so i said get ready to see -- start learning chinese. [laughter] >> thank you so much. >> thank you so much. we love you. we love you. >> thank you. >> we love you. >> thank you. [applause] ..

>> welcome, everybody. it's our great pleasure to have as our guest today henry louis gates, affectionately known as skip gates said he is en rapport. he is also the head of the doughboy center and harvard. is written 12 books. this one is just out. lakin on race and slavery. and in the coming days is the pbs series that is connected to a. we're just seen a clip of it. thank you very much for being here, doctor gates. >> it's nice to be back.

[applause] >> of all boards that i'm on, thethe aspen institute is my favorite. >> thanks. >> so did you try to knock off story with abraham lincoln? >> i want to dust it up a little bit. i did to -- i was dragged into this project two years ago by my fellow executive producer. and i have a production company named after the black section of martha's vineyard. we do joint productions for oprah's roots and my african-american life series. were going to do a new series called faces of america using african-american format, buffer to jewish americans, catholic americans, two arab-americans, to asian-americans, to latino market, to western indian americans.

so we go into production right away for that. but it turns out that the kumar family has one of the largest collection of lincoln memorabilia in the whole world. and so they are lincoln junkies. two years ago he said, the grandfather or great-grandfather started collecting lincoln memorabilia right after he was killed. and they haven't heard this huge collection. so he said, 2009 is bicentennial of lincoln's birth and we want you to write and host and narrate a series that i said i don't anything about abraham lincoln. he freed the slaves. and he said that's why we want you to do it. so i said to them, i didn't have to say that i said look, you know, this is going to be my lincoln. because if you want hagiography, then do with the standard pbs documentaries do about when they are addressing the black world, which is they get some white guy to write and then they get benzo or morgan to read it, you, with

a voiceover. and that's not me. so i started reading. and are over 15000 books written about abraham lincoln only jesus has more books written about him and the whole world. literally true. so i read all 15000. [laughter] spirit so maybe i read 2000 books. and i was shocked to find out that he was much more complicated than the image with which we were raised. when i was growing up, i'm 58, and i don't know about you, you, you have been white longer than i have been. [laughter] >> when you were growing up, get why people have lincoln's picture on the wall? >> no, not in louisiana necessarily. [laughter] >> that it is true that we were taught, when i was taught history, we were taught of lincoln in the popular

imagination, father abraham the great emancipator, almost as an island of pure reason in a sea of mid- 19th century racist madness. >> absolutely. and it turns out that he wasn't. what happened subsequent to his death, is that historians have inflated his opposition to slavery. and he was firmly fundamentally, philosophically opposed to the institution of slavery. >> let me interrupt. why was he opposed to slavery? >> it violated his understanding of natural rights. every being wasn't titled to the fruits of its own flavor. >> so it was not because he believed in the quality of the race is? >> absolutely not. he believed -- his father had failed dismally economically in kentucky. and he had failed dismally because he was a poor white man trying to compete with the white slave owners. and abraham lincoln, from his own expense, decided that was unfair. it would be as if you and i were

taking the sats and somebody gave you 400-point out 800. it eliminated the promise of america. out for him the promise of america was equal economic opportunity. so what's happened in our day, he freed the slaves, which we'll talk about any minute. he was opposed to slavery. that means he liked black people. that is a slippage. he hated the institution. he did not like black people very much. in fact, listen to this quote. this is from a speech he made debating stephen douglas in 1858, charles city, illinois. >> this is after douglas had accused him of wanting mixed marriages and other things, right? >> that's right. absolutely. i will say then that i am not nor ever have it in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. that i am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes. nor of qualifying them to hold

office, nor do intermarry with white people. and i will say in addition to this, if there is a physical difference between white and black races, which i believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. add one more factor to this. which is colonization to most of us don't know what colonization is today. but lincoln wanted to free the slaves and then ship them out of the country. he wanted to shift into liberia first, and then to haiti and into panama. >> but he changed his mind. >> in 1864. >> that's because no black go, man. hard to have a colonization movement without black people in it. [laughter] >> did he fight -- he said the civil war was not being fought to free the slaves. >> no, eventually he changed his mind. but it was the the union together. it was the last best hope of

mankind was really representative democracy. and with these people, the southern states seceding, it traveled all over the constitution. not on his watch. it's funny, last night as you know we did this big panel discussion at harvard, with other historians, all of whom are in the film. 8000 people. we were like casting live. to israel. and so we're talking about the two-state solution. and why it wouldn't work in the united states or so by analogy were talking about whether two-state solution woodworker but we didn't say it explicitly. so i found it quite fascinating. >> so you hesitate every time so far you have said he freed the slaves. the emancipation proclamation does what and why? >> the emancipation proclamation, which became

effective on january 1, 1863, freed the slaves in the confederate rebellious states that lincoln didn't believe in you is probably that he did not have the constitutional authority to free the slaves. so he didn't free the slaves in the border states. states like kentucky and maryland. where slavery remained illegal. and the best estimate is that 500,000 slaves, there were 3.9 million slaves in 1860. the best estimate from david blight and alan, is that a maximum of 500,000 slaves were able to gain their freedom because the emancipation proclamation. what was going to happen? the white man in washington issued this and we can walk off the plantation? no way. you had to be liberated ivy union forces. >> by the way, this book is again with a great essay by you and that has multiple speeches, letters and essays by lincoln on

the subject. i think the first time he really talks about slavery, is it the mary? >> yes. very early on in his career, 1841, and he says that i am fundamentally in unalterably opposed to the institution of slavery. he never wavered. he never wavered about slavery. but he definitely wavered about black people. but he changed. lincoln -- the attractive thing about lincoln and will try to do in the film and what i certainly do in the book is to show that he was a recovering racist. [laughter] >> and he got better. he didn't know any black people who weren't servants. historians are so desperate, there is a cult of lincoln. they are so desperate to protect them. they said yes, he had great blackford. i said like you? and they said likability barber. >> what about frederick douglass? >> frederick douglass changed his life. he met him three times at the white house. yet never met a black man his

