is to be truthful and to be forceful in telling people what happened. The NAACP, we owe them a debt of gratitude. You know, this was their effort over a long period of time, higher education cases, teacher salary cases, and then finally into the K-12 system. So I never want people to get confused into thinking, although we're proud of it. You know, I will never accept when people say, you know, we appreciate what your family did. My response is always, we are grateful that the NAACP was able to help make this change.  Board, do it honestly. Do not err on the side of the myth because it's simple and convenient because it is not true. And in this area of disinformation, we can't afford that. Thank you, that's powerful, that's a powerful message. And I wanna sort of continue on this thread a little bit about telling the full story of Brown v. Board by talking about the book that you helped write. So you helped write recovering untold stories and enduring legacy of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In it, you talked to plaintiffs and families that actually represent all of the communities directly associated with the case. Can you talk about what it was like working with these communities? And if there was anything that surprised you or anything that was noteworthy that you found as you've been doing this work over the years? Well, the Brown Foundation was established in 1988 and its sole purpose was to pay tribute to the attorneys and community organizers and plaintiffs in all five cases of Brown. Our first charge, however, was to locate them. So we started this work back in 2004 in finding where they were, what their names were, how to contact them so we could bring people together. And in 2004 was the first time we were together as litigants from Delaware, DC, Virginia, South Carolina and Kansas. And we did so, we had an event at the Smithsonian in one of the days that we were all together. We were guests at the White House, a First Lady Laura Bush at the time. And I bring all this up because I overheard one of the plaintiffs saying as we were leaving that gathering at the White House that we had waited 50 years for this was the statement because basically people weren't knocking on their door to find out who they were. People weren't trying to learn about, and most people weren't even aware. Now Brown v. Board Topeka, Kansas is settled and mentioned in Brown v. Board, let alone the companion cases. So we knew we were on the right track. So over the years when we get together we started calling ourselves a Brown v. Board of Education family. So it's like a family reunion now. So we've come to know. So I will say this before I talk about the book that in 2014 we were able to take 62 people from the five cases to a meet and greet at the White House with President Obama. And it's obvious why that was important because their story was his story as to how he got where he was. And it was an amazing experience. But going back to the book, we wanted to find a way, an encapsulated way like a book where people could tell their stories finally in their own words and have their photos there. We had a grant from the Hall Foundation, the Hallmark Card family out of Kansas City and the Walton Family Foundation. So over a two year period, we met at the museum in DC, the museum of African American history and culture. And we had scholars playwright, an English professor and historian work with the group on essay writing. First convincing them their stories were compelling and important and people needed to know who they were. And then starting to the process of how do you write an essay? How do you make it engaging? What is your narrative? Everything is interesting about you. So over a two year period, we ended up with the essays that were published in the book. And after that, we had a second grant from the Walton Family Foundation to the whole book launch events around the country. And we did so in New York and South Carolina and DC, et cetera, Virginia. And the video you saw was also part of that project from our partner, the 74 million. So we are keeping true to our mission in making sure people know as many people from those five cases and what they, some of them sacrificed greatly, lost jobs, lost their homes, churches were burned, people lost their life in some instances. We didn't have that experience in Kansas. So it makes it doubly important that we make sure their stories are told. And the book, you can, there's a link on our website and it's educational only. So it's not a money making it. There's no profit margin there or motive. You can read it online or you can order a hard copy, print on demand, cost recovery only for the cost of printing because we want this story to be known. Thank you so much. I think it's so important. It's so interesting this idea of when people don't think that their stories are important because sometimes people think, oh, only if I'm famous or only if I'm wealthy or only if I'm a politician, but this idea that everyone's stories are important, especially all of those associated with this case and all the various communities. I do wanna talk a bit or want you to talk a bit about the Brown Foundation, about why you created the Brown Foundation, which you talked a little bit about that in terms of the mission. I want you to talk a little bit about the work of the Brown Foundation over the years. So we talked about the book, but what about the other work that the Brown Foundation has been doing? Well, shortly after our establishment in 1988, we had a fortuitous occurrence. I guess I'll look at it that way. Two years into our existence in 1990, one of my board members driving home passed one of the schools that had been in Brown v. Board. It was going to be auctioned off, the Monroe Elementary School, and he called and said, we've gotta save this building. And in doing so, it led us through the maze of Capitol Hill and working with Congress and talking to them about help us save this building because Brown v. Board is United States history. This is an opportunity to have a place where the story of Brown