(gentle music)
- Good morning.
I'm Michael Atwood-Mason,
CEO and executive director
here at President Lincoln's Cottage
at the old Soldier's Home.
We're delighted to welcome you
and our distinguished guests this morning
for an amazing conversation
about the commemoration of America's 250th birthday in 2026.
President Lincoln's Cottage exists as a national monument
where we connect people with the spirit of the Lincoln's,
engage their empathy,
we inspire them to live out their own brave ideas
for social justice.
And we do that by preserving this amazing house
and sharing it with people.
We're excited today
because we feel like the spirit of this conversation
is very much in line with the spirit of this place
and the work that we do here.
As we prepare as a country for the Quincentennial in 2026,
I think that we will be deeply engaged
in reflection as a nation.
We'll be asking hard questions about ourselves.
Where do we come from?
Where are we headed?
What brings us together
at a time when so much pulls us apart?
And what happens when we share the stories
that matter most to us?
what happens when we share those really powerful stories
with each other?
How does that change us
and how does that change the communities in which we live?
It's in that spirit
of exploration, conversation and reflection
that I'm just so delighted
to welcome our guests this morning.
First, I'd like to introduce Dr. Edna Medford,
who's a professor of history emerita at Howard University.
She was the director
of the African American Burial Ground Project
in New York City and is a distinguished author
who's focused on the Jacksonian era,
focused on reconstruction and the Civil War era,
a real expert of the highest quality
and one of the most unassuming people in this space.
We're just delighted to have you.
And also, I'm pleased to introduce Crosby Kemper,
who's the director
of the Institute for Museum and Library Services
and the former director of the Kansas City Public Libraries.
So without further ado,
I'd like to invite you all
to begin this important conversation.
(audience applauding)
- So thank you so much, Michael.
We're grateful to you for that kind introduction
and for hosting us here at Lincoln's Cottage,
here where Lincoln worked on the Emancipation Proclamation,
and I'm joined, as Michael said,
by Dr. Edna Medford of Howard University,
the chair emeritus of the history department
and an authority on Abraham Lincoln
and the Emancipation Proclamation.
It's our intention
at the Institute of Museum and Library Services
that this should be the first in a series
of conversations with historians, critics, civic leaders,
to inform and engage libraries and museums,
their communities and patrons
in commemorating, celebrating,
interrogating, debating
and invigilating the 250th anniversary
of the Declaration of Independence.
Dr. Medford, I would thank you so much for doing this
and being here. - It's my pleasure.
- I want to start by asking you two related questions,
questions about the contradictions that American history
is frequently all about
and certainly the Emancipation Proclamation.
In the forward to your book
on the Emancipation Proclamation
written with Harold Holzer and Frank Williams,
John Hope Franklin quotes you as saying,
"Lincoln is the embodiment of our national character,
at its best and most hopeful,
at its worst and most pessimistic."
But later in your essay,
you say, "Lincoln was an atypical 19th century American.
In a nation awash in racial hatred,
he believed in the fundamental right of all people
to enjoy equality of opportunity."
So is Lincoln a contradictory character?
Is he a typical 19th century American
or an atypical 19th century American?
- That's a tough one to answer because Lincoln is such,
he's so different
from anyone that we've had in history I think.
So he is a contradiction in a sense,
but also the nation's ideals are contradictory.
I mean we talk about and they talked about equality,
they talked about liberty, they talked about freedom,
but that's not what the reality was
at the founding of the nation.
I think that we like to think of Lincoln
as an example of who we are
because it's who we would like people to think we are,
but we really are not, not yet.
We may get there someday,
but we certainly have not gotten there up to this point.
Lincoln certainly is different from the average American
in the sense that he has the ability
to sort of put his prejudices aside
and do what's best for the nation.
We have seen then throughout history
and now I think we're also seeing
that people are taking a more selfish perspective.
And so they're looking more
at how the nation can do something to advantage them
as opposed to what they can do to make the nation whole
and to make it a better place to be.
But Lincoln is that example
of who we would like to think we are.
- And that's such a great point
about the sense of obligation not being as important
as perhaps it once was or as it was to Lincoln.
