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Meet the Press
July 5 – America 250 with Ken Burns, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Lonnie Bunch
00:47:40
Kristen Welker speaks with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III for a special edition of Meet the Press marking America's 250th anniversary.
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This Sunday, America 252 and a half centuries of the American experiment. From the nation's founding to the next chapter of American democracy.
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Ask not what your country can do
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for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall.
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There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United of America.
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From wars, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
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To moments of social change.
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That's one small step for man.
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Our shared history and our future history
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can be an incredibly important way to digest the present and then figure out what your response is and to imagine a future.
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Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on what the American Revolution can teach us about this moment.
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There is a biblical sense of our destiny, of creating a place where human beings can reset and say we hold these truths to be self evident. They're not self evident. They've never been tried. But this is what we're going to try.
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Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on the power of ordinary citizens to shape history.
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The greatest Spark of the 60s was was that belief that individuals held through much of that decade that they could make a difference.
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And Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch on the artifacts that tell America's story.
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America's greatest strength. It's not running away from its history, but it's understanding how that history shaped us and continues to shape us.
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Welcome to Sunday and a special edition of Meet the Press
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from NBC News
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in Washington, the longest running show in television history.
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This is a special edition of Meet
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the with Kristen Welker.
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Good Sunday morning. I'm Ryan Nobles in for Kristen Welker. 250 years ago this weekend, the American experiment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness officially began with the signing of the Declaration of independence. And 50 years ago, Meet the Press marked America's bicentennial on July 4, 1976, with a special edition of the broadcast asking governors to reflect on the nation's sense of purpose at its 200th birthday.
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As we look to the next century, I hope it will be a national purpose of idealism and morality, tempered with an understanding that we are not morally superior to other people. One of the best ways of demonstrating to the rest of the world that we know what we're doing is to create the conditions for the good life here at home in the form of jobs and health care and a great many other things which we have failed to do in the course of the past two or three decades.
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50 years ago at America's bicentennial, the country was healing from Vietnam, recovering from Watergate, and was home to about 215 million Americans. And today, America has grown by more than 125 million people, becoming far more diverse in race, ethnicity and origin. From the information age to the age of artificial intelligence, we are more connected than ever and more challenged to find common ground. On our special broadcast this morning, we continue to reflect on our nation's progress. A conversation with renowned historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and how she views this moment in American history. Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Bunch on the artifacts that tell the American story. But we'll start at the beginning, the American Revolution and the lessons Americans can take away from that turbulent time. Kristen's conversation with award winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
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You are an iconic documentarian filmmaker. You have made some of the most impactful documentaries in US History, from the Civil War to the Roosevelts, Benjamin Franklin to baseball. Why was now the right moment to retell the story of the American Revolution?
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It's such a wonderful and fortuitous accident. The now started 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago, when we were finishing up our series on the Vietnam War and I was looking at a map of the Central highlands and I thought, maybe this could be the British moving west on Long island towards Brooklyn. Maybe we can do. Despite the absence of photographs and newsreels, maybe we can do the revolution. So I spoke up and I said, we're doing the revolution next. No idea that it would come falling close to 250, come at a place where Americans are so anxious about the future. Will there be another 250 or another 10 years? You know, And I think that that kind of existential, fraught moment gives us an opportunity to allow the story of the American Revolution. The complicated story of the American Revolution to help us understand history's our best teacher. And it can be a helpful guide for everybody. No matter your disposition, political orientation, age, whatever it is. History can be an incredibly important way to digest the present and then figure out what your response is and to imagine a future together.
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One of the aspects of the American Revolution that you capture so powerfully that you're referencing in this documentary is the fact that a lot of people think of the American Revolution in glossy terms. The founding fathers in Philadelphia crafting the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. But this documentary makes the point that this was a bloody years long battle that claimed so many lives and that frankly impacted every single person on this territory.
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It's so pervasive and I think we have sanitized the war and I think it's out of an understandable fear that if somehow we reveal how dark and bloody it is, that it will somehow diminish those big ideas in Philadelphia in 76 and then a 11 years later in 87 when they do the Constitution, it doesn't. Those ideas are made even more impressive because of the improbability of the struggle, the odds against success, the time it took to do it, all of the problems, the winters at Valley Forge in Morristown in which people are dying of disease. This coincides with a continent wide pandemic or pandemics. And one of the big arguments of the time is whether you inoculate the troops. There's a failed invasion of Canada. Our desired to make it the 14th state. I mean the rhymes to this moment are so particularly helpful because I think we can, as we Chicken Little say the sky is falling. You know, everything is bad. We're so divided, we're really divided, but we're way more divided then way more divided during the Civil War, way more divided during the Vietnam period. And so I see that division as sort of a mile wide, but an inch thick. And it, it takes good story to remind people of the thing that we share in common.