can be told. I must tell you, in working to create a national historic site, a unit of the National Park Service was enlightening and it was an education. It was certainly something we're proud of and you can't start something and walk away. It took 14 years of work to get that site open because there's so many different studies and hearings and activities that go into creating a unit of the National Park Service. And then at the very end, in that there's coming up with what are we gonna use the building for? How will the exhibits look? So when you visit that site, all of those exhibits there are our brainchild, people in the Brown Foundation and those who were contractors working alongside us. We had an opportunity to travel to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. One of our meetings were in the old Hilltop Hotel, which was a hotel on a mountain above the Shenandoah and the Potomac where they come together beautiful. An African-American man built, love it, I believe his name was, that hotel and we met at Storr College of the old historic HBCU where the Park Service now has a design and preservation center. We just said connectivity, I guess, is what I'm trying to explain. So the Brown Foundation, when we started, one of our first programs was in oral history. So we raised money again from Hallmark cards and we were able to capture the oral stories of 88 people that were either part of Brown or impacted by Brown or from the white community who were principals and community members and how they viewed that. And it's archived at the Kansas State Historical Society. It's not video because that was back in the 90s. So it's strictly audio and transcription. Next, we developed a traveling exhibit. There are panels behind me that are part of that 12 panel exhibit that still travels the country to this day. And we're very proud of that. We developed curriculum for both primary grades through high school and some universities have used that curriculum. We also, a lot of training, teacher workshops and training Park Service personnel. Whenever new staff would come to the historic site, we would help in the orientation to make sure they understood the story that they were supposed to be interpreting. We also developed children's libraries because in our community, in the low income area of our community, there was always bus transportation. Topeka was building a brand new state of the art library on the west side of town. On the east side of town where most of the low income communities are, the bus service stopped at six o'clock. So how are you supposed to get to this state of the art library when you have perhaps no car and no other transportation? So our motivation for starting those libraries was because reading is the foundation of education. And if we couldn't make a gift for children access and develop the love of books and the love of reading. So we started for libraries. One in a housing project, one in a community center, one at a head start school and one at a Salvation Army Center. And so we're very proud of that. So we were just involved in what we saw were furthering the tenants of Brown in a practical way. And that was through the libraries and books, through the orientation for park staff, through the curriculum that teachers could use in their classrooms, through the traveling exhibit that people could have on site. And then of course now the book. So we have been at this for 30 plus years. And for me, it's been lifelong. I was born in 1950. So my mom, very likely would have been the plaintiff from our family instead of dad, had she not been expecting me. So Brown v. Board, been all I've known. I was born into this and living a life of consequence happens either by choice or by chance. And in my case, it was both by chance. And then I decided it needed to be by choice because Brown v. Board was happening to us.  And the press and documentarians and people would converge on our city. And it was happening to us. We weren't controlling the narrative. We weren't taking responsibility. So the foundation was started for those reasons. I sat my family down in 1987 after the Life Magazine story of Brown because they were commemorating the Constitution and that particular issue of Life Magazine. I said, okay guys, we really need to learn more, take responsibility. My father died in 1961. I was only 10, my sister Linda 18, my sister Terry 14. My mom was a quintessential 1950s homemaker. So without your breadwinner, the concern becomes keeping the family together. So we were living in Springfield, Missouri. My dad was a pastor there at Benton Avenue. It's his second church. He'd had a church in Topeka. So we had to leave and move in with my paternal grandparents. So Brown v. Board was not high on our list, keeping the family together, making sure we were taken care of. We never talked about Brown around the dinner table. My father died before he could share with us. His thoughts, he hadn't published anything on Brown v. Board. He had become more of an activist in Missouri because in Topeka, obviously he was asked to be part of Brown. He was not a community activist, but he did become an active community member and desegregated the movie theaters and some of those steps in Springfield, Missouri. And they are now commemorating his life. They've purchased the old church that he pastored at in our old home and they're hoping to create an Oliver Brown center there in Springfield. So many things are happening now that our country, we believe, had matured enough to really embrace all of its history and to be more inclusive and they're concerned about that after what we've all experienced. But that pretty much is the work. We're of course very proud of having done the heavy lifting to create a national park to interpret Brown v. Board. So I wanna talk with this, with this last question, I wanna talk a little bit about today. And that is that there is proposed legislation that would replace Virginia's statue of Robert E. Lee in the state capital, I'm sorry, in the nation's capital with the civil rights leader, Barbara Johns. And as you