And let me put it this and ask you a question
about the context of the Emancipation Proclamation.
There is a quote on the mantelpiece here from Lincoln,
"If my name ever goes into history,
it will be for this act and my whole soul is in it."
So I'd like to ask you about the act,
the Emancipation Proclamation.
Recently, it's been written about,
as the Gettysburg Address has been written about,
as perhaps a fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence,
as related to the Declaration of Independence,
why we're here today in a way.
But it's also seen by many
as not a fulfillment or a partial fulfillment,
a divergence from the ideals of the declaration.
Is it a step towards all men are created equal?
Is it a step towards the inalienable rights
being finally given to those to whom it was not given
at the time of the Declaration in the Constitution?
- Certainly, it is a first step.
Lincoln understood
that the principles of the Declaration of Independence
could not be realized as long as you had slavery,
'cause you can't say all men are created equal
and have the right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness
and have almost four million enslaved people
who had none of that, none of those opportunities.
So he understood that if the declaration
is going to be what the country said it was,
then you had to do something about slavery.
But that doesn't mean that Lincoln did this
to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
Lincoln makes this move because he's in the middle of a war
and he's so concerned
that the nation is going to remain divided.
He understands that the issue is slavery
and that as long as slavery is there,
there's always going to be
this divisive element in the country.
Now, he's able to say
those beautiful words that are on the wall
because there is a part of Lincoln, of course,
a major part of Lincoln
that understands that slavery was immoral
and understood that everyone had the right to liberty.
I don't know that I would go so far as to say equality.
I don't think Lincoln had gotten quite to that point,
except that he believed in equality of opportunity.
And in that way, he's very different
from the average white American of the 19th century.
- And I want to get in in a minute
to the question of his views of race
and his views of slavery,
which debated among historians,
if they're the same thing or very different things.
But I want to ask you again about the proclamation.
There are a series of steps.
There's a preliminary proclamation
and then there's the proclamation itself.
And at each step along the way,
he's criticized, particularly by abolitionists,
by Garrison and Wendell Phillips and
also by Frederick Douglass. - Yes.
- For being too legalistic about it,
for it being a war measure in which,
and of course, in the detail,
he doesn't free all the slaves,
it's complicated.
Were they right?
Was the Emancipation Proclamation,
you've said essentially it was a war measure?
Or was it, Lincoln himself says
when he writes the actual Emancipation Proclamation
on January 1st, 1863, he rewrites it a little bit.
And one of the key phrases,
it's structured as a war measure,
his war power has given the right to do it,
but he says it's an act of justice.
- Right, right, so it can be both
'cause remember Lincoln is a very complicated person, okay?
So he's using the war measures,
he's using that part of the constitution that says
that the commander in chief has the right
to seize or destroy any property that belongs to the enemy
or even to someone who's in support of the Union
if that property is being used against the Union,
but he also understands that this is a moral issue
and so he's willing to say that,
but I think that we go too far
when we say that Lincoln did this
primarily because of his moral position.
That's not it.
Lincoln would've been more than willing
to allow slavery to continue
if it meant preserving the Union.
And so we need to understand the position he was in.
He was fighting a war,
a civil war that was absolutely horrific.
He believed that the Union was not dissolvable.
He had to do something to preserve it.
He was willing to do whatever he had to do
to accomplish that.
And so he came to the realization fairly early,
and this is how I differ with myself
because initially when I started studying Lincoln,
I thought, wow, this guy's taking way too long
to get to the real crux of the matter.
And when I look back now,
I see that he came to the realization pretty quickly,
but he understood that the nation was not with him yet.
You know, we sometimes think that it's only in the south
that people think that slavery is okay.
Well, there were a lot of northerners
who didn't care either.
As long as they weren't touched by the institution
in a negative way, they didn't care.
And of course, everybody is benefiting from slavery,
not just the south, but the north as well
because it's the products from the enslaved laborers
that are fueling the economy in the north as well.
- And one of the things
that historians seem to have come to agreement on
over the last couple of generations
is that slavery was in fact very profitable,
profitable for the country's whole plantation economy
was in a probably its best state economically
than it had ever been.
