edition of "alex witt reports." we'll be back next saturday and sunday. "prime weekend," next. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ hi there, everyone.

thank you so much for joining us for a very special edition of "deadline: white house," something we're really excited about. september 23, 1990, was a sunday and since there was no google, email or iphone in 1990 it took two whole days for the world to find out history was made on that day. the civil war monday night was the most watched episode ever on public television. we weren't talking about the civil war, of course. they were talking about the widely praised documentary by ken burns, the smash hit that no one saw coming, not even ken burns. burns told the times this, quote, i can't believe it. this is higher than anyone guessed, and he meant that. he did not expect his film to be a sensation. in pack, he was told it would bomb. quote, in the '80s ken burns went from meeting to meeting to pitch "the civil war." the answer he kept hearing was no one would watch this. it wasn't just that he was

proposing a work of epic length. it was because documentaries were not considered commercially viable and 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 premiere, sales of blank cassette tapes that could be recorded shot up 40% nation wide and you can see why. by mid-century the country was deeply divided. southerners feared the north might forbid slavery. southerners feared slavery might move west. it threatened to upset the delicate equilibrium of power. ♪♪ ♪♪ there are grave doubts at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.

henry adams. violence reached the floor of the united states senate where congressman preston brooks of south carolina savagely beat abolitionist charles sumner with his cane. sumner sympathizers said brooks knew canes. members began carrying 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 program minutely half slave and half free. i do not expect the union to be dissolved. i do not expect the house it fall, but i do expect it will cease to be divided. it will become all one thing or all the other. >> political violence, divided country, it is like that mark twain quote, history didn't repeat itself, but it often

rhymes. a truism ken burns himself has talked about on this very program. "the new york times" calculated that if you watched all of ken's films back-to-back to back it would take over 232 hours, a full nine days, but if you do have nine days to spare you will see generation after generation history is rhyming right before our eyes. >> martin luther king was shot and was killed tonight in memphis, tennessee. [ screaming ] in this difficult day, in this difficult time for the united states it is perhaps well to us what kind of a nation we are and what direction we 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 and in washington, d.c., where fires came within two blocks of the white house. later that same month, anti-war students seized several buildings at columbia university in manhattan. the occupation lasted a week, the first time in american history that students forced a major university to shut down. policemen eventually drove the 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 nobody will watch this, 40 million people do

because their understanding of our past has the singular and unique ability to education, inspire, captivate us, give us comfort and give us courage. so what happens right now? what can this arc of american history teach us about what we're living through today in it's where we start today with emmy award-winning filmmaker and documentarian ken burns. we are lucky enough to have ken for the full hour so we can glow into his wisdom and genius and do a deep dive into his extraordinary body of work, everything from civil war to civil rights and some things you've opened up about. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, nicole. i'm privileged to be with you again. thank you. >> can i start with your history? because i've not heard you talk about this very much and there's this wonderful, wonderful piece of reporting that's just been done in "the new york times." i'm going to play a part of the

interview with you, is that okay? >> sure. >> let's listen. >> the story that ken tells about his origin and filmmaking dates back to a little bit after his mother died in 1965 when he was 11. she had breast cancer, and he describes how his dad had never cried, not in all of the years that his mom was fighting this excruciating illness, not even at her funeral and the first time that ken sees his dad cry is when they were watching a movie together. >> we were watching "odd man out" by sir carol reed and it was about the irish troubles in the 1920s and at the end my dad just kept. >> he's weeping over the loss of his wife. >> and he would cry later on about other things like a favorite sound a track, but i loved that the moves provided a

safe haven and i decided right then and there that this is where i wanted to be. >> this is so beautiful. i want to hear you say more. >> so my mother was sick with cancer. it started in her breast, metastasized and she died a few months short of my 12th birthday when i was 11, therefore, nicole, was there not a moment in my life where she was not dying or that horrific sort of damocles was sort of hanging over our very fragile, tenuous family of her very strong, very heroic and very kind and inspirational for everyone around her. my father who clearly suffered from some kind of undiagnosed mental illness and my younger brother rick and me, and so when she finally died it was this incredible release for many of us, but my father hadn't cried when she was sick as i told minnie, and i hadn't died at her death and her funeral which was

incredibly sad and neighbor his noted this, and then he cried at this movie, and i got it. i was now 12 and he had a strict curfew, and he let me watch movies with him and i realized at that point this is what i ought to be doing. at that point that man becoming alfred hitchcocks or howard hock who were movie directors of the time, and i was at hachlter college and a wonderful thriving place and all of my teachers in film and photography were photography and still photographers and still makers, they were called hollywood industry, and so i became a documentary filmmaker and it's born out of loss. so many of us are defined by this. we forget that we try to select or pre-select for some equivalent, metaphor cal equivalent of a gated community where none of the vicissitudes of life will inevitably visit