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And in watching this documentary I kept thinking to myself that one of the takeaways, one of the points that you make is the power of this country's democracy and its fragility at the same
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time, it's really true. And I found that in film after film after film. You know, we made a film a few years ago called the US and the Holocaust. And you realize that if you wanted to be in the most cosmopolitan place on earth where everything in architecture and cinema and painting and music and thinking was going on. Berlin in 1932 would be the best place, and the next January, not so much. And so you see how quickly the veneer of civilization can be pierced. And the founders understood that. They were really trying to reverse engineer all sorts of things. You know, they put as Article one, not the Executive, that's Article two. The Executive is the manager who carries out the wishes of the Congress. So I think if the founders came here, they would not be surprised at all that somebody was seeking more authoritarian power. They would be abjectly disappointed that Article 1, the legislative branch had abdicated so much of the power because that's what they thought would be the bulwark against the inevitable thing. Remember on July 4, 1776, most people had been through time subjects, and we were creating a new thing called citizen. And it had a lot of responsibilities entailed with it. Jefferson said in that document, all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable. All of human history we've put up with the authoritarian rule. It doesn't work, it doesn't provide for human happiness. And here's our idea of how to put this forward. And because it's the Enlightenment, because things had not changed for people for a thousand years you worked the same plot of land for somebody else in England or Wales or Scotland or Ireland. And then all of a sudden you have this possibility, this sort of possibility of freedom in common sense. Thomas Paine says, not since the time of Noah do we have a chance to remake the world. So there is a biblical sense of our destiny, of creating a place where human beings can reset and say, we hold these truths to be self evident. They're not self evident. They've never been tried. But this is what we're going to try.
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What do you think the founding fathers, the people who lived and fought during the American Revolution, would think if they could see this country today, this country, this democracy that they fought and gave their lives for?
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They'd be totally impressed in lots of ways. They'd be stunned maybe and shocked at how much rights have been extended to people and glad about it. I mean, George Washington knew slavery was wrong. Thomas Jefferson knew slavery was wrong. And the scholar Annette Gordon Reed said, how could you continue with something if you knew it was wrong? And she said, instead of throwing Jefferson out, she's an African American scholar, she says, well, that's the human question for the rest of us. Like, do we act on flaws of our own? Yes, we do. And so it's a generous idea. And I Think they'd be incredibly impressed at what we've been able to achieve and see the levels of division that would seem familiar to them and be disappointed in us that we hadn't figured out what the larger thing was. There are people. We're not in a happy state right now, so we have a lot of people who are keeping us alive to our grievances. It is in the interests of authoritarians to keep people uneducated, distracted by conspiracy and superstition. And our founding, that pursuit of happiness was not pursuit of material goods in a marketplace of things, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas. If you did that, you were constantly, in a Socratic sense, asking yourself, how do I get better? How do I have virtue? And that a virtuous populace, an educated, virtuous populace, saves itself all the time.
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Part of that complicated tapestry is the violence on which this country was founded. You capture that in the American Revolution. You capture that during the Civil War. We have seen political violence in increase in recent years. What do you think the role of violence has been in not just creating this country, but in where we are right now?
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There is spasms of violence that people have, and we are not immune to it. We didn't have a country unless it was, as you correctly point out, extraordinarily violent. And yet this is a human manifestation. This is what human beings do. One of the things that the founders were hoping is to design a network that would permit within it the ability to negotiate these things, to figure out what the peaceful solutions of. George Washington is anguished at the Shays Rebellion. He's worried that we'll drown our rising empire. He said, our rising empire in blood. And so violence is part of it. The question is always falling on ourselves. And this is what the founders felt. This idea of virtue begins with me, begins with George Washington. It says, I need to check this. And can we design a system that will permit people to understand that the highest office in the land is citizen, that you can't complain, you have to vote, that you have to get involved with things, you have to listen to your neighbors. You have to understand that this will always, for all of human history. You know, if I'm making a film, you know, 200 years from now, which I won't, we will be talking about wars and political violence. But we have a system here in which we have at least the recipe to pull out the fuel rods of anger and distrust and hatred. The question is, for Americans right now, as we approach this glorious moment, 250 years, the oldest democracy on earth. Do you want to continue to cook with that recipe, or do you. Can you be, as authoritarians always do, convincing you it's better if everything's ordered, or that our story is only one people and not other people? The whole story is this unbelievably wide variety of people who improbably come together. That's the headline.