The price of a slave had gone up dramatically.
The number of slaves had gone up dramatically.
And so as you wisely say,
there there's a lot invested in this,
not only in the south, but in the north as well.
And Lincoln was dependent on Northern Democrats
to get things done who were resisting the emancipation
and he was about to go into an election.
When he gives,
the preliminary proclamation is in September of 1862,
and the off year election is about to happen
where he is reasonably certain
because the war's not going well, among other things,
to not do well, which in fact happened,
they lost seats. - Yes, the Republican party
does suffer as a consequence, yes.
- And so in some sense, as you say,
he's a realist about this, a pragmatist,
but at the same time, he knows what he wants to do.
Horace Greeley famously sends him an open letter
wondering when he's gonna do something about this
and he replies in the way that you suggest
that he would free the slaves if that would keep the Union,
free all the slaves,
free none of the slaves if that would keep the union whole,
or free some,
which is essentially what the proclamation does,
and not free others.
- And I truly believe that he believed that.
Some people say, well, he's just preparing them
for what he's about to do.
But I think that if something had happened,
if the south had said, you know,
in that 100 day period between September 22nd of '62
and January 1st of '63, if the Confederacy had said,
"Okay, we're giving up, we're coming back to the Union.",
Lincoln would've allowed that,
not just Lincoln
because it's not just Lincoln who makes this decision,
but the north certainly would've allowed them
to keep their enslaved laborers
and Lincoln would have been okay with that
because his whole idea of ending slavery
was that it be done gradually.
So the irony is
that someone who believed that slavery should end over time
is the very person who attempts to end it overnight,
at least for certain segments of the population,
or puts the wheels turning toward that.
- There are three principles that he seems to have
and that he proposes over and over again,
particularly to the border states,
Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland,
who are so important to main,
they have enslaved populations,
significant enslaved populations,
but he needs to keep them in the Union.
And so he proposes, as you suggest,
gradual compensated emancipation,
but also the thing that he always adds is consent,
they need to vote for it because in a democratic policy,
he needs consent he feels.
- Exactly.
And let's not forget the other C, colonization
'cause that is a part of his plan as well.
- Which he does propose,
but January comes or December when he must make the decision
about whether or not he implements
the preliminary proclamation,
January comes and all that's gone.
It is sort of overnight changed.
And even though it still leaves some slaves
outside of the proclamation, it's fairly clear, isn't it,
to everybody in the north and most people in the south
that this is the declaration that slavery is over?
- Well, there are 830,000 people
who are not touched by the proclamation.
And certainly someone like Frederick Douglass
felt that it didn't matter,
that with slavery ending in Virginia,
it would have to end eventually in Maryland as well.
But look at what happens with the 13th Amendment.
It's not easy to pass that.
You got the Senate approving,
the House of Representatives does not.
It takes some time for that to actually be passed,
and it's not passed without a bit of maneuvering
on the part of Lincoln and the Republican party.
So it was not a done deal, I think,
but it would've been very difficult
to go back to what it had been before.
First of all, African Americans were not going back
because you have a situation
where even before the proclamation is issued,
you have African American soldiers, there are volunteers.
They may not be regular military,
but they are already fighting.
There are African Americans
who leaving the farms and plantations,
they are taking their own freedom.
So it would've been virtually impossible
to reinstitute slavery as it had existed before.
Even those African Americans
who choose not to leave the plantations
are tearing the system apart from within.
So I think we need to understand
that although it was not a done deal,
there were things in place that would've made it difficult
for them to ever go back to the system that they had before.
- Right.
And so one of the larger questions is,
it seems almost inevitable at a certain point
that this is all gonna happen.
Some historians believe,
and some people at the time,
the founders probably originally believed,
that slavery was on its way out,
that the Enlightenment and progress, industrial progress,
et cetera.
And in fact, as John Hope Franklin
has pointed out in his book on the emancipation,
there was lots of emancipation going on
in Europe and in Central America and South America.
Mexico had freed its slaves, the French
though they went through doing it
and taking it back and doing it again.
