hello everyone and thank you for joining us for a very special edition of deadline white house. it's something we are really excited about. september 23, 1990 was a sunday as you know there was no google, email, it took the whole world today to find out history was made on the day. the civil war on sunday night was the most-watched opening episode of a series ever to play on public television. they were talking about the widely praised documentary by ken burns . a smash hit no one saw coming not even ken burns. someone says, i can't believe it, this is higher than any one guest. and he meant that, he didn't expect the film to be a sensation. in fact, he was told it was bomb. "in the 80s, he went from

meeting to meeting to pitch the civil war. the answer he kept hearing was no one will watch this. it wasn't just that he was proposing a work of epic length, it was also because documentaries were not considered commercially viable. yet, when the civil war premiered on pbs in 1990, nearly 40 million people watched. it remains the highest rated program in pbs history. the week of its premier, sales of blank cassette tapes on which it could be recorded, shot up 40% nationwide. you could see why." >> southerners feel heard the north. they fear they might move west. as each state was added to the union it threatened to upset the equilibrium of power. there were grave doubts of the hugeness of the land. whether one government could comprehend the whole.

henry adams. violence reached the floor of the united states senate where preston brooks of south carolina, a congressman, savagely beat an abolitionist charles sumner with his cane. members began carrying knives and pistols into the chamber. meanwhile, the nation's chief executive, james buchanan, did nothing. >> a house divided against itself cannot stand . i believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. i do not expect the union to be dissolved i do not expect the house to fall but i do expect it will cease to be divided. it will become all one thing or all the other. >> political violence, a divided country, it's like the

mark twain quote, history often repeats itself. if you watched all of his films back to back they calculated it would take over 200 films back to back they calculated it would take over 282 hours or a full nine days but if you have a spare nine days to watch them in a sitting, what you would witness is proof that generation after generation, history is rhyming before our eyes. >> martin luther king was shot and killed tonight . in this difficult day and in this difficult time for the united states, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we would want to move in. >> over the next week , african- americans grieving, frustrated, angry poured into the streets of more than 100 towns and

cities including new york and oakland, newark and nashville, chicago, and cincinnati, and baltimore. in washington dc, fires came within two blocks of the white house. later that same month, antiwar students seized several buildings at columbia university in manhattan. the occupation lasted a week. policeman eventually drove demonstrators out of the buildings and sent more than 100 students to the hospital. the united states now appeared to be more divided than at any time since the civil war. >> more divided than at any time since the civil war, ken

was told no one would watch this and 40 million people do because of our understanding of our past has the singular and unique ability to educate , inspire, captivate, and give us comfort, and give us courage. so what happens right now? what this arc of american history could teach us today, we start with emmy word filmmaker and humanitarian, ken burns. we have him here for more than half an hour so we could deep dive into his extraordinary body of work and your life. everything from the civil war, to the civil rights and everything you've opened up about. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, nicole. i'm privileged to be here with you again. thank you. >> could i start with your history? i haven't heard you talk about this very much and there's a wonderful piece of reporting that's been done with the new

york times. is that okay? >> sure. >> okay, let's listen. >> the story that ken tells about his origin and filmmaking dates back to little bit after his mother died in 1965 when he was 11. she had breast cancer. he describes how his dad had never cried, not in all the years that his mom was fighting this excruciating illness. not even at her funeral. the first time that ken say is that cried was when we are watching a movie together. >> we are watching odd man out by sir carol reed. it was about the irish troubles in the 19 teens. then at the end my dad wept. >> he understands that his dad is not weeping over what is on

the screen but over the loss of his wife. >> he would cry at other things like the favorite soundtrack that he and my mom liked. i loved that the movies provided a safe haven so i decided then and there that's what i wanted to make. >> that was so beautiful. i want to hear you say more. >> my mother was sick with cancer. it metastasized and she died a few months short of my 12th birthday when i was 11. therefore, there wasn't a moment my life where she was not dying, that horrific damocles was hanging over our fragile and tenuous family. a strong, hero, kind, inspirational for everyone around her. my younger brother rick and me, when she finally died, it was this incredible release from any of us. my father had not cried when she was sick. hadn't cried at the funeral.