intellectual. >> as a puerto rico. >> and douglas was on him when lincoln was elected that lincoln's first and noggle address said that he was prepared to make slavery legal forever through a constitutional amendment. he just wanted to sell to come back. remember, this is march 1861. and he said that he would defend the fugitive slave act. and douglas wrote in it, an editorial in his paper and called him an excellent slave amputee hated abraham lincoln. he said man had great promise. >> how did he get invited to the white house the? because lincoln courted -- like it was a great facility. he did want people running around hating in. he also began to change and he wanted to get to know douglas. and he fell in love with frederick douglass. he met with him more than any black man. lincoln never had a meal with a black person.

lincoln did not spend 24 hours if his whole life with black people of high intellectual caliber. but he revered frederick douglass. in fact, after the second inaugural which most of us don't know, never had so many black people ever attended a public event in the united states. and douglas report in the second and noggle memorial and you can see it chilled on the wall, this amazing paragraph about perhaps god is exacting a life, one life for each lash that the slave house fell on his or her back. it is an amazing figure, very powerful figure. but the times in london reports the black part of the audience was saying amen, and called to respond. so douglass goes back to the white house. in those days you could just walk into the white house. two guards are standing at the

door. douglas is the only black person trying to get into the white house because that was not cool. these guides say no way get out of your. and lincoln cesium and choose the guards away. he comes up and says douglas, there is no man in america opinion i'd are you more than yours. how did i do? and he said, mr. lincoln, it was a sacred effort. so they were very close. the other thing that changed abraham lincoln was a practical fact that he was losing the war. north was losing the war to the south. lincoln became convinced that the only way he could win would be to get new bodies. what are you going to get new bodies? all of those freed slaves. 200,000 black people, 200,000 black men joined the union forces after the emancipation proclamation. because it included a provision saying that black man could fight and never have an american president included that since george washington. and george washington was a

president. but we know black people fought in the continental army including mike great-grandfather. and that was very important to lincoln did once he understood that the founding fathers of that black men fight and he understood how dire the situation was, vis-à-vis the south, he changed his mind. he met with anti-slavery ministers from ohio on september 14, 1862. and he said if i armed them, the guns will end up in rebel hands within a week because these people are not manly. but he changed his mind and he fell in love with this group of black soldiers. he called them his 200,000 black warriors. so here's the ultimate irony. of this trajectory that would trace in the film and the book. the last speech lincoln gibbs, last speech of his life, april 11, 1865. the south is capitulated the day

before. all these people go to the white house. is nighttime. and they are chanting, lincoln, lincoln. and finally lincoln comes to the bounty of the second tour of the white house and flings open the windows. and he gives a speech. and in the speech for the first time in the history of the presidency, he says he has decided that certain black men should have the right to vote. should enjoy the suffrage. and those men, his 200,000 black warriors. and quote unquote very intelligent negroes. like frederick douglass. now, there are 4.4 million black people in america. only men can vote at that time. half of them, let's say, were amended so that is to .2 million black and. there is no restriction on white men voting but lincoln is creeping up on us so he is advocating 200,001. black nintendo. guess who is in the audience? guess who was standing on the grounds of the white house?

john wilkes booth. and john wilkes booth is so outraged, he turns to the man next to him who reports to subsequently and says that means bigger citizenship, and i'm going to run him through and through day later he kills abraham lincoln. so the man who wrote the statement that i read from 1858 is the same man who gave his life literally for the right of some black men to vote. it is an extraordinary story. and that's a story that we trace in the film. but we also, i realized that, i maybe list. i realized when i jumped into this that there were so many lincolns that each successive generation remakes lincoln in its own image. in fact, americans remake lincoln to remake ourselves. and most recent example of course is abraham obama, wright? [laughter] >> barack is fixated on lincoln. but this is a list i make.

these are the various lincolns. the redeemer, lincoln toward. lincoln the peacemaker. lincoln the melancholic, lincoln the humorous. lincoln the republican, lincoln a communist. lincoln the war criminal. lincoln the redeemer. lincoln begay. tony christian last nice had the best comment yet apsley no doubt that lincoln was bisexual. i said that's cool. lincoln begay. lincoln the romantic lover. lincoln the man who really loved and rutledge. hshe died and he almost had a nervous breakdown. lincoln the atheist that i have a poster wallabies people who are atheist. lincoln is in the middle. lincoln the american christ. the man is assassinated on good friday. just after 10 clock at night. he dies at about 7:20 on easter saturday by easter sunday, all throughout the north he is being compared to christ. you know, the sacrificed christ.

and in the end, it's abraham lincoln the unknown. so the most fun that i had was i became the first journalist to fill at the annual convention of the sons of the confederacy. this was last july in winston-salem, north carolina. i called them just to let them know that i was a brother, you know. i don't want any accidents happening down there. [laughter] >> somebody. now i expect, this is my own prejudice i will be honest about it i expect the google boys on bicycles and chewing tobacco. these guys -- they had was a lawyer at atlanta. he was born in great barrington. the very subtle people whose ancestors fought in the civil

war but thought for the south. and they are proud of those ancestors. so i am interviewing this guy. three officers. and i said how do you feel about abraham lincoln? and my own naïveté that i was completely unprepared for this. he said abraham lincoln, the biggest war criminal in the history of the united states. you should be tried posthumously under the nuremberg convention and his face chiseled off not rushmore. it was amazing. it was astonishing. lincoln had no heart, unnecessary violence, people of the south. and then after, astonishing interview, they said now you have to come. week present an annual, let's say it's a jefferson davis and, i care what it's called. i said okay. the first guy gives a speech about how they off his land and floor so they can fly the confederate flag 24 hours a day. it's as big as a tractor-trailer, the flag. this is important to them and