And of course, the British had eliminated slavery
in the colonies in 1833.
Was the ending of slavery inevitable?
And the real question I want to ask is
how important was Lincoln
to this happening when it happened?
If Lincoln hadn't existed,
if the president of the United States
had been John Breckenridge or John Bell or Stephen Douglas,
say Stephen Douglas, would slavery have ended?
Would slavery have ended in the 1880s as it did in Brazil?
How important was Lincoln in this?
- Well, first of all,
Lincoln was the right person for the right time,
who did have the courage to do what was necessary
to preserve the Union first and foremost
and then what was the right thing to do.
But to the question, would slavery have continued
or would it have occurred,
would it have ended anyway?
My position is that slavery would have continued.
There was no reason for anyone to voluntarily emancipate.
People were making too much money,
they had too much power.
They had power not just in the south,
but look at the Supreme Court.
They have a lot of political power.
They have economic influence.
They have such a social, a strong social position.
I think we sometimes think that slavery could not be,
would not be successful in the Western territories,
so why fight over that
because they're not gonna be growing cotton say in Kansas.
But it's more than that.
First of all, enslaved people
served in a variety of capacities.
They were in industrial situations as well,
they were in mining.
So I don't think that we can say
that economically it would not have survived.
But even if it had not survived economically,
socially, it would have,
because slavery was more than just an economic institution.
It was an institution for social control as well.
So you had, for instance, in my little are of Virginia,
south of Richmond, where you had plantations
where they didn't grow tobacco, they didn't grow cotton,
they didn't have a single staple crop economy.
They had mixed farming,
you know, cereal, grains, livestock raising,
that kind of thing,
but they had tons of enslaved laborers.
And so some of those they freed until the 1820's and 1830's,
but they sent others to the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond.
They rented people out, they hired them out.
And so they would've been able to make money that way
and they could have ensured that in perpetuity
black people would be controlled.
What do you do when for 200 plus years
you have held people in horrible conditions,
you have separated children from parents,
husbands from wives,
you have raped black women?
What do you do to ensure
that this is not going to be visited upon you?
So you keep slavery intact
if for no other reason than for social reasons.
And also, slavery was a form of conspicuous consumption too.
So you might have a planter
who has 20 or 30 or 40 enslaved people and he's not,
he or she is not doing much with them
except hiring them out,
but you are the big guy in the county
because you have that many enslaved labors.
So slavery is very complicated.
There's no one thing that would have prevented it
from remaining as a part of society.
- And you point out
that this is something of a cast system for social control,
which exists in the north.
I mean during the Civil War,
the draft riots in New York are Irish and others
rioting about the African Americans in New York
taking positions away from them, they think.
- And these are people who in many instances
have just gotten off the ship
and they came to America for opportunity
and now they're being drafted to fight a war to free people
who are going to come north and take their jobs.
And so from their perspective, it's understandable.
- The racism is pervasive in 1860 America,
and yet, still, 300,000 people lose their lives or more,
from the Northern side, 700,000 perhaps all altogether
in fighting the civil war
and a long war, a desperate war at many times.
How is it possible that this happens
given the importance of slavery economically,
given the attitudes?
And again, I go back to Lincoln
and I go back to Lincoln's principles
that he thinks he is defending
of the constitution in the declaration,
from the Lyceum speech that he gives in 1838,
to his Dred Scott speech,
what he talks about during the Lincoln Douglas debates,
it's about preserving the political principles
of the founding.
How does he get the country to go along with that?
- Well, he doesn't get a lot of them to go along with it.
There are many people who certainly are resisting,
not just in the democratic party,
but in his own party as well.
But I think that northerners are going to war
for the same reason that southerners are.
Southerners are going to war
because they're trying to preserve a way of life
that they think it is superior
to the way of life in the north.
Northerners are also going to war to preserve their nation,
what they see as what America
has always been and is supposed to be.
They're not going to war, let's be certain,
they're not going to war to free anyone.
They are going to war to bring the nation back together.
It becomes a war for freedom as well after 1863
and there are many people who don't like that at all,
who are very much against that.