us. they will inevitably visit us and it's what they do that define us and that's true of individuals and it's true of families and it's true of communities and of course, it's true of nations and that's where we can see the similarities that begin to accrue and develop. i remember raising monoen for my first film, about brooklyn bridge and this shield and triing to sell them the brooklyn bridge and at one point i was an emotional archaeologist and i was uninterested in the facts of the past, but some glue, not sentimentality or nostalgia, the enemies of good anything, but some higher emotional thing and it took me decades to sort of realize that that clearly had to do and it was rooteded in this excruciating loss. nicole, it is now 57 1/2 years

that i've been without her. there's not a day that goes by that i don't think about her and that is way too long to be without your mom. >> you're going to make me cry here at the beginning. what i wanted to ask you about the work, though, is i think the reason, if you read through all of the naysayers and all of the doubters at the beginning of your career, it's almost unfathomable to everyone that knows you. people put their premieres on your calendar to make time to watch your work when it comes out, but i on eye think the fact that it has always been this phenomenon of someone who experienced pain and loss, but stayed open, can you just -- just -- how do you do that? how did you do that? i don't think i did very well. i can remember being in the back of a station wagon when my mom picking us up, and asked what

does your father do? he's an anthropologist, and what does your mother do? i would say she's deceased as though it would make it not so and that's where this process was so many decades for me in coming to understanding. i was already practicing it in my work in a fundamental, subconscious level. i was an emotional archaeologist. people were responding to these films and particularly the civil war in an emotional way. it wasn't just a history lesson that was going to have a test on tuesday. it was something that was involving these deep, powerful emotions, but i didn't know it. i remember in a crisis i went to my late father-in-law who was a psychologist, and i told her the date of her death april 28, 1965, was always approaching and receding, but i was never present on that day ever.

he said i'll bet you you blew out your candles as a kid wishing she would come back. i said how did you know? and he listed five other things and he said look what you do for a living you wake the dead and jackie robinson, who do you think you're trying to wake up? i was 39 or 40 and all of a sudden it was like losing 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 pauper's grave. my brother and i had to track her down and then put a memorial and we had to be present now april 28th. now my little girls. i have two sets of gls and my two little girls mommy, mama,

and i call mine mommy and they call their mom, mama. they live this every single day and it's one of those mysterious things that that happen, but within the story of nations. i think i've asked the kouvenry on ever, they have deepened treme, and they are equally as personal and sort of general about what you would expect and we try moo meet them and there aren't any ordinary people ever, but not just the bold-faced names and american history is not just the sequence of

presidential administrations punctured by war and if it is an administration and if it is a war then we need to hear from the people who were doing the actual fighting and dies and the people home worried about them, and the people excluded from the ideals of freedom that we continually promote as we celebrate our supposed exceptionalism. >> supposed is something we'll spend a lot of time rumbling with. what is it like to live in a moment where you walk down the street your town or new york city anywhere where you are and the stakes were very much about the democracy itself, that that isn't an artifact and that was in the views of millions of people on the ballot last november? >> i think it was there, and yet, i think if we listened a little bit to it. we know that there have been sort of intermediate short-term kinds of understandings about just how much it cost to buy

some groceries and what people -- how fears have been exploited about -- which this is nothing new. this is the important part. if mark twain said, it and event is happening twice. we are experiencing lots of greed and virtuosity and virtue, i'm working on history of the american revolution and you think that's white guys thinking great thoughts that's a huge part of the story of philadelphia, you are missing a huge, important thing in which you begin to go oh, my goodness, our revolution was a civil war and more of a civil war than our civil war. very few missouri deaths than our civil war. it's a sectional war on one part of the country against the other and the brother against brother

trope was a way to hype it and sell it. our revolution is -- is a -- a civil war, at least a fifth, maybe a quarter of the people are loyalists, and they're killing patriots and patriots are killing loyalists and there are huge takanobus involved and hearing the bell and running to the's notice. why did you can call it if yoo you're in the seaboard uncontinental, or call it the uncontinental army and say we are interested in an empeer and it involves two dozen nations, european as well as native american and that's a part of the story. women and children are part of those moving armies and they're not back home stoicly doing those things, they are and it's