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You still seem so hopeful, despite the fact that this continues to be the great experiment democracy. What gives you that hope, Kelly?
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Because I think that recipe is there. It's sitting in front of us. And we have been distracted by the shiny objects of superstition and conspiracy and us versus them. I mean, I said something a couple years ago, just out on the road talking about one film, and I said, you know, I've had the great privilege of making films about the US, but I also make films about us. That is to say, all of the intimacy of us and we and our. And, you know, obviously things get frayed at times, but there are. We have built in. In our system, the mechanisms for repair and the restoration that I think are central to the response to this moment. Yes, we can be Chicken Littles and lie in a fetal position. It's all over. This is the worst existential thing. That's the arrogance of this thing. Way more divided during the Revolution, way more divided during Civil War, way more divided in the Vietnam era. So we have a chance to sort of reconcile this. And why not take the path of reconciliation rather than the drama, the needless drama of further disunion and dissipation and violence, perhaps? And you just. We don't need to choose it.
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Well, you have been making documentaries for more than 50 years, Ken. You've dedicated your life to this craft. When the documentary of Ken Burns is made, how do you hope people will remember your impact here on this earth?
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One of the good things about Homer or Shakespeare is that we don't know that much about them. It's the story that matters. And I have in my home in New Hampshire, a faded New Yorker cartoon that shows three men standing in hell, the flames licking up around them. And one guy says to the other two, apparently my over 200 screen credits didn't mean a damn thing. And so there is. And my little town also reinforces the stuff. And I think learning a lot about George Washington for all the flaws and all the mistakes on the battlefield, but all the great presence that helped deliver this country, that humility is the best thing. I don't know what it will be. I'm happy that my daughters are doing this with me. I'm happy that people respond to them. I love to talk about the United States as a kind of being an entity. And I don't know anybody who loves their country more. And I'm interested in figuring out ways, through stories, not through lectures or lessons or tests or scolding, to share the glories of the story of us. And the reward is only that we will find ways to restore and rehabilitate whatever divisions are at the moment. And there'll always be divisions.
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Ken Burns, thank you so much.
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Thank you.
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When we come back, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on the extraordinary power of ordinary citizens to shape the nation's future. Modern enterprise is made up of a lot of moving parts, and Comcast business helps you orchestrate it all, with SD WAN working at scale to keep 150 hospital locations connected and working as one, plus SASE and Zero Trust Security, protecting financial data across a bank's 2,000 branches, and AI powered networking that optimizes traffic across five continents. No one does business like Comcast business.
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Hey, Google, when's my next meeting?
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On this program last week you were
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suggested as a possible candidate for president yourself.
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For what? For president.
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For the nomination. I am 73 years old.
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Wake up. I didn't make the nomination.
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Do you think we shall ever have a woman president?
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Yes, of course we will.
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How soon?
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Oh, I don't know how soon. That depends on how many women do
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well in offices and how many women
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win offices and are appointed. You can't tell. But someday it will happen.
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When you get to the point where
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you look at people in politics and in positions of political importance as people
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and not as either women or men,
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are there women today who could be President of the United States?
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States? Mrs. Roosevelt.
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I've never given it much thought, but
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I'm sure there probably are.
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Welcome back. For decades, Doris Kearns Goodwin has studied how America's presidents navigated some of the most challenging moments. From Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War to Franklin D. Roosevelt, through the Depression and the World War, to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson during times of profound change. As America marks its 250th anniversary and confronts deep political divisions, the Kristin asked her what lessons our history may hold for this moment.
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I think the most important thing is to remember the difficult times that we've lived in before. We're living in a tough time right now, but history can give us perspective. It can give us solace. I really think it can give us hope. I mean, just imagine what it was like to live through the Civil war. More than 600,000 people were dead. Or live through the Great Depression. One out of four people out of work, the banking system collapsed. Or to live through the early days of World War II and it was unclear that Hitler might come conquered the rest of the world. And the important thing to know is that in each one of those times, the people who lived then, they didn't know the end of their story. They were like us. They were anxious, they were fearful. They didn't know that the Union would be restored and emancipation would be secured. They didn't know that the Great Depression would come to an end with the mobilization for the war. They didn't know the Allies would win World War II. So they lived with the same worries that we harbored. But somehow we showed strength and we emerged with greater strength from each one of those troubles. So remembering the troubled times right now and how we came out of them, that's the progress that we've made as a country. And I think for 250, it's so important for history to be there. And it's time when history is being diminished. We need just the opposite, because history is what's going to give us hope.