So Lincoln took a real gamble in doing that,
but he was able to sell it by saying,
this is what we need to do to preserve the Union.
So that proclamation was not about what is right,
except for that ending part where he brings God into it.
But it's telling northerners,
this is what we have to do for the nation to survive
and people buy it
and they're willing to make that sacrifice.
- I mean he needs military victory.
And so he issues the preliminary proclamation
after Antietam,
the bloodiest day in American history,
not a great victory,
but he and McClellan could claim victory.
And then this impossibility,
and the 13th Amendment rides on this,
that he could have lost the presidential election,
'cause again, in the summer of 1864,
things were not going well,
only in the fall, it begins to go the Union way.
And so it's heavily dependent on military victory.
But at the same time,
I want to say that he's constantly expressing,
I quote from the Dred Scott speech,
"They," the founders, "meant to declare the right
so that enforcement of it might follow
as fast as circumstances shall permit."
He's always aware of the circumstances.
"They meant to set up a standard maxim for a free society
revered by all, constantly looked to,
constantly labored for,
never perfectly obtained, but constantly approximated
and of value to all people of all colors everywhere."
He says this in 1857
in response to the Dred Scott decision.
It seems to me, it's clear that he's always working for this
within the context of what's given to him
in terms of Northern Democrats,
in terms of border states, in terms of the military,
in terms of the British potential
for recognizing the Confederacy, et cetera.
But he does have, to quote Churchill
who talks about consistency in politics,
"You bend to circumstances one way,
you bend to circumstances another way,
but you always have a dominating purpose."
And this was Lincoln's dominating purpose.
Is that fair to say?
- Yeah, you know I love a quote from him where he says that,
"I claim not to control events,
but declare that events have controlled me."
I think he's very honest about his situation.
Yes, in the back of his mind,
there's always this idea of how do I get this job done
and how do I do it in a way
that is in the best interest of the nation?
Not am I gonna win the next election,
but what is in the best interest of the nation?
And what was in the best interest of the nation
at that point in time from his perspective
was doing something about slavery.
Now, there were many people who from the very beginning
before the war even starts, you know,
when the south starts seceding,
there are people who are saying,
"This is our opportunity to do something about slavery."
And Lincoln is saying,
in his first inaugural address, he says,
"I have no inclination to do anything.
I have no ability to do anything."
I'm always a little amused at the idea
that it took him until the summer of 1862
to come to the conclusion that he did have the ability
to do something about slavery.
As bright as that man was,
he certainly understood what he could do,
he just chose not to do anything about slavery
until it got to the point
where he had to do something about slavery
to save the country.
He understood how precarious the situation was.
He knew that he was gambling.
And so he didn't want to take that step
until he could be fairly certain
that he would be able to win the war by doing it.
- So I want ask you a little bit
about the African American reaction
to not only the Emancipation Proclamation
in the 13th Amendment, to Lincoln in general,
but also specifically about Frederick Douglass's reaction.
Douglas says in 1865, he says emphatically,
"Lincoln is the black man's president."
In 1876, when they celebrate,
unveil the Freedman's Memorial
in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C., he says,
"He's the white man's president,
preeminently the white man's president."
And talks about how Lincoln's background
and view of the world are a white view of the world.
That's a contradiction it seems to me in Frederick Douglass,
but how does he come to this conclusion?
Why in 1865, one thing, in 1876, the other?
- Yeah, we have to look at the timing.
He's saying
Lincoln is emphatically the black man's president
in June of 1865.
He's in mourning, as is the rest of the nation.
And so Lincoln's going to,
people are going to say all kinds of things about Lincoln
that would be glorifying him.
And so it makes sense that Douglass would say that
and he probably did believe that at that point in time,
because in Lincoln's final address,
his final public address,
he's talking about the possibility
of enfranchising certain groups of black men.
That's understood as a movement forward for black people.
If we want to talk about equality,
that's an example of where Lincoln was heading
at least politically,
and people like Frederick Douglass picked up on that
and understood what was going on.