it was incredibly sad and neighbors noted this. then he cried at this movie. i got it. i was 12. he had a strict curfew but he let me watch movies with him and i realized this is what i'm supposed to be doing. i ended up at hampshire college that had just started a new expansile school experimental school. a wonderful and thriving place in its second year of existence. the teachers, there were social documentary still photographers. i became a documentary film maker but it was born out of loss. i think so many of us are defined in this way. we forget that we try to select or preselect for some equivalent metaphorical equivalent of a gated community where none of these institutes

will inevitably visit us. they will inevitably visit us and it's what we do in those moments that divine us define us. it's true of families, of communities, and of course it is true of nations. that is where we could see the similarities that again to accrue and develop. i remember working on raising money for my first film called brooklyn bridge. i was about 12 years old and people would tell me, this trial child is trying to sell them the brooklyn bridge and i got hundreds of rejections at at one point i remember writing a letter before computers, writing that i thought i was an emotional archaeologist and i was uninterested in the facts of the past or the dry reads. some higher emotional thing. it took me decades to sort of realize that clearly had to do with what was rooted in this excruciating loss. it's now 59 1/2 years that i've

been without her and not a day goes by that i don't think of her and it's way too long to be without your mom. >> you make me cry here, right at the beginning. what i wanted to ask you about the work here though, if you hear from all the naysayers and the doubters at the beginning of your career it's almost unfathomable to anyone who knows you because people put your premieres on the calendar to make time to watch your work when it comes out. i think the fact that it's always been this phenomenon of someone who experienced pain and loss but remained open, how do you do that? how did you do that? >> i don't think that i did very well. i could remember being in the back of the station wagon. my

mother was picking us up or a friend's mother was picking us up from school. she says, and what does your father do. he's an anthropologist or what does your mother do and i would say she's deceased as if using some kind of anodyne anachronism would make it not so. that's where this process for so many decades for me, coming to an understanding, i was practicing this in my work at a fundamental and subconscious level. i was an emotional archaeologist and people responding to these films and in particular, the civil war in an emotional way. it wasn't just a history lesson that would have the test on tuesday. it was something involving these deep, powerful emotions but i didn't know this and i remembered i had a crisis and i wait to my late father-in-law when i was in a crisis. the date of her death, april 28 when i was in a crisis. the date of her death, april 28, 1965 was always approaching

and receding but i was never present on that day. he said i that you blew out your candles as a kid wishing she would come back. and i went, how did you know? he listed five other things, and i looked at him and said how do you know these things? he said will look at what you do. you make abraham lincoln, jackie robinson come alive, who do you really think that you are trying to wake up? i was 39 or 40. all the sudden it was losing like one stage of the rocket and i could then invest personally with my brother and my young daughters in understanding finding my mother who had never been -- there was no burial. she was in a grave. my brother and i had to track her down and put out a memorial and be present every april 28. i've got to girls, my little girls text me every day. i called my mother mommy and

they called their mom mama and we have this connection. she lives every single day. it's one of those mysterious things that happen again, not just within individuals but between individuals but within the story of nations. so i think i've asked a question about our country and every film and i think the answers are the reverberations, the answers he sort of deepen them with each successive project had become equally as personal as they are sort of general and kind of what you would expect. the top-down views of history. we try to meet it with the bottom-up history which includes a lot of stories that aren't told. so-called ordinary people, there aren't just any ordinary

people ever, it's not just the sequence of presidential administrations punctured by war and if it is in administration or a war then we need to hear from the people who did the actual fighting and dying. the people who were home worried about them and the people excluded from the ideals of freedom that we continually promotes as we celebrate our supposedly exceptional as him. >> suppose it, something we will spend a lot of time rumbling with. what is it like to live in the moment where you walk down the street, in your town or anywhere you are, the stakes, no matter who you voted for were very much about the democracy itself? that that isn't an artifact that was in the views of millions of people, on the ballot last november. >> you know, i think it was there and yet, if we listen a little bit to it , we know that there have been some intermediate short-term kinds of understandings about just

how much it costs to buy groceries. how fears had been exploited about immigrants, which is this is nothing new. it's the important part. he's supposed to have said, history does not repeat itself but it rhymes. nothing ever happens twice, we are reliving history but what we are reliving is human nature. there's a lot of in human nature and a lot of generosity. there's a lot of banality and a lot of virtue. you find that everywhere. i'm working on the history of the american evolution and if you pick it's just white guys thinking huge thoughts, that's a big part of the story in philadelphia, you are missing a huge important thing in which begin to go, oh my goodness our revolution was a civil war. more of a civil war then our civil war. very few civilian deaths outside of missouri and kansas in our several civil war. it was a way to i think hype it

and sell it. our revolution is a civil war. the fifth or a quarter of the loyalists. patriots are killing loyalists. there are huge stakes involved that aren't just involved with militiamen hearing the bell or running to the moments notice. how do you start a new government? why did you call it if you are clinging to the eastern seaboard, a continental congress? then spend the next 250 years saying we've been uninterested in empire or call it the continental army and say we've been uninterested in empire? it's a global war which involves two dozen nations, european as well as native american. that story as part of this too. women and children are part of those moving armies. they aren't stoically doing

