Ep. 42 – Race, Democracy, and Public History: A Conversation with James Basker

[0:00:07 Peniel Joseph] Welcome to Race and democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. On today’s episode, Our podcast, Race and Democracy, we are really honored to have Ah, Professor Dr James G. Basker with us. Jim Basker is president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Richard Gilder, professor of literary history at Barnard College, Columbia University. He’s been president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute since 1997 and he has overseen the development of history education initiatives nationwide, including high school history, teacher seminars, traveling exhibitions, digital archives and the National History Teacher of the Year Awards program. In addition, he is a wonderful scholar. His publications include Amazing Grace, Poems about Slavery, 16 62 18 10 Early American Abolitionists and American Anti Slavery writing. Colonial Beginnings. Emancipation. A Swell as numerous essays on educational booklets on various topics in English, in American history and literature. Jim Basker, Jim Welcome to Race and Democracy,

[0:01:26 Jim Basker] Peniel, Thank you for having me. I’m really pleased to be here.

[0:01:31 Peniel Joseph] I want to have a conversation with you today about public history and really the vitality of public history and the necessity of public history in the context of American democracy in the 21st century, but especially right now we’re all experiencing this pandemic, and we’ve all seen, or at least read reports of this global pandemic. But really in the United States, the way in which it’s been cleaving along racial and economic accedes where there’s been disparate impact, depending on what community, Really, what zip code, what neighborhood you live in and sort of Black and Latin X and immigrant and Native American communities seem to be hit the hardest by this, both in terms of the illness but also in terms of their access to education, health care, their proximity to the criminal justice system. So I want to talk about what public history can do because one of the things is you know, is this story. We have faced challenges similar to this Maybe not exactly this challenge in the long history of the United States, and and we might have some clues on what to do moving forward when we when we examine history

[0:02:48 Jim Basker] well, it’s a it’s a big question. The Neil and my and my first take would be to talk about it in two ways. Even before the pandemic. Oh, I would have said that History is the most important subject for all of us in this American republic. We hope. Democracy, Um, all of this could live our lives without French or chemistry or some of the subjects we had in high school, but but without a really good grounding in American history, we cannot be knowledgeable, judicious, fair and just American citizens and voters. So, um, it’s the most important subject for all of us. The other thing I would say is in the face of the pandemic, of course, the exactly the divisions and inequities that you’re talking about have emerged. We’ve tried our best to adapt to this crisis by making what we do more available to people everywhere. Which is to say, with some of our programs that were local and in person and have restricted in enrollments, we’ve opened them up nationally. We started to pop up history school free online with six history teachers of the year from across the country, master teachers doing their individual subjects. I’m we’re going to continue that in the summer summer school doing free online. AP US History Prep courses, a college survey course also, of course, on civil rights. Using the curriculum. Skip dates our trusty Henry Louis Gates from Harvard, as given us. But led by Alicia Butler, who is the 2019 national history teacher of the year, African American teacher in Washington, D. C. And absolutely brilliant and wonderful personality and teachers, she’ll leave that course. So our first response has been Let’s make the things we do available to the largest number of people so that they could come to us regardless of whether their school is continuing to function well or not, whether they have a strong teacher or not, we’re trying to I’ll open up access for people across the country, and there’s more we can dio. I mean, the public history subjects air terribly important. We have a book breaks program where we’re bringing major historians onto a talk show every Sunday, too. And we that Eric phoner talking about Second founding. We’ve had Annette Gordon Reed talking about the Hemmings of Monticello. I mean, these are books and subjects that every American should know about, so we’re very much committed to this and will be in the future.

[0:05:33 Peniel Joseph] I wanna keep on this tack of public history and the why history is so important to I like what you talked about in terms of to make informed citizens, voters, people who have judgment. Um, why do you think we’ve lost some aspect of understanding our history? American history in a widespread way? Because we think about the Cold War and the post war American period. It seemed that there was some fundamental precepts of American history, that it seemed that there was a national understanding, even if there was a debate, one points of emphasis. But we used to have, I think, a national understanding on things like First Amendment rights. Even the Second Amendment Second Amendment didn’t used to be something that was very controversial. And certainly that civil rights movement we think about Dr King on the civil rights movement really helped turn racial justice and sort of one of these core precepts of American democracy, even as abolitionists and folks you studied and written about extensively tried to do the same. But I think until we get to the march on Washington civil rights acts, the Voting Rights Act, we don’t really have that that in there, what what have we lost where we can have really American history being denigrated even by politicians on elected leaders, Um, and and the idea that history doesn’t matter

