tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with ken burns. he follows a group of young boys at the greenwood school in vermont as they memorize, analyze, and recite the gettysburg address. the production of the film inspired an online and initiative last year of the 150th anniversary of the gettysburg address. glad you have joined us. a conversation with ken burns, coming up right now.

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: >> filmmaker ken burns has brought us so many of the experiences that define this nation from jazz to baseball to the fight for women's suffrage. his latest project which airs on pbs is called the address, following boys ages 11-17, all of whom face a range of complex

learning differences as they memorize and recite the gettysburg address. here now a look at a scene from -- burns "the address to go "the address to go >> this is one of the most famous speeches of all times, from 200 or 300 years ago. it means a lot. >> fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. >> it always amazes me, the kind of courage that the boys have. it's very difficult when you are a kid to be different. >> this has to be the first piece you've ever done where the narration is done by a bunch of kids themselves. >> were originally thought we would just have title cards to

provide the historical context of the gettysburg address and its importance. then it occurred to us, why not let the boys narrated, because some people might have reading or learning difficulties. you can see almost from the first moment of the film it is different, the kids are stumbling over it a little bit, and you begin to understand the sort of baggage that they carry and are struggling to overcome. in the gettysburg address, lincoln talks about a new birth of freedom. doubling down on declaration, the declaration being a flawed document written fourscore and seven years ago that says all men are created equal, but hoops, thomas jefferson owned human beings and did not see fit free thosetime to individuals. now after the greatest battle, lincoln was coming there and saying look, we really do believe it. i'm doubling down on this, and he is giving us a new operation -- new operating system.

it is interesting the way has resonated over time, the poetry of these words that have such durability has lasted. from newe river hampshire where i live in a tiny town in newmont, are these boys who are experiencing a new birth of freedom by learning the gettysburg address, not just learning it, but publicly reciting it. to do it, and you can memorize it. students it takes two or three months of struggle and agonizing. that's what the film is doing. also bumping up against them with the historical context because we are all liberated by the struggle, and that liberation can extend to many places. when the first anniversary of 9/11, the english word spoken besides the desperately sad list of those killed was the gettysburg address. words that you know as well as

anybody on this planet our medicine. tavis: let me stay with these boys for a second. particularly with your artistic decision to let them do the narration. decision in that the process did you know you had made the right decision, or were you rethinking your decision? decision to try them really late in the editing process. it instantly clicked, and it was right. it felt right. it was a way you start off and you don't go, it's another ken burns film. historical documentary, it's about these kids struggling. the have dyslexia, adhd, whole alphabet soup of learning differences. in our society, is one of the psychiatrist in the school says, we think we celebrate individuality, but we don't. we want conformity. these kids have been bullied and marginalized. the greenwood school is often a place of last resort.

they don't say your glasses half empty or empty. what you do well, we can teach you how to overcome this, and a disproportionate number of ceo's of fortune 500 companies are just let it. -- are dyslexic. that meant the strategies they have developed to circumvent these differences, initial differences, turned out to be such novel strategies that it makes them advance when it comes to other areas of their life. that is the good news that these kids can escape this is if the gravity of this prison. they can have a new birth of freedom, just as lincoln can say we can outgrow this unbelievable hypocrisy that we inherited at our founding, the idea that we could have 4 million human beings on by other americans and still brag to the world that we are about equality. said: >> back to what you about words matter, language

matters, i'm curious why it is that you have chosen to use the phrase a few times, and i took your lead initially, the phrase learning differences as opposed to learning disabilities. >> that is my learning curve, too. when they talked about lb schools and learning disabilities and learning disabled and things like that, what happens is that we tend to, with all our sympathy, reinforced karyotypes and prejudices that diminish it. but it just means your neural pathways are going to get to this reading, memorizing, speaking in a different way than many of us do. that's not saying your road is worse, it just means that we as a culture tend to teach down this road, you are on that one. we can help you get along that road farther. that meant there was no stigma attached. these kids from all over the world, from saudi arabia, indonesia, from every walk of

life and background in the school, they are struggling. the come to displace native do all the things that little boys do. we covered that -- they come to thingsys and do all the that little boys do. some of them up until an hour before the gala performance saying i'm not going to do this. i know it, but i cannot do it. i can talk to you right now but i cannot go out in front of more than a couple of people and talk. all of a sudden, who shows up? there he is doing it. they will have it on their hard drives for the rest of their lives. just like the person who ran in a marathon or climb that mountain. nobody can take that away. the school has been open for 35 years. they take over lots of the curriculum. it might be english, history, remedial speech, but lots of other places where they are all working together at different paces to learn the address. some kids memorize it right away but they cannot articulate it. they have speech problems.