know, better than anyone else, Barbara Johns was a teenager when she led the student strike at Robert Russo Moten High School. When you think about the youth activism associated with Brown v. Board and the youth driven activism that we have been seeing over the last several years, what do you think is the legacy of Brown v. Board? Well, Brown v. Board, I mean, as I watched the Black Lives Matter movement all across the country, it was a beautiful thing. It resonated with me because Brown v. Board was a movement. It was a collective action. The NAACP started this movement, as I said, through Charles Hamilton Houston hiring Thurgood Marshall, his former student and moving across the South with teachers always and moving into higher education and moving into, this was a collective action and a movement of sorts. Now, African-American progress in this country and demanding that this country live up to its promise, it's always been movement oriented. So when I saw people taking to the street, now the one thing I do caution when I speak at universities is movements are necessary, but at some point you have to move from the streets to indoors, to the legislative process, to the policy process in city councils, to school board meetings. So you bring attention to the cause on the streets, but you can't just go home and say, wow, you have to make sure you do the hard work of becoming politically viable. I think Corey, change not Corey, a booker, it's a blessing booker that young woman from Missouri, the first African-American. Corey Bush, is it Corey Bush? Yeah, she's a prime example. She moved from activism in the streets to the halls of Congress and Capitol Hill. So I view this as an extension of Brown v. Board, a lot of people, because they don't understand it in that way, once you understand it in that way, that this was a movement of hundreds and hundreds of people, community organizers, Reverend Griffin in Virginia, McKinney Burnett in Topeka, Lewis Redding in Delaware, Gardner Bishop in DC, everybody had a community organizer behind Brown v. Board that organized the classes of plaintiffs to make sure they understood what was at stake, because it was a risk they were taking in 1950 to stand up for your rights and demand. Martin Luther King held three marches in Washington to demand that the country implement and comply with the court's decision in Brown, 57, 58 and 59. If you're not aware, that's something you can read about online. But he understood that it's fine to have these decisions, but unless the bully pulpit of the presidency and the Congress put the weight of that behind them, it's not likely they'll take on the urgency that they needed to. You saw what happened in Brown. When the Southern Manifesto was written and it became clear to Southern school districts that Congress had their back if they wanted to defy the court, that's exactly what happened. And I firmly believe that to this day, we are living with the residual effects of the Southern Manifesto and what's happening. When you saw in the video, the part of the Brown decision I prefer was on the screen and that's where Oral Warren talked about the importance of education and how education needs to be an opportunity that's equally provided. I'm not fond of the statement he read publicly that in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no choice. And I'm not fond of that because it cannot matter if you are sitting in a classroom or everybody in that classroom looks like me, I still should have an expectation of receiving a world-class education. In the aftermath of Brown, people were trying to implement those words of separate but equal has no place, busting our children to suburban school district, building management schools to try to encourage white parents to come back to the urban core. You know, that defies reason to me. And it ignores the purpose of education which is to make sure you are giving the children in front of you, you know, the best chance at life they can have. And so the decision is more than the statement Justice Warren chose to read. And third of the Marshall himself says that Brown was never about sitting next to white children. It was about making sure the resources were available to all so that education could in fact be provided on an equitable basis to all. So I think we've come a long way through the marches. I think it's called attention. I think the Biden administration and having Kamala Harris's VP will keep this ever present. I think talking about reparations is a step in the right direction because there's so many companies and corporations in this country that have been a generational wealth has been created, you know, millions and billions because of that free slave labor. So we're getting there, Leslie, slowly but surely that we keep our heads down and keep working. And the book, the sum of us is a must read because it explains it in economic terms. Can you, you're saying the sum of us, can you tell us who that's by? Yeah, by McGee. I've got it on my Heather McGee. And it talks- I think it's a book that we should all check out. Because it talks about the economic disadvantage for all, white and black and Latino and Hispanic and so on because racism, you know, and let me give you a quick example. When public schools were closed in Farmville, Virginia for five years, that meant unless you were a part of the white community that could afford to go to the academies that sprung up or you could send your child out of the county, you know, you had no school either. And for African-Americans, unless you have family or people you knew you could send your children to live with. But my point is that this group was so spiteful that they would rather cut off avenues even for their children as long as they knew they were hurting our children. Montgomery, Alabama, you know, beautiful public park in the center of the city, swimming pool, you know, zoo connected with it. When African-Americans demanded the right to access and gained it, they closed the pool, filled it in with dirt, closed the zoo.  