those things. they are but they are also along. it's the history of german immigrants and recent immigrants, the story of indian land and all kinds of complicated things so what we have traditionally done is we have seen the history in a narrow fashion, the top-down version but if you pull out the lens you begin to add complicating characters and that complication doesn't in any way diminish the beauty or even the exceptionalism of that tapestry but allows this to be in a more profound and truthful relief and that's what we have tried to do in all these films. i have in my editing room a sign that says, it's complicated. because you know, when you are

a filmmaker the scene is working and you don't want to touch it but every time we don't have a set research period or a running period then we shoot and edit, book, done. we never stop researching or editing and we never stop shooting so we are constantly

--. >> families divided. if you are a family that feels 20 part by politics, ken's lessons of our history could offer you some hope. also ahead what reverend martin luther king jr.'s legacy could teach us about the setbacks on the road to real progress. a nation turns its lonely eyes to legends like jackie robinson.

what baseball is still teaching us about healing our nation. those stories and more when deadline white house continues after a short break. don't go anywhere. don't go anywhere.

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>> there's something happening here. what it is ain't exactly clear. >> at that time and moment, i realized they were killing

someone else for no reason at all. in the meantime my country is being torn apart. i saw someone who looked like my dad hitting someone who looked like me. oh my god, whose side would i be on? >> families divided , torn apart by politics. we have been there. we are back with ken burns. ken, this feeling of fight within families. it was a line that governor tim walz used. thanksgiving has come and gone, the holiday, people who had

their candidate prevail probably feel good and people who accepted these arguments even talking about democracy being on the line, it looks like they feel worried. i wonder what your cancel is for both sides, the sides that prevail if you think there are any signs of capacity for humility within politics which feel broken and on the side that feels disappointed, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that people don't want to dive into the lessons of history or consume the news. >> to that latter, you just cannot do that. none of us are getting out of this alive. this small precious life we are given, one could presumably take that information and sit locked in the fetal position sucking our thumbs, but we don't. we raise children, we tend our wounds, write symphonies, we have television shows, make documentary films. we have to fight against the impulse at discouragement. i think, you are to believe all men are created equal or you

don't. if you do then huge responsibilities come along, one is accepting the results of unpleasant elections we have to deal with in this binary world that the binaries don't actually exist so how do you just enthrall yourself from this? you have to see them from a different angle or perspective. lost souls escape the loss of control and patriotism. we think of all the ways in which patriotism is used and abused these days. it's easy for things to become destabilized. the bridge started to shake and finally just wove itself into destruction and we have this tendency to do that with a combination of the ferocity of our rhetoric that accompanies this. the chicken little, the aggressive view, on the other

side of that and we have to figure out how to diss enthrall ourselves the one in our american revolution felt thinking about talking with you, it's short. an englishman and philosopher, i hadn't put it on my hard drive so i apologize for having to read it but he said the americans think they have made a discovery that mean to oppress them. we have made a discovery or think we have made one that they intend to rise in rebellion. the severity has increased their ill behavior. we know not how to advance. they know not how to retreat. some party must give way. this is what happens. the more i tell you king george and parliament your tyrants, the more they act like tyrants. the more we tell them they are rebels and radicals the more rebellious they become then you

begin to have a hard time. the beginning of this is a really measured thing basically you want to succeed, so if estate could secede from a nation then a county could secede from a state and a community could secede from the county and the neighbor could neighborhood could secede than what you left with? essentially the question, the dining room table at thanksgiving. so where do we as human beings find the grace, the patients, the love, willing to allow some of these binary constructs that sometimes are durable. let's just say when we point out the revolution, we see, it's divided like now. we forget for marginalized people or for women, for black americans, native americans,

many other groups, there has been perpetual violence of that kind of community destroying, family wrecking kinds of things that take place in human beings do the bad things they do to one another. yet, virtue is around the corner or right in front of us. there are courage for mothers, courage still reminds me, people long after she died, she was cheerful, she cheered me up and i just needed to communicate that to you what that means. all around us, there are these examples of that kind of simple human decency and courage. i think the way in which you conduct yourself and the way that you pursue your inquiries the way you do has given many people space to explore not only the binary, oh my god, the sky is falling but something more nuanced, something that asks us to take responsibility

for it and to not just say oh, it's them. that's what i've learned on your program so many times. that's the problem when we make of them when there is only us, the u.s., only us, that's where the problem begins. so one of the ways that we stop is you've got to do it first. you've got to stop that first. i'm not going to be sure that it will be all right until you stop doing this and that's not the way they work. we have many people in our past, particularly doctor king who talks about this army of love, about the ability, all the teachings that animate all the major religions of the world, the sanctity of human life and the willingness, in the christian religion to turn the other cheek but also it's everything, to give up and find how rich you are in the giving up of things. >> to be the thing that you are craving, to be the light. i love that.