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What is the role that citizens can play right now, based on what you've witnessed in history?
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You know what I think about when I think about these movements for social justice, it always starts with individuals feeling that they can make a difference. I mean, that's what the inauguration of John Kennedy was. That's what the Civil rights movement was all about. I remember being at that march on Washington in August of 1990, 1963, when I was 20 years old, showing that I'm 83 years old today. And there was a sense in that feeling of being there that you were something larger than yourself. I carried a sign, protestants, Jews and Catholics unite for civil rights. And I felt for the first time that I was something larger. And I carried that with me, I think, the rest of my life. Obviously, people in the civil rights movement felt that even more deeply. People in the anti war movement felt that people in the gay rights movement, the women's movement, the union movement earlier on. And I think that's the sense we have to feel today that if we feel changes are needed, it's going to come from us, the citizens, maybe at your local level, in the. In the city and the state, maybe. I'd love to see some national service program come today where kids in different parts of the country could come together to have a mission, just like military people have a mission with different classes and sections coming together. The city kid goes to the country, the kid from the coast goes to the heartlands. They work together, they feel they're making a difference on disaster relief or helping older people. And they come away from that not feeling that that the other people in the sections or the classes are the other, rather than as common American citizens. That's one of the things Teddy Roosevelt warned against at the turn of the 20th century. He said that the classes were divided. There was a big gap between the rich and the poor. The industrial revolution had shaken up the economy, and there was a feeling from people in the country of suspicious of people in the city. And he said, if democracy is really going to be in peril if people in different classes and sections regard each other as the other rather than as common American citizens, and I think nothing more could make us feel common American citizens than letting that younger generation come together on a common mission and feel like they're doing something for the country.
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John F. Kennedy, who arrived in Washington as one of the youngest presidents in history, and his inauguration became one of the defining moments of the era. Why do you think that was? And why is his loss still felt so deeply today?
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Yeah, it's so interesting. I think part of the reason why it was so extraordinary for him as a young president to say, the torch is being passed to the next generation, and to say the famous phrase, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country is it was already welling up in the late 50s, a desire to move forward. The civil rights movement was making strongholds, and there was a lot of feeling that we needed to work together. And then the signature program becomes the Peace Corps, which was an answer to what you can do for your and what it meant was somehow, throughout the 60s, that sense that individuals could make a difference. You know, the sad thing is, we so often remember the 60s with the assassinations of JFK and RFK and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the riots in the streets and the fires in the streets. And yet the greatest spark of the 60s was that belief that individuals held through much of that decade that they could make a difference. And again, we think of the assassination, but we have to think of what happened after that. And the extraordinary thing was that when Lyndon Johnson took the office after John Kennedy died, that he would make the priority, his number one priority, the passage of that civil rights bill. And his friend said, you can't do that. It'll never get passed. And then he famously said, then what the hell is the presidency for? And then he went for it. And he had talents, interestingly, maybe John Kennedy wouldn't have had to get it through Congress. He started calling every congressman, every senator. He would call them at 6 in the morning, he would call them at noon. He would call them at midnight. He even called a senator at 2am and he said, oh, I hope I didn't wake you up. And the senator said, oh, no, I was just lying here looking at the ceiling, hoping my president would call. He brings the Republicans, they break that filibuster, the Civil Rights act passes, ending 78 years of Jim Crow. And maybe there was the combination. In fact, when he went to the country and said it was my number one priority, he said nothing would be more important for the memory of John F. Kennedy than passing that bill. So it was John Kennedy inspiring and Lyndon Johnson making it happen.
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And your late husband, Dick Goodwin was also a part of that pivotal moment.
