Acknowledge Humanity

“I was the first black child to go to “the white school” in our (East Texas) school district. And I was in first grade, and I was introduced to the idea that politics mattered, that race was a thing, and that we had a history — that this came from someplace. And I, just from being in this situation where I had to crack a code, crack a social convention — gave me a sort of insight, made me start to think about how we got here…

Jefferson was multifaceted — as we all are, incredibly complicated — but somebody who existed at the forefront of his society. Studying him is a study of America in many, many ways, because so many of the paradoxes, so many of the dilemmas that exist in his life are in the country. So I mean he’s interesting, but his connection, the way he personifies so much of the conflict that we have is even more interesting…

I expected resistance (to this idea of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slaves). I think most people — many people in the United States had believed that the story was true. The real opposition had been among historians who did not like the story, because if you have a man and suddenly give him a person that he’s lived with for 38 years and four kids, that changes the narrative of his life, and that means you have to deal with it. You can’t just — they can’t just be side characters. They have to be part of the story. And so there was real resistance to that…

I’d give talks in Virginia… Richmond… Fredericksburg. Or whatever. And Whites would come up to me with their own stories about their families that had been hidden, things that they didn’t talk about. So Southerners knew this. This was an American life, and that kind of thing happened in the South. And it’s pretty clear that it did, and most Southerners understood it, but it’s the kind of thing that you know but you don’t talk about.

Families have secrets, communities have secrets, and they whisper it, but they don’t talk about it even though it’s apparent in the faces of African-American people who are all different colors, different hair textures, and so forth. It’s always been there. But it’s always some phantom traveling salesman or phantom person who came to visit one time. It was never anybody that anyone cared about. It had to be somebody who was off and that you wouldn’t have to write about. And so the reckoning was actually saying, slavery was not just about making people work for no money. Slavery created a mingled bloodline between African Americans and whites, acknowledged and unacknowledged, but that shows the complexity, the tragedy in all aspects of the institution.

In my hometown, it was very much known. There were many instances of people, police officers harassing individuals. One teenage boy was arrested and went into the precinct and was killed. Allegedly attacked someone and he was shot and nobody ever figured out what was going on with that. I mean I’ve — it’s different, even though I think African-American women still have problems, certainly. Sandra Bland, those stories everybody knows.

I was on a part of our book tour with my coauthor, and we were driving along one evening, and we were stopped. And it was not anything serious that was done, other than the officer asking me for my identification — I wasn’t driving. He was driving. And I was just thinking about the fact that I felt so different because he’s a white man. I mean in the first place, they asked for my ID. I doubt if I had been his wife, a white woman, that he would have asked for my ID. I wasn’t driving. But — and I teach criminal procedure. This is the thing that I teach my students. You don’t know what’s going to happen. So I — you know, I didn’t have to give him my ID, but I did, because I didn’t want to cause any problems. That’s the only time I’ve ever been stopped, but you just think about the range of how race implicates, intrudes on every single thing that happens.

I mean no one was killed that evening, but as I said, it made me think about my relationship, as a woman married to a black man, feeling different. Who knows what would have happened. And I have a son who I’ve raised in New York, and I have those feelings too. What happens? What happens when people talk to you like you’re a dog, and you’re talking to a young person, and you know that it’s provoking? But you don’t feel like a citizen. And that’s what we’ve been grappling with since Jefferson’s time: Are African-American people part of “the people”? Are we actually citizens here?

Malcolm X said, “Well, if you’re a citizen, why do you have to fight for your rights? I mean the citizen either has rights or not. Why are you fighting for them?” And we’re always in that position…

In the killings, in the shootings — indictments. I mean people see it, and we’re shocked by it, and it’s to a point where now it’s almost — there’s sort of a backlash: “I don’t want to see anybody else get killed. I don’t want to see this anymore.” It’s very hard to indict a police officer. I mean we understand that people are doing a job that lots of people don’t want to do, and it can be a dangerous job. And part of the way that people get paid to do that is to give them discretion. And judges and law enforcement is given a great amount of discretion.

But there are so many instances, you sort of wonder when people will actually — we’re naming it, and we’re seeing it, what is the next step to try and figure out how to deal with this problem? How to reconcile or reckon, or however we want to put it?... We need police officers. But we also need to have some sense that African-American people — a reality that African-American people are, in fact, citizens.

Du Bois said that the problem with the 20th century would be the color line, but we’re still there. You know, the 21st century, now it’s to the global scale. This is not just — the ferment that we’re talking about now is not just here, it’s all over the world, and so problems of work, problems of inequality, the shifting alliances, and so forth. It’s a frightening time, but it’s also a time that if we choose to be, it could be a hopeful time.