i have to sneak in another break. when we come back, martin luther king junior's iconic speech, i have a dream and the moment calling on every american to do right right now. don't go anywhere. trust me, after 15 walks, it gets a little old. ugh. i really should be retired by now. wish i'd invested when i had the chance... to the moon! unbelievable. stop waiting. start investing. e*trade ® from morgan stanley. at betmgm, everyone gets a welcome offer. e*trade ® so whether you're courtside trying to hit the over... or up here trying to hit the under. whew! or, hitting that win with your crew. ohhh! yes, see defense!

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a young minister named martin luther king jr. who had recently been jailed in birmingham alabama, the director of fbi considered a communist sympathizer and whose life was in constant danger, for everything he stood for give a speech that would be considered a turning point in american history. >> 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. >> that speech, of course, a turning point and triumph for the civil rights movement. the nation would soon learn progress is almost never a straight line. >> the march on washington was a watershed moment for the

movement itself. it was also a turning point, the violence we associate with the movement. the escalation of the opposition. the fear is, the civil rights bill is coming. it's only a month later that you have the bombing of the 16th street baptist church in birmingham alabama that killed four little girls p >> a reminder of the victories, the tragedies, the progress, the backsliding which defines our history. ken is still with us and we have been joined by professor eddie glad and mild wiley maya widely. >> eddie and i were talking about this soft set. the martian 10 on washington was an important thing for the civil rights movement. it was a watershed but it could not have happened because everyone had a dream. it could only happen because

everyone was living activism into the dream. and because the local fights taking place, building the hope that people felt if they fought they might win, not that it was a guarantee but that's what hope is, a passion for what is possible and what was so important about doctor king's speech was that he was speaking out what people were already feeling and doing and the importance of everyone coming together having that many people saying yes this is our dream, incredibly powerful and important. in this moment we have to remember it was the on the ground organizing which enabled this to happen. we should also remember, one other thing, because of kings speech, the night before he was

assassinated was a speech he gave and when he talked about the mountaintop, adding to the mountaintop and i might not get there with you. that's always the part we talk about the more important part was the same thing kamala harris said which is, "in our darkest nights, we can see the stars better. the stars are brighter." which means, in the darkest hours we have to find that light. so even in the hard times we have to find the light. organizing helps to bring in this. >> i need to bring ken in. i have to sneak in one more break but we will be right back. back.

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>> its imagination which constitutes the battleground and allows us to see beyond and imagine what is possible. sometimes we have to experience pain and the horror of it. when i hear doctor king's speech i think of the violence. i think about those people who organized, they've seen unimaginable brutality in the south. they didn't want to go to washington dc because it distracted from what they were doing. the performative nature, i'm thinking of king appealing to kennedy, to issue a second maximization proclamation. a second emancipation proclamation and they refused.

something of the complexity of the moment and thinking of the way in which we often reach for kings i have a dream speech is a way of saying we are actually decent. as a way of avoiding and confronting the ugliness which surrounds him that put him in the coffin. >> like the cherry picking of the story. >> the cherry picking, the forgetting , that situates and grounds this political culture. the evasion and the deferral. we evade the reality of our choices and the further consequences of our choices. generations of degeneration have to deal with this evasion and deferral. for some people, we have to raise our babies in the midst of this all. >> and i mean , ken, that's the work, right? that's why you are so both unflinching and and full-

length, right? there's no two-minute 32nd you know, piece of work that you have, right? i mean, tell me about the importance of the whole story. >> well, i think that's it. at the heart of people supporting the civil war. those who thought no one would watch it were critics. no one was going to sit still for 11/2 hours of photographs about this event. you know, that wasn't the case. we are all starved for meaning and all meaning accrues induration. so despite our needing to watch balls of yarn and kittens are fine, that's an important part. i think, what we do, we have to learn how to separate the binary. while we cherry pick as eddie was saying and maya wiley was saying, we pick the nice fruit that's plucked there, we forget