a story of german immigrants and recent immigrants and it's about indian land and all sort of complicated thing, and so what we've traditionally done is we've seen our history in a very narrow fashion, that 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. it just allows it to be in a more profound and truthful relief, and that's what we've tried to do in all the films. in pack, i have in my editing room a neon sign that says it's complicated because when you're the filmmaker and the scene is working you don't want to touch it. we don't have a is the writing period and boom, we're done. question never stop researching and we never stop editing and we never stop shooting and we are constantly writing and re-writing and we have a

relationship to this material which is fluid and corrigible. we want to see that that seemingly simplistic answer isn't true, and it isn't. wynton marsalis said in our jazz thing sometimes the thing and the opposite of the thing are true at the same time, and we can't do that in a divided politics. it's too superficial. only stories are able to contain the complexity and so rather than get into the push me/pull you of that, it's super and understand there are back pxigeycis for everyone that don't exist. young state, old state, gay, straight, north, south, east, west, we can keep going endlessly on these and it feeds the big machine of disunion and media, but it's not how people

live, you know? duck doon afty, both -- they went and being in helicopter. how does that fit in with the comfortable naur tiff. >> maybe some of it, too s what's in focus and i want to press you more on this because people feel we live in a country where two sides don't see each other or hear each other. i have to sneak in a quick break. ken stays with us for the hour. when we come back, we'll have that conversation. families divided, if your family feels pulled apart, torn apart by politics, ken's history may offer you hope. and what reverend martin luther king's journ deteach us about the setbacks. a nation turns to the legends like jackie robinson.

what baseball is still teaching us about healing the nation. all of that continues after "deadline: white house" continues after a very short break. don't go anywhere. very s

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powering possibilities™. ♪ there's something happening here ♪ ♪ what it is ain't exactly clear ♪ >> at that moment in time i realized that anybody who really cared for america was half way around the world chasing some ghost in the jungle killing somebody else's grandmother for

no reason at all. ♪♪ >> and in the meantime my country is being torn apart, so i saw somebody who looked like my dad hitting somebody who looked like me. oh, my god! whose side would i be on? >> families divided, torn apart by politics. we have been there. we're back with ken burns. ken, this -- this feeling of fights within -- within families it became aligned that governor tim walz used that he and vice president harris have prevailed so it went, they would make thanksgivings great again. thanksgiving has come and gone, the holidays are here. people who had their candidate prevail probably feel good. people who accepted these arguments we've been talking about about democracy on the line, most of them feel very worried, and i wonder what your counsel is for both sides, for the sides that prevailed if you

think there are any sides of a capacity for humility in our politics which feel pretty broken and on the side that feels disappointed, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that people want to disengage. they don't want to dive into the lessons of history. they don't want to consume the news. they feel disheartened. >> well, to that latter, you just can't do that. none of us are getting out of this alive, that is to say this very small precious life that we are given and one could presumably take this information and sit locked in a fetal position sucking your thumb, but we don't. we raise children and we tend gardens and write symphonies and we have television shows and make documentary films and so you have to actually fight against that impulse at discouragement. i think you either believe that all men are created equal and you don't, then huge

responsibilities come along. one of them is accepting the results of unpleasant elections, you know? we also have to deal with this in this binary world or the fact that the binaries don't actually exist? how do you disenthrall yourself? you see them from a different angle and perspective. dr. johnson said lost souls escape their loss of control in patriotism, and we think of all the ways in which patriotism is misused and abused these days. it's so easy for things to be destabilized. do you remember that to comb a narrows bridge, galloping girdy in 1940 started to shake and then finally just wove itself into destruction? and we have that tendency to do that with a combination of the verocity of our rhetoric and the hand wringing that often accompanies this, the chicken little and the aggressive other side of that, and i think we have to figure out how to

disenthrall ourselves. i came across a quote in the, that's in our american revolution film and it's very short and it's by edmund burke, a philosopher, i haven't put it on my hard drive so i apologize for having to read it. the americans have made a discovery, or think that we have made one that we oppress them that they intend to rise in rebellion. our severity has increased their ill behavior. we know not how to advance. they know not how to retreat. some party must give way. >> wow. >> the way i tell you king george you're a tyrant, the more i act like a tyrant. the more they tell us we act like rebel, the more radical and rebellious you become and then you have a hard time separating and the famous first inaugural

of lincoln, the beginning of it is this measured thing. he said basically you want us to cede? if a state can secede from a nation then a county can secede from a state and a nation can secede from that county and the neighborhood and then the family and then what are you left with? essentially your question, the dining room table at thanksgiving. and so where do we as human beings find the grace and the patience and the love willing to allow some of these binary constructions that sometimes are durable and let's just say when we point out the revolution and the civil war and vietnam and we see, wow! that's divided like now. we forget that for marginalized people, for women, for black americans, native americans,