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No, he surely was. I mean, in fact, most importantly, he was involved in the Civil Rights Signing act, and he went down there for that. But most importantly, the Voting Rights act comes the next year. And what had happened is Lyndon Johnson had said that he thought voting rights couldn't come until 1966, absorb the civil rights movement first. And he had a whole great society program that he wanted to go through. But Martin Luther King had other timing in mind. And he had the great Selma march to protest the problems for blacks from registering in the South. And as we all know, when they came over peacefully, the Edmunds Pettus Bridge, the Alabama state troopers were waiting and clubbed them, had horses, pushed them to the ground, hospitalizing many of them. And it was all captured on television. The rare footage of television came up to the networks and they broke in on regular programming. I remember watching. I was watching Judgment at Nuremberg that night, a Sunday night movie. And they broke in with this footage from Selma, Alabama. And we just all turned to each other and couldn't believe this was our country. And then Johnson realized that the conscience of the country had been fired by seeing that. So he changed his whole timing and decided, I'll go for voting rights now. But it meant that my husband had only one day to write that speech. He came in in the morning and they said, you have to have it done by six at night. I don't know how he did it. He put his work watch away in a draw, somehow thinking that that would mean that he would forget time. And he started writing. It took him two hours to write the first line of that speech. And he wrote a beautiful first line. I speak tonight. He would have Lyndon Johnson say, for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. And then he said, every now and then, history and fate meet at a certain time in a certain place. So it was in Lexington and Concord, so it was at Appomattox, so it was in Selma, Alabama. That meant he was positioning Selma in those great moments of history. And then he said, this is. If only we could think of this again today. This is not a Negro problem, not a white problem, not a Northern problem, not a Southern problem. It's not a moral problem. It is simply immoral to deny your fellow Americans the right to vote. It is not a state rights problem. It's a human rights problem. And then once he got all of that done and we are met here tonight as Americans, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, to meet that problem, he decided, okay, it's time for a break. So he went out and had a cigar, and in the distance he saw some kids, and they were singing. The faint echoes could reach him. We shall overcome. So he came back in and he wrote the lines that have now made that speech called the We Shall Overcome speech. But Johnson said, but even if we get voting rights, there's still 100 years of discrimination to overcome. But if we come together, we shall overcome. And the audience was in uproar, crying, clapping, knowing that that meant that the anthem of the civil rights movement that had been fighting for so many, so many decades for these kinds of changes, was now going to be reached to the highest chambers of power in the Congress. And it was said by John Lewis that Martin Luther King cried at that moment, knowing that would mean the Voting Rights act passed. And it did indeed pass in August of that summer. And my husband was able to get one of the pens from the passage, plus a picture of Johnson shaking his hand. And that stood on the wall of my husband's study and is now on my study in Boston. And it was probably the proudest moment in his life and one of the great moments in Lyndon Johnson's life. And of course, voting rights is under attack today. How they would be thinking about this, I can't even imagine.
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Well, it is just so powerful to hear you retell that, Doris. I just want to ask you, as a final thought as we prepare to mark America's 250th birthday, what does the story of our country, everything that you and I have just discussed, ask of these citizens today?
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You know, I think when I look at the people who are our great leaders, it's not just what they did, it's who they were. And what we have to look at is what qualities do the leaders in our own hometowns, in our schools, our teachers, our governors, as well as the leaders who will become in this contest for the presidency. What kind of character do they have? I think that's what we've got to ask of all of ourselves. We want character to be taught to our students in school. It's what parents want to teach their kids. It's really what we should be judging our leaders at every level by are those qualities of character that make a good person as well as a great leader. And that's what I think I'd love to leave us with.
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When we come back, America's Treasures Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch on the artifacts that define the American experience.
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At Etsy, we want to know what moments mean the most to you. Whether it's buying a home or hosting a party, there's an Etsy seller with the perfect original pieces to help you celebrate. Celebrate being human. Here's what happened. When one journalist reported on dei, I
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decided to just focus on the University of Michigan. I obtained internal documents that showed that the school had spent about a quarter of a billion dollars on DEI programs. I spent two weeks in Ann Arbor talking to everybody I could find the unintended consequences of these programs. They had sort of left everybody dissatisfied. And this expensive machinery the school had built just imploded. If you're a journalist, you are not on anyone's team. All you're trying to do is figure out as many of the facts as you can gather. The facts are going to guide you to where the story lands. You're not taking sides. I'm Nick Confessore. I'm an investigations reporter for the New
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Seek it out if you don't already. A dog's love letter to his squeaky avocado. Dearest Squeaky Avocado, my heart yearns to chew thee.
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Yours, Jerry.
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Is there any country in the world that is a better model as a society than ours? I mean, what is it that if you get a thorough transformation of America as you seem to want want, what's America going to look like? What country?
- [33:06]
E
Oh, I think we're unlike any country in the world. I think that we're completely unique. I also think that we have,
- [33:15]
D
we
- [33:15]
E
have a tradition of democracy which is very unusual, political democracy. I think the kind of vision that I have can probably happen best here and will probably happen, I hope soonest here. And it is a vision that extends the democracy we have in the political arena to the economy so that average citizens can have some say so over the decisions that most importantly affect their lives.