they're all happy. then they were playing dixie and they are bringing in the descendents of the man they are honoring for this great jefferson davis, let's say, price. and i look up and it is a bunch of african-americans. and i said what? widely clayburgh, saved his master's life twice on the front lines. he ran away from the plantation. they made him go back the first time. he ran away again. twice he saved his master's life on the front line and they were honoring his family descendents. very well-educated people from new jersey. and i interviewed them and they said they were very proud of their ancestor for what he did. they might disagree with what he did. they might not have made the same choices, but that was their family, their blood. and i was proud of him for that. i thought that was a good thing. so i started to do some research. there were many african-american men, free negroes in the south, who voluntarily enlisted and thought for the confederacy.

i had no idea. there were more free negroes living in the south. there were 280,000 free negroes living in the south. and slaveholding states in the year 1860, and there were 220,000 free negroes living in the north. and many of these people thought the north was going to lose, and many others like themselves. some family members, some not. how many slaves were there in the north? >> four hundred thousand. four to 500,000. there were 3.9 million slaves in 1860. 3.5-inch in the south. so 400,000 in the north. but primarily the border states. >> right. >> kentucky, maryland. >> the theme of this book is how changes, why does it change the? i am often asked what is barack obama have in common with lincoln or what would lincoln think of barack obama? and i wrote an op-ed piece for

the times on martin luther king day. lincoln initially, if galatea lie, lincoln said when the moment came to life, that we told them that blackman was president he would have a heart attack and die. [laughter] >> lincoln was only sneaking up on liking black people, you know. but he would be amazed, but when he got to know barack obama, he would realize that they are very similar, that they both are conciliator's. that they both believe in an ideal of nonpartisanship. that they both are committed to transcending ideology, and bringing people together guy think he would like barack obama implicitly. and i think that barack obama is more like abraham lincoln, at least thus far, than any of lincoln's successors, since 1865. >> why? >> because of their love of language. they're both great writers.

they're both have this need to bring people together to in a way it's a need to be loved. so as george bush, president bush said to me in my interview last summer, people hated lincoln. i mean, bush is like and in part, gives president bush hope that history will vindicate him because he said to be people hated abraham lincoln picked abraham lincoln didn't even think that he was going to be reelected. and in fact, he drafted a statement which he had each of the members of his cabinet signed pledging their support for mcclellan, who was running against him. for the transition. and i told president bush that and he said not only do i know that, but my daughter felt the same way. he said his daughters wrote him a letter, which he kept obviously, and he said that, said you're going to lose, you are so unpopular, we're dropping out of school and will campaign for a. he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him it into the relationship.

he had lincoln portrait move to the oval office and he could see it every day. >> does president obama keep lincoln supporter in the oval office? >> i haven't been in a position to ask them but i don't know. but he probably sleeps with it. [laughter] >> some people talk about barack obama transcending race, and in fact not necessarily being an african-american in the sense that we often use that word. i think i magazine asked you this and you said wait a minute. >> that is a load of rubbish. if the man tries to get a taxi going uptown in new york before he was elected, he would be black. he would still be black. and he is literally an african-american. he identifies culture is african-american. is wife is african-american. if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck. and this post raced up, what a fantasy. percentage of black children living at or beneath the poverty

line went marga king was killed is 38%. the last time i looked was about 33%. all those people are still living at or beneath the poverty line, even after november 4 and even after the inauguration. >> and in terms of separation in education it has got worse. >> oh, my god. yes. i can't remember the exact statistic, but we are segregated as we have been for a very long, long time. and the dollars, you know. if we could have a policy through which we allocated per child the same amount of money in lexington, massachusetts, as roxbury, that would be good but that's not the way it is. so we have this structural discrimination. what used to be called institutional racist. and until that changes, i think we're in trouble. and with his economic crisis, all of the statistics are going to get worse, this condition is going to be exacerbated.

>> do you think president obama changes that just by virtue of who and what he is? >> i think that my managing editor -- >> waiter handed. >> and publisher, donna bird. she has always pushed me to write about barack obama and the implications. so i thought how do i get this woman off my back and actually write something? and what do i have original to say? what difference do i really think barack's selection makes? i think it is subliminal. the first thing, i had tickets to the inauguration so we are sitting there in the yellow section, freezing our buns off because it was so cold. and finally there is barack coming down the red carpet. and i never see -- i'm not one of his good friends or anything, but i have had dinner with him a couple of times. had a party for him when he was running for the senator ted

dinner with him at opera house for a big negro fundraiser. i was one of the little negroes, but i was there. he had this look on his face. and my girlfriend said game face. you know, and it was. he was the president of the united states or the bursting was the most powerful man in the world was a black man. and it hadn't sunk in until i watched him on that screen coming down that red carpet. then he is so competent. so every day in january, he is having press conference is and he was announcing his selectio selections, and since he is been president. he is the man. he did it seamlessly. he just became the president. as you said, they took it blackeye to rehabilitate larry summers. [laughter] [applause] >> to quote don king, only in america. [laughter] >> but i think subliminally this has to have an impact on people who have fundamental doubts about black intelligence for