but then you see an alum come back when he five or 30 years past and they still have it. it's like a talisman, something that has crystallized in them. you realize in the same way, in are all sense, we beholden to them and those words. it gave us a new reinvigoration of our catechism at the darkest moment of our republic's history, after the greatest battle ever fought on american soil. 56,000 casualties, 10,000 dead. the students go there and in two minutes say the first sentence is where we have been, the second sentence is where we are, and the remaining eight, this is what we have to do. tavis: i want to deconstruct the speech a bit more in just a moment. it is fascinating, and that is the best word i can come up with right now. it is mind-boggling that that a two-minute presentation can have a kind of impact this has had

all these many years later. i wonder whether or not, as you follow these young boys, you get the sense that they are not just learning it, not just reciting it, but they are getting what lincoln was -- this is heavy stuff for kids of a certain age. i recall when i had to learn this thing when i was in school, i was forced to get it because there were some people in my universe who happen to be african-american american who were going to make sure that i understood, absolutely. are they getting the meaning of this? >> that's the best thing, and that's the central question. we have stopped asking kids to memorize things in our schools. my dad had six hours on his hard drive. shakespeare passages and long points. they did and asked me to memorize the gettysburg address when i was growing up. fact, we like to do things together. we like to sing in church together. we like to sing take me out to

the ballgame or the national anthem together. yet everything in our media culture suggest we should not do things together. the interesting thing about the gettysburg address for these boys specifically is it gives them paradoxically a free agency, but it does it in the context of the community, of the collective, that they were together. my worry is, you can memorize it, and some of them because of their learning differences, do , but a little bit wrote when you see a kid who fully invest in the meaning and inhabits the meaning as well as the great task for them of memorization, for any of us, it is impressive. that's where you feel like i would rather air on the side of having our kids, whatever their learning status is, memorize lots of things. the human brain has the capacity to put thousands of things on it , if we could train it that way. er, worry about the rote lat

because some of that meaning is going to accrue, even to the who is justerson remembering it so they can pass the test. it lodges in your memory permanently. i can think of lincoln's first inaugural, the last sentence, the six chords of memory stretching to every living heart and our stone all over this swell and will yet touched by the the better memories of our angels. i will never lose that. it is mine. warm ornately, it is ours. -- more importantly, it is ours. anyone who watches the film will see that the kids get it. that is the most important thing, not just memorizing. tavis: i wonder whether it is your sense that this is the ultimate, the quintessential example of that notion that less

is more. >> i thought you were wrong to ask about the best beach in american history. -- ian make that argument thought you were going to ask about the best speech in american history. there are three others i can think of off the top of my head. dr. king has one, george w. bush nine/11, alsomber with equal to the challenge. there are several speeches that qualify in the running. you have to put it in the context, he was invited as an afterthought. the featured speaker that day was edward everett, the noted orator of the time. he spoke almost two hours. that's what people came to hear.

people would applaud when he came back to the main theme out of just the beauty of the construction of the english language. the president was an afterthought to add a few appropriate remarks. and he nailed it. but it took a while for that to catch on. the chicago newspaper said the cheek of every american must tingle with shame when it reads the silly dish watery utterances of the man who had to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the president of the united states. if you're wringing your hands about partisan politics in america, it has been going on since the beginning of the republic erie it -- of the republic. edward everett said i wish i could have come as close to the heart of the matter in two hours as you did in two minutes.

all of a sudden had meaning and not just for some americans, for all americans. what it meant is that we were going to be in the pursuit of happiness. it was not just a limited all men are created equal, not just white men of property, it meant everybody, and the continuing narrative of the united states beyond gettysburg was going to men, women, what people of color, handicap, were going to debate about the elderly and all the different things that all men are created equal means. we are a nation in the process of becoming. that is the pursuit of happiness. tavis: that's what fascinates me about this address. here you have an address that is at best aspirational. given what has just happened, as it isntioned earlier, aspirational at best. that precipitated by a war

is being fought over the institution of slavery. juxtaposition of the documents that were proslavery to begin with. it endures for a nation that is now more multicultural and more multiracial and more multiethnic than ever before. >> we have to give thomas heferson his props, because distilled a century of enlightened thinking into one sentence vague enough that it white property owners, not just of physical property but of human property, and of society, but it also was elastic enough for us to continually evolve. if we talked of the liberation of the african-american in the united states in law, if not in , and that0,000 people

is what he is addressing right there. but the aspirational aspect has drawn us into our future. it basically says it's not just about this moment, it's about the future moments, and there's no proper name inc. salting a great battle. he is asking us to look ahead. eight orhe word here nine times. he places it within a different context in each sentence. forward, and for these dead to not have died in vain, we have to continue to have a government, of, by, and for the people. there is still impresses on those prepositions. -- emphasis on those prepositions. you suddenly realize how revolutionary a thing it is. gave it todaye somebody would stand up and say the president came to gettysburg to try to distract attention from the disastrous military