- [33:42]
C
Welcome back. Here in Washington, the story of America is on display at The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums and galleries. From a piece of the original Star Spangled Banner to Amelia Earhart's flight suit, the man overseeing it all is a history maker himself. The first black secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch. He invited Meet the Press to the original Smithsonian Castle headquarters to see artifacts he hand selected for a 250th anniversary exhibit and explained how his grandfather inspired him to find resilience even in the most difficult parts of America's history.
- [34:24]
A
Let's start with where we are right now. The Smithsonian Castle. Part of it's under renovation, but you have reopened it to mark this milestone for the country, America's 250th birthday. Why is this such a special place? Why did you want to reopen it right now?
- [34:40]
B
Well, the castle was really the Smithsonian for almost 30 years, that it was built in 1855. And all the research, all the exhibits, all the science was here. And this has really been the heart of the Smithsonian, but it was also the heart of Washington. Nothing else was here. And so what I wanted, as we're doing all this renovation, I said, let's for the 250th, let's bring the joy of the Smithsonian. Let's let people see the heart of the Smithsonian. So it was really the desire to sort of open it and then to craft exhibitions that might help people understand the 250th a little more.
- [35:14]
A
The American Aspirations is what you have called the special exhibit In Honor of America 250. What does American aspiration mean to you?
- [35:25]
B
To me, it means that we are always in pursuit. We are in pursuit of the promise of America, that, in essence, we almost never get there. And that's okay. That the notion of being a more perfect union, not the perfect union, is really what motivates me. And I think what I want people to understand is that there is a responsibility to continue to make those aspirations available, accessible, meaningful to a whole range of people. And that, in essence, America's greatest strength, it's not running away from its history, but it's understanding how that history shaped us and continues to shape us.
- [36:04]
A
Well, I want to talk about your personal history a little bit. You are the third Lonnie Bunch, and the first Lonnie Bunch set the bar very high and met a number of challenges as he tried to pursue his dreams and his goals in life. Tell us about the first Lonnie Bunch,
- [36:23]
B
the original Lonnie Bunch.
- [36:24]
A
The original Lonnie Bunch, and how he has brought you to where you are today.
- [36:29]
B
Well, you know, it's interesting. It's an example of how two people, my grandfather and grandmother, can change the trajectory of a family.
- [36:35]
A
Yes.
- [36:36]
B
I mean, this guy was a sharecropper outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, and decided this is not the life he wanted. And he just. He found out that he could go to Shaw University, Shaw College in North Carolina, and It took him 10 years to graduate college, and then he wanted to be a dentist. Why? We don't know. I have no idea. He has to earn money. So he works on the boardwalk of Atlantic City pushing rolling chairs of rich people to make money, gets that money, goes to Howard University for dental school, and basically he practices in New Jersey for 50 years. And my recollections of them. He died the day before I turned five. And my recollections are that he used to. To read history to me. He used to talk about history. And so I think part of my fascination came from him.
- [37:24]
A
What do you think Your grandfather would say, if he were sitting here today and saw everything that you have accomplished and this extraordinary museum and the fact that you are the first black secretary of the Smithsonian Museums.
- [37:43]
D
Wow.
- [37:44]
B
I think, in a way, he would be astonished. From the world that he came from. You know, his parents were enslaved to think about how in, you know, three generations, this has happened. So I think he would be astonished. But I think the other thing he would be. Would be proud of America, proud of a nation that can come out of slavery and Jim Crow and civil rights to basically say it's possible for someone like me to be part of this amazing group called the Smithsonian. So I think he'd be really pleased that America has lived up to his dream.
- [38:20]
A
Let's talk about the Museum of African American History and Culture. You are the founding director. I have visited it multiple times. Every time I go, I learn something new, I feel something new. Talk about what that role meant to you and building that museum literally from the ground up.
- [38:43]
B
Well, you know, in some ways, I took great from my grandfather. I thought, if this guy could go to college for 10 years, I could give 11 years of my life to build a museum. So it really was an opportunity that scared me to death. I didn't think I was good enough to do it, to be perfectly honest. But I realized that this was an opportunity not to build an African American museum like I would have done it 40 years ago, but to basically say, this is a story of a community, but it's also the story of a nation. And I wanted people to understand that this was their story too, regardless of who they were. And so putting in the time, finding amazing people to help make this dream come real was what motivated me. And I kept hearing from John Lewis, the great congressman who for 17 years tried to pass legislation, finally got it through. And so whenever I would feel, oh, my God, can I do this? I'd look to John Lewis. I'd look to his courage during the Civil Rights movement, his creativity on the Hill. And basically I said, you don't have the right to fail, because they didn't. You're standing on the shoulders of your father, your grandfather. So therefore, every time I wanted to quit, I said, nope, gotta keep going.