black competence. i remember when colin powell was chief of staff. and i was in a taxi, and the driver was from argentina. so i was thinking about code, and i like in. is a friend of my. he could've been the president of the united states and he would've been great. colin powell make barack obama possible. i have no doubt about the. so i asked his driver, i said look, i'm going to give a tip to be honest with you what you guys think about a black man running -- it was the kuwait war. >> and he was head of the joint chiefs of staff. >> thank you. and he said well frankly, he said i want i don't want you to get a great. we are in a bar in argentina. and it is cnn. colin powell, making this statement on behalf of the victory in kuwait. and he said the whole bar. he said everybody just stop edn

drinking and talking because they could not imagine a black man having that job speaking on behalf of the combined armed services of the most powerful nation in the world. so multiply that by a thousand times and you get the effect that this must be happening -- having around the world for barack obama. and he is so competent. and some intermeeting yet last night after our panel discussion at the kennedy school said to me, how does it feel to have -- he used a word like competent black man. he names of other black people that i do want to name the. unlike xyz. actually making it into the white house. i wanted to smack him, being that too familiar. but i understood what he said. i said i hope it makes you feel as good as it makes me as a fellow american. but the point is, barack can, kind of like a drip, drip, drip but reversed chinese water torture. >> you were doing that panel at

harvard last night, because his press conference last night -- >> i watch a. scene and place it over and over. i thought it was great. >> i thought it was awesome. but i also thought he was just a deep dive into competence. and you know, quite a difference from the past eight years. >> yes. absolutely. he is very self confident. in fact, he is right. that is a good way to describe him. very self confident. he assembled a good team. is a quick learner. friend of mine said that barack is the ultimate stealth. one of his professors at harvard law school. he can learn anything. i think that is why he picked larry. clasclass. .

>> he's transcended race in one way. in another way he's still imbued in his racial context. >> what is race? >> well, race is in one sense how you're perceived when you walk in a room like this. when i walk into any room i walk into in america, i presume that part of the descriptors with which i'm greeted will be this

is an african-american man, right? i'm a man, i'm handicapped, i often think of that though people don't think of me that way, and african-american. and those three things are always bubbling around, i think, in at least my sense of my own identity. >> do you make a distinction between that and ethnicity? >> no. they're just used interchangeably, but race has an unfortunate history in that it was rooted in misconceptions of biology. but it's really a social construct. >> yeah. i'm almost asking because of the dna and roots work that you've done. you may not have known you were jewish, but i knew you were jewish before you did that dna test. [laughter] >> and irish. >> and irish. i did not know you were irish. >> on my father's side. >> no, i knew it after i read the book. >> i'm an identical genetic

fingerprint, my my to cond reel dna goes back to europe, and i have three identical matches with women who are jews, and my y dna goes back to ireland because an irishman impregnated a black female slave named jane gates. she's my great, great grandmother. and that's only 1 percent of the african-american people have that profile. but 25 percent of all african-american men, if we did the dna of all the african-american men in this room, 25 percent of you would trace your y dna back to europe because of slavery. 100 percent of black people in this room think they have native american ancestry. [laughter] i've never said a black person who didn't say my grandmother has high cheekbones and straight black hair.

yeah, yeah, yeah. not because some slave hung out with seminoles and was smoking by the campfire. only 5 percent of the black people have a significant amount of native american ancestors, and after this somebody will come up to me at the reception and say, yes, dr. gates, that's true, but mine really does. [laughter] but my overall mixture to my horror and astonishment is 50/50. i just took a test for the new series 23 and me which is a great series, and i just got the results back on friday. i'm getting whiter by the minute. again to my horror. [laughter] now i'm 57 percent white and 37 percent african and 7 percent asian/native american, so it's interesting. >> why is it interesting, meaning why have you spent the past, i guess, six, seven years now being interested in the dna and the tracing, the books you've been writing on that?

what does that tell us about who we are? >> well, there's a perm reason and a professional -- personal reason and a professional reason. the professional reason is for whatever, i don't know, for a long time i've been obsessed with restoring black people's history to black people and to the world. and i realize it's one thing to do it on a macro scale, the history of the negro, blah, blah, blah, but it's another thing to do it on an individual level through your family tree. and the reaction, the gift that you give people just for anyone who's watched african-american lives, when i conceived of that series, i pitched it to our sponsors. you need $6 million to do a four-hour pbs series ideally. and i pitched -- once quincy jones and oprah agreed to be in it, i said how would you like your product watching as oprah

winfrey finds out what tribe she comes from? it's like a giant atm machine. [laughter] where's that button? but that's not the part that moves people more. the part that moves people more than the revelation of air african -- their african ancestry is the revelation of the identity of their slave ancestors and post-slavery ancestors on this side of the atlantic. restoring names and sometimes faces through documents which i hand the people. that makes people cry. chris rock broke down and cried. >> i saw that on the air. >> yeah, it was very moving to me. he said if he had known that his great, great grandfather had fought in the u.s. color troops -- one of abraham lincoln's 200,000 black warriors, then was elected to the house of representatives in south carolina, then was thrown

out when reconstruction ends in 1876, becomes a dirt farmer, then by the turn of the century owns 64 acres of farm, 64 acres paid for free and clear and thendied with two life insurance -- then died with two life insurance policies, i like that part, it would have changed his whole life. that's amazing. so i'm committed to restoring black history on an individual level, and i'm trying to get all -- not only all african-americans to see their family tree, but we're developing at harvard a curriculum which, through which we hope to transform the way we teach inner city black kids and brown kids science and history by teaching them how to do their family tree and teaching them -- look, you and i walked into an inner city school and said today's lesson is the double helix of dna, they'd say get out of town.