But by 1876, when reconstruction is ending
and black people are being shot down in the streets
and lynched and their businesses are being burned,
their schools and churches are being burned
you've got the KKK
having to be contained by the Grant administration
and that kind of thing,
Douglass is looking at the proclamation and saying
the proclamation was supposed to be a promise,
and the promise has not been fulfilled.
And so Lincoln as the author
or the guarantor of that promise,
he has failed somehow,
although he's not around to make any difference there
because he's been assassinated, of course,
but it makes perfect sense
that Douglass would take that position
in 1876. - And of course,
he ends his speech that speech in 1876 by saying,
"If you're an abolitionist,
if you're an African American, he's tardy, he's cold,
but if you get understand the sentiments of the nation,
he's swift and sure."
So Douglass recognizes the circumstances change everything.
I'd like to talk for a minute about monuments
because that very statue
of Lincoln raising his hand out
to a slave who's breaking his chains,
an enslaved man who seems to be rising up
or seems to be kneeling down
depending on your point of view,
but that monument has been protested,
significantly protested here in Washington, D.C..
And I want to talk a little bit about monuments
and what they represent and what you think that statue,
what Douglass thought of that statue,
and who we should be building monuments,
how we should be structuring our monuments today.
You and I talked a little bit
about the other great monument,
or perhaps the greatest public monument in my view,
a piece of public sculpture, the Shaw Monument in,
which is the 54th Massachusetts Monument
to Colonel Shaw and his African American troops
who fought at Fort Wagner, the movie "Glory" is about it.
What kind of monuments should we be building today?
- You know, we should be building,
monuments, first,
symbols are really important to any society
and to this society, to our society,
they're extremely important
because of our history of the civil war.
And so we were bound to clash at some point
over what was being erected
that sort of glorified and honored
men who had fought against the nation,
and they're not just in the south,
there's some in the north as well.
I've always wondered about that.
It's almost like northerners
are sort of giving the Confederacy a pass.
They have bought the idea that this was about,
these monuments are about heritage,
they're not about supporting
the idea that people were fighting this war over slavery,
it was just about heritage.
Well, it certainly is more than that.
So we need to understand that when we build these monuments,
we are saying that these people share American values.
So we have to determine what our values are going to be.
The idea of the Freedman's Memorial,
to me, that's more than unfortunate
that that one came under attack.
I know Frederick Douglass
didn't like it when it was first built,
a lot of of people didn't like it
because it had the black man kneeling,
as opposed to being on the same level
as any other human being.
And it also suggested
that Lincoln single handedly freed the slaves
when we know the reality
is a lot more complicated than that.
Lincoln absolutely opened the door.
He was central to freedom for black people,
but black people fought for their own freedom as well.
And black and white Union soldiers and sailors
made that emancipation possible,
made freedom possible through that proclamation.
That monument was built primarily
through the fundraising of black people,
poor black people who didn't have much to give,
but they recognized Lincoln's importance
and they gave money toward the erection of that statue.
- You talk Charlotte Scott giving
the first five dollars. - Charlotte Scott,
her first five dollars, yes,
to this monument, yes.
And she wasn't freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
She is freed because her owner, who's a unionist,
can't stand being in the Confederacy any longer
and he leaves and goes to Ohio and frees her.
So she didn't have any real obligation to Lincoln,
but she understood the role that he played
in freedom for black people in general.
So hands off the Freedman's Memorial.
Nobody should be criticizing that.
If you have a problem with how it's structured,
put up another monument next to it
or put up some signage and say,
"This is how people thought during this period
in 1876 after the war,
but the reality is black people had a large hand
in their own liberation",
but don't take it down
because you have some issue with Lincoln.
- Right.
And are there statues that we should be building now
or have we lost a sense,
you talked earlier about this sort of me generation
view of the world that we have now,
what's in it for us?
So have we lost a sense of heroic?
Most monuments are about our heroes,
sometimes we get it wrong,
I understand why anybody would want to tear down a statue
of Nathan Bedford Forrest,
but why aren't we building statues to Harriet Tubman
who's one of the great figures in American history,
a woman of incredible courage?