[0:07:04 Jim Basker] Well, I look at it with two main themes in mind. But, Eli, I think you’re so right. I mean, the 1st 1 is we live in a time when, ah, history has been relegated to second class importance. We live in an era when a stem subjects are emphasized. And I guess in a high tech developed society, that course is important, and literacy and language arts have been emphasized of those are two important. But history is, for a variety of reasons, been relegated to a lower importance. And I think that’s all wrong, and I’m very hopeful that we’re going to be able to push back on it. But in the meantime, I think outside the curriculum those in the university world, those who do public history of the kind you’re doing through this medium those who were trying to do with our programs, we we try to reach beyond, um, the curricular limitations, the local political limitations and make the important stories of American history available to teachers in our institutes to students through our programs on Our resource is online and through certain programs like the Gilder Lehrman Center on Slavery. Resistance in Abolition at Yale, which is gives a Frederick Douglass book prize every year to the book. Put this book on that subject. Have been doing that for 20 years. So that’s there’s one area sort of bring it back to the fore. As important, I think the other, frankly, and and you know this very well. It’s a scholar Is that in the period that Skip Gates writes about in Sony the Room, the Long Jim Crow era After Reconstruction, um, others took over the narrative. The narrative of American history was taken over by people who wanted us to forget about slavery and the miseries of racism even in the reconstruction period. Wanted that to disappear or be told in a new way. So films like Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind became the governing ah storyline as false as they were and the rial stories were lost. I’m working on a book right now that library America is going to publish in a year cold. It’s a collection of writings. Coal black writers of the founding era. And it’s not under writers whose works survive, as I’ve spent five years pulling them together in the period from 17 60 to 1800 1 of the documents I found was a petition which I would say, actually marks the moment that the civil rights movement began. And it’s not in the 19 sixties, and it’s not even in reconstruction. It’s a petition that was signed by eight African Americans on January 13th 17 77 and in Massachusetts. And they quote the language of the Declaration of Independence as they’re asking for an end to slavery in Massachusetts. On I would contend that the Declaration of Independence and establish a notion that there were rights, inalienable rights and immediately the African Americans in Boston were appropriating. Those were trying to leverage that idea of natural rights, inalienable rights, a civil rights in their petition. And that’s the kind of history I think we need to restore to do.

[0:10:35 Peniel Joseph] I want to, um, use that as a point of departure, to talk about the 16 19 project and really Gilder Lehrman and this idea of slavery racial slavery from even before the founding of the United States. We think about 16 19 and Jamestown and the idea of 20 and odd Africans who were coming over from Angola by a British slaver that taken over, Ah, Portuguese slave ship and sort of taken those Africans to Jamestown, Virginia. That 16 19 project has been a usually successful public history project. Um, that has sparked some controversy to after winning the Pulitzer Prize, because some people have made the argument that it’s not, Um, um, it’s not a triumphant enough history. It’s not a celebratory history. And I want toe really dive into that with you because you’re a historian of slavery of abolition one. Why do you think it’s so important to talk about slavery both publicly, but also to somehow be able to teach our Children, especially in secondary education? But even before about racial slavery, its complexity and its connection to today? And why do you think, um, there’s so much criticism of a project that has done that, I think really beautifully, um, and even won the Pulitzer Prize. But like I said, not without controversy. The 16 19 project, which New York Times published as a multimedia project online teachers have been using this. And I think in a lot of ways that project is connected to what Gilder Lehrman has been trying to do for decades.

[0:12:21 Jim Basker] Well, you’re so right. And for me personally, as a scholar, I began working in the history of slavery. Abolition, especially, is manifest in literature and in cultural history. Um, since the early 19 nineties. But for the institute, the very first teacher seminar we sponsored back in 1995 was led by David Brian Davis. One of the great sculptor ends up lasting victory at Yale. And in fact, we have at least one teacher seminar every year, often several on some aspect off the history of slavery abolition for 25 years running. So it’s absolutely core, um, toe our notion of what a proper representation of American history represents. Um, and there are different ways to talk about. The needle is, you know, one of the things I sometimes say is, you know, when I’ve been a professor for more than 35 years, and sometimes when people come on campus and they say I wanna talk to somebody about history of slavery cell, we’ll go over to the Africa studies department there as if it were just a black subject. Only think black people. And that’s insane. I mean, by definition, without white and black people, there was no slavery or slave trade beanballs us both, by definition, from the outset. So that’s the first kind of misunderstanding that somehow this is just of interest of black people. Um, And when we go back to what the 16 19 project is done, it has surfaced. The centrality of slavery in the American story. Um, and you know, yes, there are scholarly critiques come along and and, um, people have pointed out there, you know that the Spanish had slavery for 100 years before that, under slaves in Florida and Georgia, 15 twenties and so on, and slave rebellions. So there’s a There’s a broader context, yes, but the importance of slavery to the American story is there. And sometimes you really have to be very dramatic and emphatic to get people’s attention. Um, the idea that somehow civil rights burst on the agenda in was a political movement in the 19 sixties without having a multi 100 year history behind it. Um, you know, it’s just not to understand It’s to be without memory and human being can’t exist properly without memory. Nor can a country. So we have to restore that memory toe. Understand what the concerns are, would understand what the inherited deprivations and discriminations are. Um, I found in my work, for example, that in South Carolina immediately after the Constitution was ratified, there were new discriminatory taxes passed on African Americans in in the independent state of South Carolina that hadn’t existed under the British when it was a colony. And so this idea of discriminatory of poll taxes and other punitive measures levied on black people go back to every phase of our history. And they would go a long way if the white community were fully educated and I speak as a white person myself. But in a mixed race family, my wife is African American, mixed race Children. It’s a subject that all of us need to understand so that we can understand each other today, and I