but if you say each of you is going to swab your cheek, mail it to one of these companies, 23 and me, and in six weeks you'll know where your ancestors came from, and in the intervening six weeks we're going to study the slave trade, how africans were shipped here, and when you get the revelation of what tribe or ethnicity you're descended from, you're going to do a report, a power point on those people and their history and culture. what person wouldn't be turned on by that? so i think that we can light a fire again among the very populace that most needs that fire lit. because when i was growing up, walter, the blackest thing you could be was an educated woman or an educated man. the blackest thing you could be was not a basketball player or an entertainer. there's nothing wrong with

playing sports or being an entertainer, of course, but a lawyer or a doctor, they were, like, in my household they sat next to god, you know? my mom wanted two doctors. my brother's chief of oral surgery at bronx hospital, and i'm a fake doctor. [laughter] too many of our people have lost their way. they've lost that, they've lost the capacity to defer gratification or the belief in deferred gratification, and they don't believe in the future. >> why the reverence for education? >> and the loss of reverence for education. >> obama might change that? >> only if -- inspiration only goes so far, man. i mean, he needs structural reform, but he knows that. he picked arne to run -- >> arne duncan. >> yep, and a good man. he has good advisers like linda darling hammond who's on his transition team and other people that they're appointing, and i'm counting on it.

it's certainly crucial to the future of african-americans, and it's more important than the election of a black president, as important as that is. >> you talked about your father and his dying and the gates of -- >> no, my father's alive. my grandfather. >> grandfather, i'm sorry. in the new yorker piece. right. >> well, that's the other -- i said there are two reasons i've been obsessed with genealogy and genetics. first is the personal desire to restore black history on an individual level, but the second -- bless you -- the second is because i've been obsessed with my own family tree since i was 9 years old since the day i saw my grandfather buried. and he looked like a white man. we used to call him casper behind his back, he looked so white. [laughter] good thing he didn't hear that, we'd have been in big trouble. but my father, after we buried him at the rose hill cemetery -- i just grew up three hours from

here. all the the gates' are from cumberland, maryland. coming to d.c. was huge, man, that was like going to the moon. it took about six or seven hours because there were no interstates at that time. and i first saw the lincoln memorial when i was 10 because i was a patrol boy in the fifth grade. but when we came back to the gates' family home and they lived on green street in cumberland which was certainly an all-white neighborhood five years after slavery, it's almost an all-white neighborhood now, and jane gates plopped down $1400 in cash and integrated with this neighborhood. and she'd been a slave up to 1865. so, obviously, this anonymous white man had given her the money. so my father takes my brother and me upstairs to my grandparents' bedroom to a sun porch and shows us to our surprise all these scrapbooks that my grandfather kept. he was janitor in the bank, and

he used empty bank ledgers for his scrapbook. and we had no idea he did this. his other hobby was growing tulips. looked like a dutchman too. [laughter] my father's looking through, looking through, looking through, and finally he stops and shows my brother and me the obituary of jane gates, january 6, 1888, in the cumberland evening times, and it said anest admissible colored wop. at the end of the -- woman, i went to my bedroom and looked up the word. then he showed us a picture of jane gates, and she was a midwife, and she was in her midwifery costume, and that very picture is the one that hangs in my kitchen in harvard square. so i started keeping composition books of my family tree, and i

wanted to get a coat of arms like white people do. you know, in the sunday supplement, the sunday magazines in the back in the ads for $50 you could get your family crest, your code of arms, and i would think, yeah, we would send the $50 -- which we didn't have anyway, but even if i did and got a gates code of arms, it wouldn't be our baits code of arms. -- gates code of arms. so in a way i've been trying to give black people their own code of arms since june of 1960. and as fate would have it, i'm able to do that. it's a miracle. my whole life is a miracle. >> since lynette is here, that ties in directly with the root. why don't you describe the root. >> the root.com. well, donald graham says it was my idea, and i say it's donald graham's idea, and i'm really right. [laughter] we were on the pulitzer prize

board for almost nine years. you could serve three three-year terms, and we used to argue, you know, all the time. but i admired him, i knew his mother socially through martha's vineyard, and i liked her a lot, and i like don. he's a very smart guy. but we would have big time healthy, fun like harvard seminar kind of battles over which novels should win or which poet, whatever, and we often disagreed. so i thought, wow, man, i hope the post never reviews any of my work, because it's going to be rough. [laughter] so at the end of one day, a particularly heated day, he said i have an idea i want to talk to you about. why don't we have a drink. so i said, oh, my god, what's going on? so we get there, and he says i want to start a black version of slate.com, and i want you to be co-founder with me, and i went, really? you know? he said, yeah. so we did, and we planned it for

a long time, about a year. mark whitaker when he stepped down from being editor of "newsweek" he sort of became the post head of media adventures, and i spent a lot of time talking talking to him about it, then mark left to become president of nbc news, and i called don and said, do you still want to do it? he said, yeah. not only do i want to do it, but there's a journalist from "the new york times," and ann daniels and i -- >> mcdaniels. >> yeah, mcdaniels, we think she's the best person if you like her. i met her, and her name was lynette columnenson, and we stole her from "the new york times," and we just celebrated our first anniversary. >> the hottest ticket in the inaugural week. >> hottest ticket. and the root.com, i hope you'll all go back and click on the root.com because i have an essay

called was abraham lincoln a racist which is generating a lot of comment. >> right. and to turn it back to lincoln before i open it up, you kind of end with him in the louisiana endorsement of government and the question of whether or not he's going to support real rights for blacks, and you kind of ask the question there had he lived, well, you take it from there. >> well, had he lived, see, there are two theories about abraham lincoln post-april 15th. >> uh-huh. >> one is that the whole world would have been better, and martin luther king never would have had to -- there wouldn't have been jim crow selling regais -- segregation, and he would have combated the growth of the klan. the other theory which was to my surprise i had no idea that this literature existed, but two people who were very close to