- She has a few, but not nearly enough
and I would say it's because she's a woman,
she's African American, she was not educated,
so she doesn't fit the American standard
of who the Patriots are in this country.
But you're absolutely right,
it's people like Harriet Tubman.
Why don't we build monuments to the enslaved people
who kept this country going for so long with the labor,
certainly uncompensated labor,
but they kept the country moving
because of the work that they were doing?
They get no recognition for that,
and instead what happens is any books that deal with that
are banned from the school system.
So how are we ever going to move forward
if we don't at least acknowledge our history
and allow ourselves and our children to read that history
and have a better understanding of who we are
so that we can become better in the future?
I just don't quite understand it.
- And I did want to ask you this question
about teaching history today,
how you teach students today,
what students know and don't know about our history.
And obviously, you're very eloquent on the subject
of being told perhaps from outside
by legislatures or others what we should teach.
Is it harder to teach today?
I mean, there's less history teaching going on,
fewer history majors. - Absolutely.
- And we know that one of the stunning things
is the Citizenship Test,
which is a test of a knowledge
of American government and American history,
that every immigrant who becomes a citizen has to pass,
70% of Americans, adult Americans couldn't pass it.
- I bet it's higher than that, probably.
- Uh oh.
How do we correct that?
I mean, what can we do about this?
- It's difficult.
It certainly has to start at the grammar school level.
I don't think that you can start early enough
to teach students about citizenship and about history.
You just tailor it to the age.
And so you're not going to teach a kindergartner
in the same way that you're teaching a high school student,
of course, but you've got to get them involved early on,
because if you don't,
then they're going to come under the influence
of people who know even less about history and citizenship
and have this view that is totally different from reality.
So we've got to start working on that now.
You're absolutely right,
it's difficult to get history into the curriculum
in a way that it needs to be,
and that's not just in elementary school and in high school,
but it's also the case in colleges and universities as well.
There are so many HBCUs for instance,
that don't even have history departments anymore.
So they will have a social sciences department
where they're talking about history and political science
and sociology and everything else together.
No, history needs to be taught separately.
We know that it connects to all of these other disciplines,
but it needs its own space as well.
We don't value history in this country.
And as long as we have that position,
we are never going to advance.
We'll just keep making the same mistakes
over and over again and maybe that's what we want to do,
but it is not good for the country as we can see now.
I think part of the reason
why we're in the predicament we're in
is because we don't know our own history.
I've had conversations with friends, close friends,
and I am appalled at some of the things they say
because they have been misinformed.
And when I was teaching,
I told my students, "You can hear what I have to say,
but don't take my word for it."
Pick up a book, look at some primary sources
and come to your own conclusion
about what is happening in any given situation.
Historically, take the time
to know who you are and what your country is about
so that you can work with it.
We all have a responsibility as Americans
to be the best country we can possibly be
and we can't do that if we don't even know.
- If we don't know where we've been.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- And is it possible to teach history today
with shared ideals, a sense of our shared ideals,
the notion that Lincoln had
that we all could learn something
from the Declaration and the Constitution,
the apple of gold and the frame of silver,
as he talked about it, the psalm.
Is it possible that narrative history of this country
can bring us together instead of pushing us apart?
- It certainly could if we had shared ideals
and I'm not so sure that we do anymore.
We used to believe in certain things.
I think now it's all over the place.
People believe whatever is expedient
and what advantages them and that's the unfortunate piece.
I think you have to teach American history in a way
that it's much more inclusive.
It's got to be a shared narrative,
but that narrative has to include everybody's story
because that's what America is made up of.
It's not just the British settling North America.
It's not just the Declaration of Independence
and the revolution.
It's all of these other immigrants
who have come in over time as well
and what they're bringing to the table,
because they are bringing a lot to the table
and we need to recognize that.
We need to understand that this is not just a country
with an Anglo-Saxon heritage.
There's so much more going on here.
- Oh yeah.
- And if we recognize that, we will see how special we are,
if we can manage our expectations of where the country,
what the country should be.
It cannot just be some Anglo-Saxon tradition.
It's got to be something much broader than that.
- And the relationship that Lincoln had with Douglass
and what they both represented to the country,
is that the kind of narrative that we can teach
that brings us together?