That's a powerful statement, a very true statement. I want to take a few minutes to, there's some questions, I believe, from the audience. So let's take a few minutes to see what those questions are. So there's a question, it says, is it not true that some Southern school district did not segregate the entire district K through 12? Did not segregate or integrate? Are they asking if they were segregated? It says, is it not true that some Southern school districts did not segregate? I guess they're asking if there were Southern school districts that had integration K through 12? I honestly, I have to be honest, I can't speak to Kansas in that I mentioned earlier that our general highs and high schools were integrated. However, the integration at the high school, and my mom attended, you know, integrated high school to Pica High School, they were only integrated for academic, extracurricular activities were segregated. Two basketball teams, two football teams, two cheerleading squads, two proms. So only academics, I cannot speak knowledgeably about the Southern schools pre Brown v. Board. Okay, the next question is, well, it looks like there's a correction, hold on. So it says, is the school building where the Brown children attended school still standing? If so, is it a designated historic site? Does the city of Topeka recognize the significance of this case in its public history? But then there's a correction to that question, it looks like it says, are the school buildings built for segregation in Topeka still standing in their history recognized by the city of Topeka? That's a very good question. Yeah, there are 16 sites in Topeka that were associated with Brown v. Board. And yes, the all but two of this, the wide schools that were part of Brown are still standing and majority of them are I think only ones not used for school. There's still schools. The African-American schools, however, were eventually closed largely because the communities changed. And I taught at Monroe Elementary. Monroe was the African-American school among the four black schools. It was a school that my mom attended when it was brand new building in 1926 as a first grader. And it was first grade through eighth grade, the elementary schools. Then they went one year junior high and then onto high school. And so I taught there, my sisters were there, my mom, I taught there and so on. What I taught there was 95% African-American. But it's now a Brown v. Board National Historic Site. Building is used for the historic site. The other buildings are in different use. Clay, which is one of the wide schools name is now a private school, Care Paraville. The building is still standing. Sumner has been abandoned, well not abandoned, but it's owned by a concern from out of the city. The other white school, Gage, is now used as a civic theater. But the remaining white schools in Brown are still schools. So they are not necessarily recognized although we have on multiple occasions written articles for the newspaper to make sure people knew which buildings were involved in Brown, which white schools and which black schools were involved in Brown. So in answer to your questions, it's kind of a mixed bag as to who's aware. And it's certainly not a city-wide recognition of those buildings. So there are two questions that are related. And that was, and that is, why was your father's name placed on the case if he was the tense to sign on? And then relate a question asking why Brown was the first name, was it alphabetical? Yeah, that is a great question. And no, it wasn't alphabetical. When you look at the list of plaintiffs, for example, the traveling exhibit I have up, one of the panels shows the plaintiffs in all the cases, but Kansas in particular, the 13 plaintiffs were comprised of 12 women and one man. Alphabetically, our plaintiff, Darlene Brown, would have been first alphabetically because Oliver, O comes after D, but my father was the only man. So we believe that the decision who assigned him the role as lead plaintiff was either a legal strategy or something done by the clerk of the court. We don't know. But we do believe it was a gender-based decision. Interesting, interesting. So then there's actually a question about the exhibit that's behind you, because what are the specifics of the traveling exhibit mentioned, including the process of requesting it? Oh, good question. You can, two things. You can view some of his content, excuse me, on our website, brownvibor.org. And also there is an explanation of how to borrow the exhibit. There is an agreement that you print off and complete with the days you wanna use it, the cost of the loan, the shipping and all of that is on our website. And we're so pleased that it's been so popular. We developed this in 1993 and once it was announced to our community, our state that it was ready, it was a three-year wait list for the exhibit. We had done the right thing. And then once our website was up and running and people around the country also started borrowing it for their schools and churches and university campuses. That's amazing. We have one last question. It says, I know there are other schools, for example, McDonough 19 school in New Orleans where black students helped to desegregate New Orleans schools in 1960. What opportunities would you see to share stories like this along with Brown v. Board stories to amplify the story about efforts to desegregate American schools? That's a good question because the cases that predate Brown, I think about Mendes versus Westminster in California and the case in Arizona. You know, I really don't know what they're doing but I do know that New Orleans through the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation have really started to call attention to some of the activity within the city of New Orleans. Ruby Bridges was not the only elementary child during that period. I think there were maybe six little girls but the Bridges case drew the most attention because she was having to be ushered to school and all the white parents took their children out of the second grade or whatever grade it was. And so Ruby spent an entire year in an empty