Jefferson made some of the most eloquent statements against slavery but not being interested actually — Jefferson was interested in something else. I mean Jefferson was interested in the United States. I mean he helped start a country, and that is what he focused on. I mean we sort of know that it actually was going to work — [laughs] to a point — and he didn’t think, at the time — it wasn’t clear that it was going to, and so he focused all of his attention on that. We look back, and we’re interested in — rightly, I think — in race and slavery, but that was not his preoccupation. I mean he knew slavery was wrong, and he said that. But what he basically was obsessed about was the United States of America.

I think George Washington — I mean people castigate Jefferson, but the person who had the most moral capital, the person who could have — there were always people who hated Jefferson, so he was not a universally beloved figure. Washington, for the most part, was. If he had said something, I think he could have had the most influence, if he’d spoken out.

And in fact, one of Jefferson’s secretaries, who, when Washington died, and Washington did free his slaves — they were supposed to be freed upon Martha’s death — and this person was somewhat critical of him. He said, “If he had done something when he was alive, that’s the time to have done something.” I mean glad that he freed the slaves, the enslaved people who were at Mount Vernon, but a president, a person with that moral capital, if he had spoken out would have made, I think, a huge difference. Although I don’t know that it would have made the Virginians give up their slaves right away. But I think it could have made a difference.

What I would like to see white people to do — would be to challenge one another on this question of white supremacy and racism. I mean black people can’t and should not have to convince white people that we are human beings who have a right to be on the earth. The only time we’ve made progress is when whites, a critical mass of whites say, “Enough of this. Whatever it is I’m getting out of going along, I can’t.”…

William Lloyd Garrison did it. Through the years, you’ve had people who did that. I would like to see more whites do that, because it’s demeaning, it’s not right for people to have to make the case that we are humans. And to the extent that your family members don’t seem to know that or your friends don’t seem to know that, I think that’s something that — that’s a conversation that has to take place among whites. And it has happened; it does happen, and we have made progress. But it should happen more…

A conversation or emails that you can have with (people who feel very differently about the world than I feel), you may not come to a total agreement, but they are in a different place. Sometimes we actually do get to a point where the person will begin to back down and will begin to open up. And even though that’s just one individual, I see that as something of a victory. And that’s kind of why I wanted to write, because I wanted to be able to reach people, and reach those kinds of people as well, not just the people who are saying, “Oh, you’re great, you’re great. Everything you’re doing is wonderful,” but people who are questing in that way.

Where do people go wrong? People go wrong, I think, in seeing people like Jefferson as a god, in a way, somebody who was superhuman — on both sides; I’m not just talking about people who revile Jefferson or people who love Jefferson are not dealing with a human being, dealing with an abstraction and don’t see the foibles and the frailties of a person who was human. And so I think people go wrong on both ends by not recognizing the humanity. As a historian, history is not just about writing about people that you like. It’s about people who were important, who did important things, and to try to illuminate their lives in a way that makes that plain to readers: why is this person important? I mean all the different roles he played during this time period, and to see the strengths but also to see the vulnerabilities.

As an African-American person, people say, “Well, how can you write about this figure with any degree of sympathy?” or whatever. But first place, there’s the fact that he lived a very, very long time ago, [laughs] so there’s distance. But it’s not, as I said, about your personal feelings about it. It’s about the importance. This is someone who was at the center of American life, who crafted words that we consider to be our creed, American creed. And whether he failed or not, that is something that was put there that every group of people who tries to make a place for themselves in the United States, in American life, that they use it. And flaws and all, that is important. So I think not seeing the humanity, not — making the person larger than life, superhuman, or evil incarnate is not the way to go.

I do think that there will be alliances formed that you could not have imagined would be formed… It’s a very, very up-in-the-air moment. And I don’t think it’s — it’s reason for exasperation, in many ways, it’s a reason for uncertainty, because it’s a new thing. We’ve never done this. As I said, we’ve never had a president like this, a person who is really not a part of a party, a part of a system… So it’s new territory that we’re in, and I think we can surprise ourselves. I mean it’s a big country, a lot of talented people, and I think a lot of people of goodwill. It’s easy to focus on the negative, but I think that there’s a reason to be hopeful...”

~ Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, and Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.

~ Citizen University was founded by Eric Liu, a former White House speechwriter and policy advisor. He’s just published a new book, You’re More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen.

  "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" 

                                                                                                                          

~ Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream

delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.