him, gideon wells who was secretary of the navy and benjamin butler who was, you know, his general both wrote, wells in three essays published in the galaxy between 1872 and 1876 and benjamin butler in the north american review in 1886, both of them said that lincoln never abandoned his embrace of colonization, that lincoln really, maybe he wanted to give a small number of black men the vote, but he wanted to ship all the rest of these africans back to africa or to the caribbean. so we don't know. and so the historical profession has said these guys are lying, mr. lincoln freed the slaves. but you don't know. how was -- it certainly could have been a reasonable conclusion to say that 3.9 million illiterate slaves are not going to be integrated

easily into, or 3.5 million into the confederate south, right? because the others had escaped. you know, it's taken us a century and a half to integrate anyway, and -- >> the evolution from the first inaugural address to the second inaugural address, gives you a trajectory. >> yeah. and is support of the right to vote for those black men. so i think that the abolitionists like frederick douglass would have pressed them to say, look, this is racist. if white people don't have to be very intelligent but white men, why do we have -- so i think the suffrage would have been expanded to all black men under lincoln. i think that he would have been a healer for the south, but what i can't figure out is how the former confederates would have dealt with black people being their social or political equals? at least as citizens. it's taken them a long time. i mean, you grew up in the

south, man, you know this better than i do. it's taken them a long time to believe that, and i don't know if lincoln would have made that -- >> i've also lived in the north too. >> yeah. well, what do you think? what do you think? >> i think when i was growing up it was just as bad in the north as it was in the south, and i think that there's a very pronounced bend of the arc of history that's happening now and that it's a great time to be alive. let me open it up. >> okay. >> yes, sir. >> don't you think there was a big difference if lincoln would have lived as opposed to andrew johnsonsome. >> oh, my god, yes. >> yeah. >> andrew johnson gives the worst second inaugural address. he was terrible. i mean, he was a white supremacist who hated black people. he was horrible. it couldn't have been worse, absolutely, it couldn't have been worse. but whether lyndon -- you know, i asked the panel last night how crucial was

lincoln's assassination in the formation of the myth that lincoln is? and by the large the panelists thought that was crucial. would lincoln have continued to grow? how many presidents grow consistently over eight years? you know, we could argue about that. john f. kennedy. >> [inaudible] >> someone said alan last night, i believe, the lincoln scholar at gettysburg quoted john kennedy saying that kennedy said his hero was nehru before he becomes president. he said it was the most disappointing night of his life when he met him. and then he turns to sorenson, i believe, and says, you know, that's what lincoln would have been like if he had survived. he would have turned into nehru. and i'd never heard that story before. >> sorenson's counselor. it's a great tale. yes, ma'am? >> if lincoln hadn't, if lincoln

hadn't freed the slaves, who would have? >> the slaves would have freed themselves. i think there would have been such enormous pressure. i mean, the slaves did free themselves too. lincoln issued the edict, and then the slaves had to assume the agency to move off the plantation, get behind union lines as union troops were coming down. but i think that -- >> this happens right after ante toe, right? >> yeah. on the same day. they were waiting -- lincoln had been working on the emancipation proclamation all summer, but seward said it'll look like capitulation. as soon as they found out they had won, he signed a preliminary emancipation proclamation in 1862. but just the month before on april 14th he had invited five black men to the white house.

they had no idea, they had been summoned to beth l ame church here in d.c. at 2:00 in the afternoon by an emissary of the president of the united states. they thought lincoln was going to be there. and this man said, no, no, the president wants you to pick five leaders, and you will meet with him in two hours at the white house. so they deputized five guys. they show up, and he says, i'm going to give you -- you guys are going to be -- you know the founding fathers in america? benjamin franklin, george washington? you are the five founding fathers for a new black nation in panama because i am about to free all these slaves, and i want you to take 'em all out of here to panama, man. so it's, there are these two things going on in lincoln's head at the same time. that's why he's fascinating. he's fascinating. but i liked lincoln. don't get me wrong. when you see this film -- and i hope you will. >> when does it run? >> tomorrow night at 9:00 on pbs.

it's, he's better for being complex. and i wanted to show the historical profession that you don't have to mask his warts. >> uh-huh. >> that you don't have to diminish his dimensions. that lincoln in three dimensions is infinitely more fascinating than, you know, the cardboard cutout that we were raised with that he was the american christ. that's ridiculous. nobody's that good, nobody. and lincoln wasn't. in this book i include his dark jokes, he liked black-faced minstrel singing, he used the n word seven times in a speech inheartedford. look at that lady there, what? abraham lincoln. you know, the funniest take on abraham lincoln i've ever seen, you know, the great african-american artist williams is a good buddy of mine, and she has this picture. there's lincoln essentially, looks like he's been out drinking all night. and he's hungover. and so he wakes up, and somebody

tells him, and the caption is i freed the what? [laughter] >> but go back to that question, he didn't quite free the slaves. you have to keep remembering. >> no, he didn't free the slaves. the 13th amendment -- >> yeah. >> now, historians argue about this, but the thing that abolished the institution of slavery was the 13th amendment. and that was lincoln ran that through congress and signed it. he didn't have to sign -- the president doesn't have to sign amendments. but he insisted on signing it, and he said this is the thing that he would be remembered for, the 13th amendment. because, again, he thought the emancipation proclamation basically could be illegal, and the reason it reads -- remember, it reads like a legal brief because it is. he's saying that a war gives a president extraordinary powers, and that this is an act that one

can confiscate the enemy's property in a war. and this is an extension of the confiscation of enemy property. >> but at least he rams through and makes a very important statement in the 13th amendment, and that's where he should be remembered. >> yes, absolutely. >> one quick one. when you said and then i have a real one -- >> one or the other, liz. >> all right. on the emancipation proclamation, i think a lot of us had a sort of sudden moment of disillusionment when we realized he only freed the slaves -- >> in the south. >> -- in the south. and i wonder how, you know, i thought was this a cynical move? because he didn't touch the institution of slavery in the north because he wanted to hold them together and have them be his political -- >> that's right. >> -- support whereas he wanted to discombobulate the enemy. >> good question. >> that's right.