campaign out west. he said the world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. it's interesting that many of us have forgotten what they did here, the real facts and forms of the civil war, but we haven't forgotten what he said there. it's a great irony and contradiction, underscoring that words matter. tavis: i think about the brilliance of it, the aspirational nature of it, but then i think about all the -- what it all the took to make these documents come to life for a generation of americans. the words had to be spoken exactly 100 years later by dr. king, because we were still tripped up, our journey, that

aspirational part of it was still repeated by all of those --ngs that still to this day when you have the birther movement, that's just a new way -word.ing the n >> what happens is that ecclesiastes said it best, what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. there's nothing new under the sun. many people favor the idea that there are cycles of industry. some say you're condemned to repeat what you don't remember. i can tell you that human nature remains the same. that is what ecclesiastes means. that means we can study the past and you can have a conversation between two men most responsible at least rhetorically for giving voice to those unspoken aspirations, that both those

documents, both of those speeches, both of those men fully represented. tavis: how fascinated were you or are you at the journey that those words took that cap them alive, not just in our minds but in our hearts and out of our mouths, to the point that these boys in vermont are still them rising the speech? you mentioned african-americans. i think about the black national anthem, the words and music written by these two negroes who came together to write this piece and they teach it to a bunch of kids. the only reason all these years we still sing it, lift every voice and sing, is that the kids were taught the song for a one-time occasion, and they grew up and went out and started families and moved around, they kept singing that song, and all these years later,

thanks to them, the song is still being sung. so i think about these boys here who are carrying on this tradition. >> we have in the pipeline a big series on the history of the war of vietnam. one of the best books is called "the things they carried their quote -- the things they carried ." like the blues, it's not just a missed understanding about the it's tough, but i'm carrying on. when you have words like this, regardless of whether our media consciousness or the conventional wisdom is willing to accept them, some of us hold onto them and we are in armored by them, and they survive. those kids say lift every voice and sing. all of a sudden, someone else remembers those words and it

comes down. one day as a single dad would tootle girls 12 and -- two little girls now grown up and making babies themselves, at christmas time saying that he, i have a gift for you and she stands up and recites the gettysburg address for me. i saw a little girl in a nightgown standing in that early morning light by the christmas tree, and what is she doing? she is giving something she thinks is the best she can give to her daddy who has just made a film on the civil war, and she recites the gettysburg address. so it goes on. the school doesn't in a little bit bigger way and we hope the challenge -- we are saying if these kids can do it, you can do it. we have challenged the whole country. we have bill o'reilly and rachel maddow. we have nancy pelosi and marco rubio and conan o'brien. we have steven spielberg and stephen -- and bill gates and

taylor swift and usher and shane victor reno, infielder for the boston red sox. they are all in one mash-up that we have done. i forgot a couple of people, robin roberts, mayor dinkins. they have already at, and if you learn the address.org, there are schools in hawaii, alabama, and utah. there is somebody singing it in the shower. stephen colbert hamming it up. a lot of people really taking it seriously. they are going down to their governors and legislatures in school systems in churches and saying what if we did this all together? black or white, gay or straight, young or old, rich or poor. we sever today from too much --

suffer today from too much plur ubus, not enough unum. [laughter] tavis: how can you not love ken burns? i always love talking to him. the project that you want to see now, this gettysburg peace with these young kids is amazing. >> it will blow your mind and you realize there but for the grace of god go i. then you watch them learn it on them,u go, i wish i were the dedication to purpose, the end result, the sense of accomplishment. it's stuff we all crave. tavis: i'm sure i won't be lucky enough to have you on the west coast again when that roosevelt project comes out. >> i have a feeling we will be

here for a while. be anywhereappy to ken burns is. good to see you, man. that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. >> tavis, you are making history by getting a star on the hollywood walk of fame. a your only the second person -- the second pbs into tea to do this. the original one was big bird, which is pretty big feet to fill, but you do it with grace and honor and i can't think of anyone who deserves it more than you. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with grammy winner rosanne cash on her new cd, the river and the thread. that is next time. we will see you then.

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs.

% hello and welcome. i'm becca. this week, behind me you can see the famous hangar one. you've no doubt noticed it as you have passed by on highway 101. it's so large you can fit three ships the size of the titanic inside. built in the 1930s for the uss macon, an airship and could hold two blimps. we'll talk more about it in a bit. an we'll also meet some local aviators who also made history. the only woman to win an air medal in world war ii. a tuskegee airmen and the pilot that ditched his airliner on the hudson to save lives. sully sullenberger, you may have heard of him. it starts now.