- [39:59]
A
Well, many of the artifacts there are from a project you created called called Saving African American Treasures. Talk to me about what that process was like. And I know you went all around the country to do it.
- [40:13]
B
Well, you know, I remember testifying before Congress, and they said, can you find the artifacts? And I remember saying, sure. I didn't know if I could. And so I realized that I remembered early in my career I was collecting for something, and I went into this woman's house, and she had this treasure trove of stuff and didn't know what it was. And so I thought to myself, I bet that there is artifacts, history, stories embedded in people's homes. And so I created this project where we went around the country, and basically the goal was to help people preserve their collections. We didn't go to take things. We brought people to help you preserve Grandma's old shawl or that 19th century photograph. And so, basically, what is powerful to me is we collected 40,000 objects, of which 70% came from basements, trunks, and attics of people's homes. 70% came from people who said, we trust the Smithsonian. Take this material and let the public see it. That, to me, was why it was so special. The people trusted us. And I used to tell my staff all the time, you're not building a museum. You're holding people's culture, people's hands, people's hopes in your hands. And I want you to treat it with that kind of respect.
- [41:23]
A
And when you're in the museum, you are transported. You are having an experience. And part of that is because of all of that work you put into it. So you found Ku Klux Klan robes, for example. You found segregated drinking fountains. What was that process like of. It must have been emotional every time you encountered one of those artifacts.
- [41:55]
B
Very emotional. I mean, I think that I told my staff, it's okay to cry because you're dealing with things that are difficult, but I want you to find the resiliency and the joy that is in that. So we really said, you got to do both. But we would. We would get collections. For me, it was getting material on Harriet Tubman, right? I mean, Harriet Tubman, great abolitionist, But I knew there wasn't any material. And a wonderful collector called me from Philadelphia and said, you know, I've got material on Harriet. And I said, no, you don't. Come on, you don't believe it. And he said, well, come to Philadelphia. I'll buy you a cheesesteak. And, you know, we'll see. So I went up, and this guy, Charles Blockson, gifted man, was six, three, big guy. And he pulled out a little box, and in it, he pulled out photographs of Harriet Tubman's funeral that I had never seen. And I did just. I said, oh, my goodness. And he said, you're excited. And then he would punch me. He would share his excitement by punching Me, he pulled out 33 objects and punched me every time. And the last one was this hymnal that Harriet Tubman had. Where was all those spirituals where she would sing into the south to help people escape? Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Steal Away, Jesus. So I'm crying, right? I'm just so emotional. And I said, okay, what's it going to take for us to come to the Smithsonian? Because I've got no money. And he said, shake my hand and it's yours. And that's what happened time and time again. People realized that this was the moment for these stories to be told. And that happened almost every day. Somebody said, here it is. Can you use it? Can you share it? Can you make it accessible?
- [43:31]
A
We are living in polarized times. I don't have to tell you that. How does the Smithsonian fit into this moment and help the country move through this moment?
- [43:43]
B
I think the Smithsonian in some ways, is the glue that helps hold the nation together. Right? You look at who visits the Smithsonian. Everybody. Red states, blue states. Whatever your politics, you come to the Smithsonian. Why? Because you want to understand who you are, Right? It's about celebrating, but also understanding. And in some ways, what I think the country could use, what the Smithsonian provides is we spend. As many Americans, we look for simple answers to complex questions. The Smithsonian gets us your ambiguity. It helps you understand complexity, nuance, subtlety, debate. And I think that that's a major contribution. If you could help people feel comfortable with ambiguity, then you could help a nation move forward.
- [44:31]
C
When we come back at 250, the spirit of American exploration still points sky.
- [44:45]
B
Senator Glenn, on Thursday, October 29th, when you were launched in the space, these children from National Presbyterian School were in
- [44:51]
E
this very studio watching you and applauding you.
- [44:55]
B
They entered a contest. These are the winners. And sixth grader Blake Elder has a question for Senator John Glenn. Go ahead, Blake.
- [45:03]
E
Hello, Senator Glenn, Considering the advancements made
- [45:09]
A
since your first flight, what do you
- [45:12]
E
think the future holds for space travel for my generation?
- [45:19]
B
Well, I think the future is unlimited, Blake, and I am glad to have a chance to talk to you there this morning.
- [45:25]
C
Although I should ask you kids, what
- [45:26]
D
are you doing out of Sunday school
- [45:27]
B
this morning over there next door. But anyway, glad to talk to you this morning and I, you know, it's
- [45:34]
E
unlimited as to what you can do in the future.