it was brilliant though morally it might not sit well with me, pragmatically -- >> [inaudible] >> yes. pragmatically it does. he needed kentucky particularly and maryland to be in the union, and they had slaves. if he had tried to abolish their slaves, they would have joined the confederacy. and it was touch and go. >> [inaudible] >> no. and again, he was losing the war so he wanted completely, as you say, to discombobulate the south. surprise, surprise, the confederates brought their slaves with them to the front. so they had all this free labor. he wanted to get rid of them, take away the positive for the south, and then get them to cross through union lines and fight for the north. so it was a win/win for him. >> march key kay -- mary kay bush. >> hi, mary kay. >> hi, how are you. >> fine, thank you. >> you talked about something that's very near and dear to my

heart. when we were growing up being a doctor -- >> i'm old enough to be your daddy. [laughter] >> i wish. being a doctor or a lawyer was, you know, something really great to aim for. and let alone head of the duboise center or president of the united states. >> yeah, they're all equal in importance. [laughter] >> but you, the way you put it was the loss of reverence for education, and i think you're spot on. but what i want to ask you is as a historian, as a person who studies social history and phenomena why did this happen? and also do you see your books, your films, the dna studies that you're having people do, can this kind of thing help to reverse it or what can? >> that's a good question. both of them. >> two questions. i think that in my opinion what

happened was paradoxically the success of affirmative action. because affirmative action introduced two profoundly different classes within the african-american community. now, as you know as well as i, we always had class. black people have been arguing with each other about how to get out of here since 1819 when the first 20 black people got off the boat, right? and we've had house slaves and field slaves, mulattos and dark come protected -- etc., etc. we've had all kinds of class distinctions since the 17th century and free negroes and slaves. a huge class distinction. thomas sole had a theory, as i understand it, that many of the most successful black people if you did their genealogy came from people who had been freed early like duboise's talented ten. and there may be some truth to that, maybe not. that's one of the things i always have in my mind when i'm doing my series. as a matter of fact, though i

didn't put this in the last series, of the 19 people whose genealogy that we've studied in both series, three -- or 20 counting me -- three are descended from free negroes. only three. and guess what all three have in common? they have one thing in common. anybody guess? well, they're all three professors at harvard right now. [laughter] sarah lawrence light foote, peter gomez, and me. i didn't know that. i didn't start with that knowledge. i discovered it. i just started because they happened to be friends, and i liked them, and i was trying to get a diversity of opinion. diversity of profession in the series. but what happened with affirmative action was my mother got arrested so was fond of saying people who had colored money all of a sudden had white money. we always had, you know, a black set of professionals who had black clientele, but all of a sudden we could get -- instead

of going to howard, three generations of my family went to howard starting in 1910 when pansy gates graduated from nursing school. but instead of going to howard, i went to yale, right? so that all of a sudden it's not like black people didn't go to yale, but not many did. class of '66 at yale had six black men to graduate. .. suburbs or to white

neighborhoods. their kids don't go to m street high school anymore. they go to exeter or wherever. so it changed -- for wilson it was a disappearance of role models. so you could be a janitor or a maid but you see dr. wilson down the street or general powell or something because we were one nation united by segregation. if you have a law all black shall or shan't the class distinctions within the race are irrelevant, vis-a-vis a law, you still can't eat a hamburger at walgreens or some drugstore. so that all changed. we have two classes now the black middle class has

quadrupled since dr. martin luther king was killed. if we graphed. there would be a self-perpetuating middle class and underclass and never will the two meet without massive intervention, structural intervention on the one hand and almost a moral revolution within the african-american. every time i see jesse and al i say to them -- you eyes are looking for a second act. lead a moral revolution within the african-american community about individual responsibility. about deferred gratification. use barack as the model. because in the end only -- i taught emerson at my graduate seminar and he gave a speech and he called the emancipation westerners. ideas only save races. in the end, black people to have save themselves and the same thing is true of women. it's very interesting. he throws down the gauntlet in

effect for frederick douglass and in a year later he writes this great paper. you have to show that you are equally to all the other races. this is not me. this is emerson and i think that we have to impress upon all the members of the black community that barack obama -- nobody did him a favor, you know? he's not the affirmative action candidate. he shocked everybody, especially me. i didn't think he was going to beat hillary, a, let alone the american people. i didn't believe the american people were ready to elect a black man and and i was wrong. it's not about barack. it's my age with a certain level of skepticism and sin -- cynicism. and unless you step up to the plate, you're going to be

crushed in this world and that's -- it used to be that if a black person got the pulitzer prize, gwen lebrooks gets a pulitzer for poems. people had parties. people were proud. if we ask the average black person who was the -- name three black writers who got the pulitzer prize they wouldn't even know, probably. we know, we've just lost this love of knowledge -- the love of the pursuit of knowledge and the understanding of the importance of its history to us, you know, there were laws against our people learning and, you know, we had -- frederick douglass said steal a little learning from the white people so we should be running m.i.t. my father always says, every time we pass an inner city basketball court, it's packed if we studied calculus like we studied basketball we would be

running m.i.t. it's true. it's true. >> >> i think it's worse than losing education. there's disdain of education among young black men. >> far too many, that's through >> and that's even more dangerous. >> it is. because it's social suicide. and it's individual suicide and it's collective of a suicide of the huge segment of the race. what i asked some of the most distinguished social scientists at conferences, black and white, is whether they believe off the record that the classified in the african-american community is bridgeable. and many of them say, no. they just theoretically it is but either it won't be the individual will of black people or there won't be the collective will of society to do that which is necessary to change it.