[0:15:53 Peniel Joseph] want I’m amplify that point. Jim, when we think about why is slavery and the study of slavery all the way up until the present so important for elementary teachers to know so important for our business leaders in Silicon Valley folks to know sort of a narrative of racial slavery to the present. It’s its impact and its relationship with capitalism. Um, whether we’re thinking about cotton or sugar or agricultural production or industrial production, why is that so important? What is it? What what light does it shed? Um, in the 21st century that are students who are heading into this globalized world this world of of much inequality but much opportunity to Why is it so important for them to know that history?

[0:16:46 Jim Basker] Well, I’m not an economic historian, and so anything I say about capitalism, it will be uninformed. Although I know from history there were some very successful black capitalists all the way back to allow de Quiano in some ways. But, um, the system that resulted from slavery and its legacy. Some people think that slavery can’t began because of racism. I think slavery and the broader global sense always began because of power relations where people could be made slaves. Romans had slaves from every ethnic group in the world. But in fact, in America, racism was the outcome off slavery as much as it was the cause, so that even when slavery as an institution or practice ended, racism continued. And it therefore found ways that the collective racism that had become habitual, deeply embedded in society found other ways to deprive black people of equality some of them economic, some of them political, some of them through terrorism, like lynching on the activities of the KKK. Many of them was serious economic consequences. Whether you’re looking at those discriminatory taxes against black people who were trying to succeed even as free people and in various parts of the country in the beginning. But other moments, you know, when the Homestead Act IV white people free land in the West, but not black people all the way down to redlining in modern real estate sales in the development of neighborhoods and cities, they were actually measurable financial punitive disadvantages imposed upon black people at every stage of our history out of a kind of habitual, deeply embedded racism. And so when people talk about reparations, which is a complicated, very political topic, there are ways that one could measure the economic harm, the financial harm with compound damages that might be argued for from a financial point of view, I’m not sure that will ever work financially. But a certainly extra efforts at education inclusion and allow the support that we can build into our social and political policies, I think, are called for. And there’s a deep justification for that call.

[0:19:20 Peniel Joseph] Well, in terms of the work, you’re doing it. Gilder Lehrman Um, what can we do to create? And is it even possible right now? Um, a national American history narrative that’s inclusive. That’s inclusive with obviously African American but Latin X LGBT Q. Certainly, I understand that scholars, scholars at Columbia University, University of Texas, all across the country, are doing and writing those inclusive histories. But we still have not produced sort of this new consensus, so to speak, this new sort of coherent narrative of American history in American democracy that can inform both citizens in terms of voting but also informed these debates that we’re having about immigration, about the criminal justice system, about voting rights, black lives, matter, women’s rights, just so many different issues, what if anything, can be done because certainly we used to have a coherent narrative, and I’m not making the claim that that narrative was perfect. I think it was deeply flawed. But right now, what can we do? Because it seems like we’re in a world Republic and, like you say that to repeat you, hopefully a democracy where the narrative is untethered to our reality.

[0:20:39 Jim Basker] Yes, I think, Peniel, I mean, uh, I think you and I share a sense of the importance of this mission and how much work there is to do at Gilbert Chairman. We have been trying for more than 20 years to bring off the top scholars into contact with teachers. Unlike most countries in the world, we don’t have a National Department of Education that sets a national curriculum. But you know, it’s always locally determined state by state and even town by town or school, district by school, district, sometimes different teachers in the same hallway or teaching a different curriculum or syllabus. So our strategy has been to bring the best scholars from Eric Boehner and David Brian Davis and Annette Gordon Reed across the spectrum now of hundreds into contact with teachers because teachers are the key to this collective educational effort to make them aware of all of these important stories. We’re also trying to reach out in other ways, though, by supporting projects around the history of slavery abolition such as the, Um, Center, the Guilt 11. Center on Slavery, Yale And now we’re looking to offer in the wake of this crisis, some version of an online Saturday academy that would be free and open students anywhere in the country. And in it, we hope to be presenting, um, history courses that do integrate the full history of the African American experience, the immigrant experience, women’s history, me, all of the human components of the great tapestry on the great epic of American history, which I think can be seen in really heroic terms. Um, you know, the narrative doesn’t have to be simply a dismal, uh, sad story, or even, in a relentless critique, mean heroism off the black people, women’s suffragettes, the immigrants who succeed. There is tremendous human aspiration and success in that collective story with a long way to go. But I think it can be told in an integrated and coherent way. Um, and we’re gonna keep trying.