family wrecking kinds of thins that take place when human beings do the bad thingis that do to one another and yet, virtue is around the corner or right in front of us, there's courage, my mother's courage still reminds me. i met people long after she died who said i was in the same hospital room with her, and i knew i was getting out and the she knew she had a death sentence and she was cheerful and i needed to communicate to you what that means and all around us are these examples of that kind of simple human decency and courage. i think the way in which we conduct yourself, in the way you pursue the inquiries that you do has given many people space to explore not just the binary, oh, my god, the sky is falling, but something that is more nuanced and something that asks us to take responsibility for it, to not just say oh, it's them.

that's what i've been on your program so many times saying, that's the problem when we make a them when there's only us, the u.s., that's where the problem is. one of the ways we stop is you've got to do it first. you've got to stop that first, right? i'm not going to be sure that it's going to be all right until you stop doing this and that's not the way they work and we have many people in our past, particularly dr. king who just talks about an army of love, who talks about the ability of all the teachings that man mate animate all of the religions of the world and the christian religion turn the other cheek is the phrase, but also that is everything, to give up and find out how rich you are in the giving up of things. >> to be the light, to sort of be the thing that you are craving. god, i love that.

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a young minister named martin luther king, jr., who had

recently been jailed in birmingham, alabama, who the director of the fbi considereded a communist sympathizer, and whose life was in constant danger from people who hated the color of his skin and everything he stood for. gave a speech that would be considereded 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 be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. i have a dream today. >> the civil rights movement that the nation would soon learn progress is almost never a straight line. >> the march on washington is a watershed movement in the movement itself, but this is also a turning point in the violence we associate with the

movement and the escalation of opposition because the fear is that civil rights field is coming. it's only a month later that you have the bombing of the 16th street baptist church in birmingham, alabama, and killing of four little girls. >> a reminder of the victories, the tragedies, the progress, the backsliding that defines our history. ken is still with us and we have been joined by distinguished political scholar of princeton university eddie glad and maya wiley whose book "remember," and what that moment meant to her and her family. maya, i'll start with you. >> well, eddie and i were talking about this offset. the march on washington was an incredibly important thing for everyone in the civil rights movement. it was a watershed, but it could not have happened just because everyone had a dream. it could only happen because

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

was a speech that he gave and when he talked about the mountaintop, and we always talk about the mountaintop, and i might not get there with you, that's always the part we talk about, but the more important part was the same thing that kamala harris said, which is that 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. >> the premise is clear. >> and so -- yes. even in the hardest times we need to find the light. >> i have to bring ken in. i have to sneak in another break. we'll all be right back. in anotr break. we'll all be right back. that doesn't hold up. new charmin ultra strong has a diamond-weave texture that's more durable and it cleans better* so you can use less. enjoy the go with charmin. power outages can be unpredictable, inconvenient, and disruptive to your life, posing a real threat to your family's comfort and safety.

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for more than a decade farxiga has been trusted again and again, and again. ♪far-xi-ga♪ ♪far-xi-ga♪ ask your doctor about farxiga. we're back with three of my favorite humans walking the earth. eddie, you know, just the language, i have a dream. do we still dream? sometimes. sometimes those dreams are

nightmares. sometimes they're aspirational, and it's where the imagination constitutes the battleground that allows us to see beyond our current condition, to imagine what's possible, but sometimes skip to that, we have to experience what is and the horror of it, and when i think about dr. king's speech, i think about it being bookend by violence and the murder of met gar evers and the murder of those babies at 16th street baptist church. i'm thinking about the complexity of the moment, and i'm thinking about the way in

which we often reach for the do i have a dream speech, of the way of avoiding, confronting the ugliness that surrounds him that actually put him in the coffin, and that -- that -- >> the cherry picking. >> it's cher picking and that grounds this political culture and we defer the consequences of our choices and generation after generation have to deal with the invasion and the deferral, and for some people we have to raise our babies in the midst of it all. >> that's the work, right? and if you're both so unflinching and full election,

right? in the piece of work that you write, tell me about the importance of the whole st >> i think that's it. that's at the heart of some people supporting the civil war and thought no one would watch it and they were critics and no one would sit still for 11 1/2 hours and are still photographs about this event. that wasn't the case because we're all starting for meaning and all meaning accrues in duration, and so the long and despite our meeting to evolve and that's an important part. i think what we do is we still have to learn how to separate the binary and that wow, we do cherry pick, as eddie is saying and pick the nice, right group and let's forget the underlying history of violence and dr. king said all of the people are caught in an inescapable of mutuality and we're not talking