- [45:36]
B
I think whatever your imagination can imagine, we almost can do these days.
- [45:42]
C
When we come back, Lonnie Bunch gives Kristen a tour of the newly renovated Smithsonian Castle and the Special Artifacts Inside
- [45:54]
E
America250 is sponsored by AmericanEagle.com creating digital experiences that drive growth.
- [46:04]
A
Secretary Bunch, Here we are in the American Aspirations exhibit, one of the oldest rooms in the Smithsonian Castle. And the lights are quite dim in here. Why is that important?
- [46:17]
B
We have some of the most treasured objects in the Smithsonian in this room. And light is the enemy of treasured objects surviving. So we wanted to basically make the light level so that people can enjoy it, but that we make sure that these artifacts are here for another hundred years.
- [46:33]
A
Well, we have to start with this artifact, which is the desk of Thomas Jefferson. This is where he signed the Declaration of Independence. It's extraordinary. It's so small and yet so powerful in terms of our nation's history.
- [46:47]
B
It's one of my favorite objects. Right. This is a desk that Jefferson designed himself, and he called it his writing box. You could just imagine him in Philadelphia. He would sort of jot down things, notes, ideas on this box, and then basically write the entire Declaration of Independence. And what I love is that how this survived. Jefferson knew how important this was, so he actually put a note in it to say, this is the desk where I wrote the Declaration of Independence. And then he gave the Declaration. He gave this box not to his granddaughter, but to his granddaughter's husband, which tells you something. And he kept it and gave it to the United states Congress in 1880, and then they gave it to the Smithsonian.
- [47:28]
A
It's just so powerful to see it in person. Quite literally, the core roots of our democracy.
- [47:35]
B
I mean, one of the joys of the Smithsonian is you open drawers and you're like, oh, my God, what's that? You know, when I was a curator, I opened a drawer, and it was the compass that Lewis and Clark carried when it went across the country. So it's like, it's just amazing what we have here.
- [47:47]
A
And this is a broadside talk about why this is so important.
- [47:52]
B
Part of the understanding of America is you defend democracy, and a lot of that is military. And one of the things that's so powerful is this broadside. During the Civil War, when the war broke out, many African Americans, slave and free, said, I want to participate. And Lincoln and the army said, no, we don't want you. By 1863, the war is going badly, and suddenly you need these folks. And so when the army started to recruit blacks, many of the free blacks said, you didn't want me then. I'm not sure I want to do this. Frederick Douglass wrote this, and this banner was used in a parade in Philadelphia to convince free blacks to participate. In the war. And what I love about it is it's a call to arms, Right? But my favorite line is, are freemen less brave than slaves? And so what it did is it really encouraged people so that by the end of the war, 250,000 African Americans participated.
- [48:48]
A
This, for me, is one of the most striking elements of the Civil War. The fact that slaves, free black men, fought and died for the idea of democracy that they had been so deprived of themselves.
- [49:04]
B
And the notion that freedom was given is wrong. Freedom was earned through their sacrifices. And so I just think that this is a powerful broadside that says many things about who we once were and inspires me to think about who we can be, no matter what's happening.
- [49:21]
A
Well, let's keep walking because there are more remarkable artifacts here. One that I have to say is near and dear to my heart as we approach this, which is the NBC News Fireside chat microphone.
- [49:39]
B
One of the things that I think is so powerful about America is one of our aspirations is hope. I mean, the notion of in the Great Depression, America worried about, is it going to survive? And suddenly you have FDR utilizing the newest technologies of the day and basically coming into people's homes and giving them hope, saying that we can do this together. And so for me, when I think of a single object that speaks of hope, nothing more than the NBC microphone.
- [50:05]
A
And he delivered, FDR delivered more than 30 fireside chats. And this was really a new way for a president to communicate with the American people.
- [50:15]
B
That's right. There had been, you know, the radio was used by Calvin Coolidge and Hoover, but they didn't use it effectively the way he did. He realized that the radio allowed him to go into people's homes, to act as if he is right next to them and telling them the story. And so the way he did these, he always began by talking about how
- [50:34]
A
my fellow American and this microphone at the time, especially, really about bringing the country together.
- [50:40]
B
Absolutely. And I think that's one of the most powerful things about hope, is that no matter the challenge, America has an opportunity to sort of come together, find hope, find common ground. At least that's what I believe.
- [50:53]
C
And that's all for today. Thanks for watching. We hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend. We'll be back next week because if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.
- [51:04]
B
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- [51:57]
D
Hire skills first.
- [51:58]
B
Learn why at tearthepaperceiling. Org, brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.