[0:23:03 Peniel Joseph] Yeah, and I think that’s exactly right, because one of the last question I want to ask you was about optimism because I think that American history is very dramatic. It’s very global. Um, you know, you are a cultural and literary historian, so we all are very much interested in that and popular culture as well. So I do think that when we think about American history and when we’re teaching it to the public that we should be critical. But at the same time, American history does have triumphant points and high points and water watershed moments that really shows the power of the human spirit and the power of democracy, the power of political coalitions, interracial movement. So many different, Um, you know, movements for democracy and justice. So how can we and this will be my last question when we think about moving forward, especially in the context of the pandemic, especially in context of what’s happening in the 21st century, where we have seen more racial division, we’ve gone from the presidency Barack Obama to the current president, where we’ve seen much more racial division, much more divisive rhetoric from politicians. We’ve seen white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, things that as historians we know we’ve read about, but certainly not things I expected to see in my lifetime. Ah, on the national stage. In this way, how can we both acknowledge where we’re at? But also use our history to chart a way forward where we we are thinking optimistically and positively that were saying, Hey, we have serious challenges and conflicts and contentions, but our history provides a context for us to see our way through and really to triumph over this.

[0:24:58 Jim Basker] Well, I think we have to tell the stories first of all and in media that actually reach people. And I think the stories that we choose to tell tell us a lot about ourselves. I remember the film glory from When it first came out. Yes, about the Massachusetts 54. I thought he was one of the great Civil War rate milk military history and then, you know, accidentally one of the great African American move stories ever told. But we shouldn’t have more stories like that, stories that were true to the historical conditions of discrimination, and so far, and we’re true to the actual grit and persistence and heroism of the black actors themselves. We have not had enough of that So I think when we when we look to popular culture, I think that there are better choices to make in terms of the writers and producers and what’s available to the world. More largely, I think we need also to look at institutions that have the power to tell a story. Um, the universities, that kinds of public history projects you’re suing in our institute. I think we need to make people. Ah, were I think we need to harness popular culture. We’ve partnered with Hamilton to do outreach to students in K 12 schools title, one school, poor schools in America and at first it was only where the theatre production was going, but now, during this pandemic, were actually doing an online free for students and their families everywhere, regardless of the theater, we’ve opened the curriculum up to them. But that’s an inclusive story where Miranda retold American history in an inclusive way. Put actors in these roles s so that audiences saw people who looked like them and they could imagine in America that included them and spoke in their idiom and their cultural and political priorities. So there are many, many directions and dimensions to this struggle, but it’s it’s all important. And I think through cultural life we can often share things that with our political divisions and even our kind of residential and segregated community visions, we might not sports the military. These air places where the race is, um, a mix more easily and more aptly with each other in so many ways and where there’s so much success to trumpet. So I think we I think we need to keep focusing on those positives and move the story forward while being fully informed about the history at the heart of our country.

[0:27:48 Peniel Joseph] All right, we’ll leave it right there. We have to share our stories, share our narratives in pursuit of building both racial and political unity, but also amplifying democracy. Small D democracy Here in the United States, Jim Basker have enjoyed our conversation so much. Jim Basker is president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Richard Gilder, professor of literary history of Barnard College, Columbia University. He has been president of Gilder chairman since 1997 and overseeing the development of just numerous history education initiatives nationally, including one with with Lin, Manuel Miranda and Hamilton, which is really one of the best, most important Broadway plays, if not the best ever. His complications include Amazing Grace Homes About slavery. 16 60 18 10. American Abolitionist and American. Anti Slavery writing. Colonial Beginnings, Emancipation and You’re Working on a new book, Jim. The new book’s title is

[0:28:50 Jim Basker It’s Black Writers of the founding era

[0:28:54 Peniel Joseph] Black Writers. Have you found an error, which will be out next year? And is that by library?

[0:28:59 Jim Basker] My brave Americans publishing

[0:29:00 Peniel Joseph] it. Okay, awesome. So, Jim Basker. Thank you for joining us here at race in democracy.

[0:29:07 Jim Basker] Thank you, Peniel. I’ve enjoyed talking with you very much.

[0:29:10 Peniel Joseph] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-E-N-I-E-L-J-O-S-E-P-H and our website CS rd dot LBJ That you, Texas that you d you and the Center for Study of Racing democracies on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the liberal Arts development studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you