room with the she and her teacher. It was so dramatic which is why we focus mainly on Ruby Bridges but there is some move around making sure not only Plessy in New Orleans but what happened with their schools is it will be recognized. So there are a few more questions coming in but unfortunately we have to move on to the next section but what I'm gonna do is send these questions to you and then hopefully you can answer them and then we can be able to respond. So those in the chat, you can keep sending your questions and we'll try to get those answered and then respond to you. I wanna thank you so much Sheryl Brown Henderson for agreeing to speak with us today and all the ways that you've been helping us throughout this process as we try to highlight these stories and it's been so amazing to hear you speak today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And now I'm gonna turn it over to Pam Bellman and Kendra Parton. Hi, thanks Leslie and thank you as well Sheryl. It was a great conversation. Just wanted to talk a little bit about the legislation that both Leslie and Sheryl referenced earlier in the webinar. A big component of the Brown v. Board Treasure Campaign that the National Trust launched in September 2020 is advocating for legislation that would help connect the sites associated with the court cases and really preserve and protect those sites for future generations. And as this effort evolved in collaboration with the local partners we've been working with, our champions in Congress and others, the approach that emerged was for the sites to become part of the National Park System. And you'll see here on this slide excuse me, that the National Park Service currently manages over 420 sites that include historic buildings and cultural assets. And first Sheryl, talk about all of their efforts for creating the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas. And the new legislation that's been introduced provides an opportunity for the public to learn about the stories of all four court cases and those communities as well. The Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site Expansion Act does a couple of things. It would expand that Topeka, Kansas site to include sites in South Carolina and would also establish National Park Service affiliated areas in Virginia, Delaware and Washington DC communities. Next slide. In the interest of time, I won't go through this in a lot of detail, but there's a little bit of information here about National Park Service affiliated areas. There's about 15 types of designations for the National Park Service. And as part of our research and efforts around this project, it made sense for a variety of reasons for several of these sites connected to the court case to become National Park Service affiliated areas. There's a few advantages listed here as well, including that's many of these sites continue to operate either as schools or administrative buildings, community centers or museums. And this kind of arrangement allows the ownership structure to remain and also allows them to be available for, there's availability for technical and financial assistance to help with the preservation of those sites. Next slide. And here's a little bit of information we have here about the legislation that was just reintroduced about 10 days ago. The bill numbers are listed here. This is bipartisan and bicameral legislation. It's been introduced in both the House of Representatives by Representative Clyburn and also in the Senate by Senator Coons of Delaware. We're also pleased to report that there's been a 100% participation by the House and Senate offices that represent the site locations that I mentioned earlier. We've seen a lot of bipartisan support, a lot of information being shared in congressional newsletters about the excitement and momentum that's building around this legislation. So we all encourage you to be a part of that effort. I'll turn this over to Kendra now, and she can talk a little bit about some of the resources we have to help you advocate. Thank you, Pam. So for everyone joining us today, we would love to have your support in advocating for the passage of this legislation, which Pam said is currently up for consideration in Congress. There are a few ways that you can do that. First, if you would like to express your individual support, we invite you to visit savingplaces.org slash Brown VBOE and you will find there a form which will let you ask your elected officials to support the Brown V Board of Education, National Historic Site Expansion Act. We also have the option if there's anybody on the call today whose organization would like to express support for this legislation, we invite you to join our organizational sign and letter to Congress, and you can get on that list by emailing us at brownvboeatsavingplaces.org. And then finally, please follow the National Trust website and social media for future opportunities to learn and get involved, as well as for information about future webinars and for articles about this amazing history. So thank you and we hope very much to have your support. And I will now turn this back over to Leslie. So please keep the discussion going on our forum connect. This is our online community for people in the business of saving places. We have active conversations happening all week around topics from section one and six to women's history at historic sites. If you haven't joined connect yet, you should. It's a great place to keep up with this conversation and start more. Also, don't forget to take advantage of these additional upcoming programs. Join the Fitch Collifium tomorrow, beginning at noon Eastern and upcoming preservation leadership forum webinars on the title basin in context on March 3rd and preservation advocacy requests on March 4th. Thank you to everyone who attended today's webinar. A special thank you to Cheryl Brown Henderson for sharing her story with us. If any of you have any questions following this webinar, please don't hesitate to contact us. Our email is form at savingplaces.org noted on the screen here. Thank you again.