Understanding from Douglass's point of view,
what Lincoln did and didn't do,
from Lincoln's point of view, what he could do and did do?
- Absolutely, it's about including everybody's story.
It's about including ideas
from all of the groups that we have.
It's about showing,
if you're looking at Lincoln and Douglass,
it's about showing that you have two men who mean well,
these are not, neither of them are bad people.
These are people who me mean well
and they mean to do what's best for the country.
They have a different way of going at it.
I think in my book on Lincoln and emancipation,
I talked about the fact
that you have black revolutionaries, so to speak,
who have the same agenda,
but they're going at it a little bit differently
than Lincoln is.
Lincoln's move toward freedom is not,
does not have the same urgency
as does the actions of the revolutionaries.
Even a John Brown, who's not black at all,
but he certainly fits into the black revolutionary,
or the revolutionary category.
So if we show that people can have the same goals,
but they come at it in a different way
and they learn to respect each other,
and Douglass would've never agreed
that Lincoln did the right thing by moving slowly,
I mean that's just not Douglass' thing,
but he certainly had respect for,
after the fact he had respect
for the conditions that Lincoln had to work under
and Lincoln certainly I think
grew to respect the Douglass' position, certainly did.
Otherwise, he would not have accepted Douglass
into the White House uninvited initially in '63.
He certainly would not have brought him
back to the White House in '64 to ask for his assistance.
And he certainly would not have allowed him
into the reception uninvited in '65.
So these are people
who can see the positions that other people have
and still disagree,
but try to move forward for what's best for the country.
And I think that's something that's lacking
in our society today.
- I so agree with you and I think this is a great place
to leave our conversation,
this sense of the tension in our history,
the tragic in our history,
but the fact that we're always,
we hope we're always working on making it better,
approximating, as Lincoln said,
the ideals of the Constitution and the Declaration
and doing what Lincoln did so well with Douglass,
which Douglass did so well with Lincoln,
which is working together
even coming from such dramatically different points of view.
Dr. Medford, thank you so much for this conversation.
I think it's been a wonderful, provocative
and ennobling conversation.
- It's my pleasure.
(audience applauding)
- So any dialogue from the audience,
any conversation from the audience you might like to have?
I want to say thank you to Senator Blunt.
- [Man] Extraordinarily well done.
I did wonder about your comments
about teaching history today.
I think I missed a point
when you mentioned talking about Harriet Tubman,
but books that include her are sometimes now
not part of the curriculum, what?
- Well not so much Tubman,
but the idea that anything that's negative
about American history,
there are certain parts of the country
where people don't want to hear that
and Tubman is a part of American history that's positive
in the sense that this is a woman
who's actually risking her life,
spiriting people out of the south to freedom.
And then during the war,
actually leading a group of soldiers
up the Combahee River.
It's just amazing the kinds of things she's doing,
but we don't really celebrate her the way we should.
But it's not so much that Harriet Tubman has been banned,
but there are these other books that some would say
have a negative portrayal of American history
because we don't want to upset our children.
Well, I would rather let them see
the history of the country now
rather than have them repeat something
that's going to be just as dangerous for the nation.
But I think our children can take it.
We should be able to.
This isn't about a feel good kind of thing.
It's about being realistic about who we are
and how we can better the nation, that should be the goal
of all Americans.
- [Man] And for your work,
what you understand so well too though
is we also have to try to present things
in some context of the time.
What you've done so well with Lincoln
and the mission that the commission is on
to celebrate 250 years of history,
there's a current view to say,
well, we've really kinda got it wrong in the bicentennial.
Now we have to overemphasize the other side of history.
And I'm not opposed to any of that,
but I think the way your writings and your discussion here
very much does bring things into context
and people aren't perfect,
and like Lincoln, often have to be moderated by events.
- Yeah, I think that my aim has always been
to show that when the story is more inclusive,
it's more truthful.
- [Man] I agree.
- And so it's not to put
so much the other side of the story,
but to have the fuller part of it.
So it's trying to weave everyone's story into it.
(gentle music)