the underlying history. doctor king said all people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. he's not talking about some black people and other black people or some liberals and northern liberals, tied in a single garment of destiny. he's talking about all people. that's where, in this warman fabric woven fabric we have the seeds of undoing our addiction to the binary. right? i don't like him, i like her, i'm for her, i'm against him, you are bad, that's why this thanksgiving is so wrong. so we have got our own work to do. it has to do with obviously trying to preach the complexities of this history that isn't allowing us to just cherry pick the lovely moments then all the sudden jack roosevelt, robinson arrives, everything's fine. it wasn't. it still is not fine and it

still goes on. yet, we do have these people within our midst who guide us and suggest the possibilities of our republic. they are all still there. even in the darkest night. the stars are bright and perhaps the darkest night, the dreaming -- i certainly know it's here in new hampshire. you feel your atomic insignificance. it's got a funny way of instilling you with bigness just as the egotist in our midst is diminished. this humility that's required to, as many civil rights workers did, put on their clean sunday best to go out and get bloodied, then come back in and go out again. this is a thing. of course, you know, you just

put 1 foot going in front of the other. the idea that you are allowed some sort of four year timeout doesn't work. >> it doesn't work. i wonder how you operationalize, eddie? how do you get people beyond not just the logistical hurdles of getting out there and fighting for what is good, how do you get through the emotional hurdles right now? >> you have to acknowledge it. you have to acknowledge we are not okay. we have to understand our responsibility. baldwin says responsibility is not lost it is abdicated. i responsibility is to get our babies to the other side of this. when the storm comes and the storms are always coming, our task is to make sure our babies get to the other side. that's how you wake up and put your feet on the ground and get up, even though, as doctor king did when they attacked those elementary school babies who

were let out of school early and they beat them with bats and tree limbs. someone had to seeing someone had to sing pilgrims sorrow to him to get him out of dead. ken is speaking to the heart of this, but this is one of the most difficult challenges, how the country plays so fast and loose with our dead. the sacrifices of her father and mother that made us possible, the fact that we are supposed to just fight. find the energy. we just have to sing some days so that we could actually get up and move honestly and say we

are not okay. >> i am so thankful that you all do this. thank you so much maya and eddie. thank you for being part of this conversation. we will give ken the last word when we come back. back. and lasts up to 8 hours. narrator: at this very moment, children at st. jude are fighting to survive. with a gift right now, you can join the battle to save lives. katy: without saint jude, i don't know where we would be. can we see snuggles? they have given children with cancer, like my winston, a chance. christine: she has neuroblastoma and it has spread to her liver. i try to enjoy every minute with her because i do not know when would be my last moments with her. narrator: time is running out to give a year-end gift that can help.

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powering possibilities™. everyone has a favorite ken burns, in our house where family is baseball religion, family is ours, why baseball, why is it so much more than a game than a stick and a ball? >> it is interesting, nicole. please tell eddie that i will come and sing. he is right about protecting our kids but we also have to prepare them. one of the things that i think jackie robinson did was prepare us and set the stage, not just allow other black players to come in, brown players and asian players and reminded us this is the national pastime. i could go into bigger theory

about why the greatest them and then it. talking about a football game, joe montana threw up all the jerry rice, last moments and we won. michael jordan tongue wagging hit a three pointer at the buzzer and we won by one point. baseball story always goes, i remember my mom took me to this game or my dad brought me here, after the series how many countless people come up to me and said, my dad and i used to watch it every january, my dad passed away and i'm showing the baseball series to my son. i never thought i would have a chance to thank you for the thanks isn't bad, it is the bonds that we have, the sport that accompanied every generation of our national narrative that reflected some good and bad ways and still manages to have infinite chest like combinations. we want to have a golden era before jackie arrived or after right now it any time when the

season is on, you see as great a play as there is, it has a wonderful comfort of continuity to it that i love so much. first of all, it is nice to sing together. you're not angry, nobody asks you whether you are registered republican or democrat. you sing the national anthem and you are singing together, amazing thing to do, the seventh inning stretch of the ball game, where i am, it is sweet caroline. there is something about doing something together, the us part of the u.s. that is key to getting out. the only thing i remember franklin roosevelt accepted his nomination for the second time in '36 at soldiers field in philadelphia, he said, dante tells us divine justice wins the sins of the cold-blooded and sins of the warm-blooded with different scales. better the fault of government

that lives in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. if you are looking at those stars, decide what kind of government you want to have. >> you have to come back before opening day and we will have that hour-long conversation about baseball, the greatest game ever played. >> ever played. >> ever, ever. i love you so much and having all our to marinate. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> you can navigate all of ken's films on digital platform. we are so grateful to all of you for letting us and your homes for this special edition. >> this is msnbc special presentation.