about some black people and northern liberals and other northern liberals and tied in a single garden of destiny, right? you're talking about all people and that's where in this fabric in this garment, we have the seeds of the possibility undoing our addiction to the binary, and i don't like him. i don't like her. i'm for her, i'm against him and you're bad and that's why this thanksgiving is so wrong and so we've got our own work to do and it has to do with trying to preach the complexities of this history that isn't allowing us to cherry pick these lovely moments and all of a sudden jack roosevelt robinson arrives and everything is fine, and it wasn't, and it still is not and it still goes on and yet we do

have these people within our midst who guide us and suggest d ey're always still there and they're in the darkest night and the stars are bright and perhaps in the darkest night, the dreaming, i certainly know it's true up here in new hampshire. that you feel your atomic insignificance and in the midst it's diminished by his or her self regard. you have a kind of humility that's required as many of the civil rights workers did, to put on their clean sunday best to go out, get muddy, come back and go out again and this is a repeated thing. brian stevenson just said that the other evening to me, and of course, you just put one foot in front of the other and the idea that you're allowed some sort of

four-year time out doesn't work. >> it doesn't work. i wonder how you operationalize that and how you get people beyond not just the logistical hurdles of getting back out there and fighting for what is good. how do you get them to the emotional part of that right now. >> let's acknowledge it that we're not okay. we have to accept responsibility and the responsibilities is abdicate. the abdication begins. >> right. >> so when the storms come and our task is to make sure our babies get to the other side and that's how you wake up and put your feet on the ground and get up even though as -- as dr. king did when they ttacked those elementary school babies who were let out of school early and

they beat them with bats and tree limbs and it put him into bed and someone had to come and sing pilgrim's sorrow to him to get him out of bed so he can get back out and do it again. one of the difficult challenges, ken is speaking to the heart of it, that's one of the most difficult challenges is how the country plays so fast and loose with our dead. all of the people that have died that have made me and maya possible, the sacrifices of her father and her mother that made us possible and the fact that we are supposed to just -- and fight the trumpist, fight the energy. some days we just have to save so that we can actually get up and move honestly. >> yeah, but some days we have to act and we have to acknowledge that we're not okay. >> i am so grateful and so thankful that you all do it around this table. thank you so much.

maya and eddie, thank you for being part of this conversation. we'll give ken the last word when we come back. give ken the d when we come back. ( ♪♪ ) my name is jaxon, and i have spastic cerebral palsy. it's a mouthful. one of the harder things

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ken, everyone, has a favorite ken burns in our house where baseball is our family religion, baseball is ours. why baseball? why is it so much more than a game with a stick and a ball? >> it's interesting, nicole. first of all, please tell eddie, i'll come and sing to him, and he's right about protecting our kids and we also have to prepare them and one of the things that i think jackie robinson did was prepare us and set the stage and not just allow other black players to come in and brown players and asian players and reminded us that this was the national past time and i can come into the argument that why the game was invented. joe montana threw a ball to

jerry rice just in the last moments and we won or, you know, michael jordan hit a three pointer at the buzzer and we won by one point and a baseball story also goes. my mom took me to this game or my dad brought me here and i can't remember how many countless people, and my dad and i used to watch it every january and now i'm showing the series in my baseball series to my son, and i never thought i'd have a chance to thank you, but of course, the thanks isn't bad. it's in the bonds that we have. this sport that has accompanied every generation of our national narrative that has reflected us in good and bad ways and still manages to have infinite chesslike combinations and as much as we'd like to revere some golden era before jackie arrived or even after, right now at any time when the season is on,

you're seeing as great a play as there is and it has a wonderful comfort of continuity that i love so much, and i think, first of all, it's also nice to sing together. you're not angry. nobody asked you whether you're a registered republican or democrat when you come in and you sing the national anthem and you're singing together and it's an amazing thing to do that and you're singing "take me out to the ball game" or sweet caroline, there's something about us doing together, the us part of the u.s. is the key to getting out. the only thing i remember is franklin roosevelt accepted for the second time in soldier's field, ante tells us it weighs the since of the hearted on different scales. the government that lives in the spirist charity than the

consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. if you're looking at those stars, decide what kind of government you want to have. and you have to come back and we'll have the hour-long conversation about baseball. it's the greatest game ever played. >> ever played. >> ever. >> i love having you so much to marinate.is very special. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> you can navigate all of his films on his digital platform, or at ken burns's website. we're so grateful to all of you for letting us into your home for this varies usher edition of deadline >> good evening and welcome to politics nation.