i'm hoping that if the stimulus -- the stimuli bills -- because we're at the beginning of stimulus packages, if they can get the economy righted in the same way that bill clinton's policies were not race-specific, he had a theory of rising tide lifts all boats. and they did. our figures were never better under any president for a long, long time than they were for president clinton and i'm hoping it will help under president obama and at the same time, there will be this internal intraracial moral component trying to return us to our roots. >> john? >> this is really marvelous. walter burns gave a talk on lincoln in which he argued opposition to slavery was lincoln's great star. that lincoln had the opportunity

to endorse the crittenden compromises before taking office, rejected that and, in fact, the reason lincoln was determined to keep the union together was primarily he understood that if the confederacy became a separate nation, abolition of slavery would be out of use of the federal government. that sounds like a different view of lincoln's motives. i wonder if you could comment. >> there's no question that lincoln was always opposed to slavery. and this theory about the -- keeping the court of appeals fed si of the union so he could abolish slaves, i think it's interesting but i don't think that's what motivated him primarily. because at the beginning -- and we know from lincoln's own words in this very book that that's not true because he was willing in his first -- in his first inaugural to make slavery legal for everyone if that's what it took. and then he was also at one point in his career willing to

take 100 years to abolish slavery and that was in 1858 so i would would have been 8 when it was abolished. as much as he respected that opinion, i just don't seat evidence for it that he wanted to get the confederacy back to keep it in the union so that he could abolish slavery because after all he was only able to abolish slavery because the confederacy left. he didn't think he had the power to abolish slavery. >> i always wonder about media. because part of creating a value is that there's such a media onslaught of everybody -- that it's like black more television than any other groups. television doesn't value education and that's been going on for about 30-some years. and that's a good percentage of what is happening there. >> i watched tv all the time.

>> what were you watching? >> when i was growing up amos and andy, buhla? i was watching the worst stuff you could watch. >> i think it's worse nowadays, >> we didn't have sesame street. we had ding dong school and romper room. >> i'm talking about today. >> i have two children. 28 and 26. they were tv junkies but they had -- but they read, and they -- you know, there was no question -- they're both in graduate school. it didn't even occur to me or to them that they weren't going to go to college. i don't think it's tv per se. i think it's the context in which the tv is watched. i think it's your role models. i think that if you have a 16-year-old mother who can't read and write, you're probably going to be a 16-year-old mother or father who can't read or write. the most likely -- >> it's intervention i feel like sometimes you might -- somehow the television almost prevent intervention from that parent

having another focus. >> the true intervention -- you could be right. i'm a media person and i love -- and i make tv shows. maybe i'm the wrong guy to talk to. but i think the real intervention -- what is the institution, the mechanism through which homes have been -- the effects of home life have been mediated? schools. right? except our schools are failing. you could come from whatever home when i was growing up and find salvation in school or at least that's what i believed. i had a good home that i come from. schools, that was the level playing field. i hated summer vacation. i mean, i liked the weather but i reigned in school and i wasn't an athletic so i couldn't reign on the basketball court or at some football field but i loved school. and i think many of us love school and now that's gone.

i went to boston english high school two years ago. every black history month i try to do, you know, some free gigs in inner city schools. so i went to boston english which is, you know, historic -- jack, did you go to boston english? >> no, i had a question. >> oh, okay. [laughter] >> it's up to walter. don't call on jack white. >> he used to be my colleague. >> yeah, he's a good man. it was an all-school assembly at 11:00 in the morning. so i got at 10:30 and sat at my computer at the powerpoint. i had to go to the bathroom and i asked the teacher and she said of course and i'm waiting. she gets on the walkie-talkie and calls somebody and i'm waiting. teacher, i really have to go to the bathroom. you can't go the bathroom by yourself. the policeman is taking you to the bathroom. damn, this is cold man.

now, that's a true story. i would have been crushed in an environment like that. i can't imagine sitting here and having the life that i've had -- if i'd gone to a school where being smart wasn't -- didn't put you at the top of the heap or that you weren't protected from bullies. piedmont is an irish piedmont school with a handful of black people. >> actually two questions. when you were speaking about the -- what you thought the root causes of the problems in the black community with regard to education you mentioned affirmative action, were you really talking about desegregation as opposed to affirmative action, a, and b, is it really the case that young black disdain education or is it more of a case of them reacting

to the structural deficiencies that you describe here? when do you think that this disdain, if it actually came about at all? when do you think it started seven >> my statement of affirmative action, no one has benefited more than i have an american academy. and i'm a ardent and proponent -- >> so am i but that's not the request he. >> i'm just warming up, jack. >> he's a harvard professor. >> i don't want anybody in the audience to think that i was against the affirmative action but the principal impact was to create the black middle class and it was to transfer the old colored class to the new middle class. that is the principal effect of affirmative action. that's not a bad thing. it was a necessary thing but we didn't have enough of it. when blacks started to expand the size of the middle class,

affirmative action shut down. affirmative action was like a class escalator as lonnie is fond of putting it. and somebody hit the stop button. >> you were admitted to yale before affirmative action? >> no affirmative action was formulated under lyndon johnson. jack, we were the beginning of affirmative action. yale didn't wake up one day and -- it depends what you mean by affirmative action. it wasn't a law. >> that's what we're talking about. because i want to be a little bit precise about it. >> it was in the air. it was a concept. i'm not talking about a government mandate. nobody could tell yale to let in 90 more black people but it was philosophically in the air. the idea was embraced that we needed to create a new leadership class within the affirmative community or another way to put it is that the broader american class should be more diverse so we need to led harvard, frank rains, give him a