John Stauffer

President Obama, President Biden and other leading historians such as David Blight are helping America progress from its dark past of slavery. The Black Lives Matter movement will be seen as a very powerful civil rights movement that has helped America become more progressive. Organizations today recognize the extent to which racism is embedded in American culture.
 
Transcript: "Yes, I would say that President Obama among others would be someone historians will recognize as helping America progress from its dark past of slavery also President Biden. Some leading historians today, David Blight, probably most prominently a number of others, George Floyd and his murder, Black Lives Matter I think will be seen as a very powerful, important civil rights movement that will help America progress from its dark past of slavery to the present essentially. And there are a lot of them organizations today that recognize the degree to which racism has been the DNA of American culture."

Charles Sumner devoted his life to the concept of equal rights under the law. He was with John Quincy Adams, the two leading intellectual congressmen in the 19th century. Sumner recognized the importance of equality under the law for all people and brought that phrase into a legal framework. Equality within a democracy is a fairly new invention, emerging in the 18th century at the earliest. Sumner was born and raised in a Black neighborhood in Boston, showing the importance of integrating from an early age.
 
Transcript: "I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I have pneumonia which is part of why I've been so delayed. What have I discovered in the biography of Charles Sumner? A number of things. One is that I've come to realize that he's the leading white American who recognized the importance of equality under the law for all people. And in fact he brought that phrase into legal-- into a legal framework. He was with John Quincy Adams, the two leading intellectual congressmen in the 19th century. And essentially Charles Sumner devoted his life to the concept of equal rights under the law. Another thing I learned is through Sumner is that the idea of equality is a fairly-- and especially equality within a democracy is a fairly new invention. It doesn't really emerge and it doesn't exist in classical antiquity, which was essentially democracies in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. It really doesn't begin until the 18th century at the earliest. And in the late 18th century, the idea of equality was vexed. Arguably most people were very fearful of equality because they believed in a natural hierarchy and that natural hierarchy came to be based on race and on gender and on class, but really first and foremost on gender and on race. And that was what Sumner really devoted his life to. Another thing that I've discovered in the biography as parties, it was a white. He was-- but he lived, he was born and raised in the Black neighborhood of Boston in the North End of Beacon Hill. So from the time he was an infant, a toddler, his neighbors, his friends were African-Americans which highlights to me the degree to which integration is so important and mandating integration is important, especially beginning when one is young. And I have two sons and we live in a mixed neighborhood in Cambridge. In fact, our next door neighbors are African-Americans. And our kids have been exposed, have been around, and been friends with African-Americans and Latinos, and from the time that they've been infants really. And they."

I am cautiously optimistic that the current cultural and political awakening America is experiencing will lead to substantive change in regards to race relations. This hope is fuelled by the progress seen over past "Great Awakenings" such as the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, and the presidencies of Obama, Trump and Biden.
 
Transcript: "I do see progress each time that America faces reckoning with its sins of the past. And that's characterized by what scholars have referred to as a cultural, political awakening, where people, Americans, try to come to terms with what's wrong with the country. And when you ask about what-- when someone asks what's wrong, there's a natural-- in any subject, there's a natural-- a natural answer is to look at the past. History is a guide. History is a way-- the past is a way to help us explain the present and how to move forward in the future. And so these reckonings with the past are a way of trying to understand history. It's also why conservatives are trying to pass a ban-- trying to ban critical race theory, which essentially is a way of not allowing race to be discussed in schools because they don't want that reckoning. They're trying to resist that reckoning. We're in the midst of what I think is the fourth or fifth "Great Awakening." And these awakenings, they're moments in which there's been ultimately progress in race relations. The three areas that everyone has agreed on is the revolution that gave rise to the Declaration of Independence and the abolition of the Northern states, the Civil War, which then led to the legal abolition of slavery in America, and the Civil Rights, the modern civil rights movement. A few scholars have characterized other great awakenings. But it's that time of an awakening. So I'm cautiously optimistic that the moment we're in now is one that will lead to some sort of substantive change. And I think you see it in the presidencies actually of Obama, of Trump, and of Biden. Trump is a reaction against the awakening that was reflected by the first African-American president. And Biden, in terms of race relations, is even more progressive than Obama. Obama recognized how far he could go, and given the fact that he's the first African-American president. And one of the reasons that-- in fact, the main reason why Trump became president is because he was the head of the birther movement. He tried to argue that Obama was illegitimate because he was Black. He didn't say that, but that was the whole basis of the birther movement. So it's a great question. And I'm cautiously optimistic that the turmoil and the--"

Zoe Trodd and Celeste Bernier spent five years researching libraries, archives, and museums in the United States and Europe to document the fact that Frederick Douglass was the most photographed American in the 19th century. They did this by counting up the number of separate photographs of him and comparing it to other famous Americans from the same period. They laid out all their evidence in the catalog raisonné at the end of their book so people could challenge their numbers.
 
Transcript: "How did I do the research? So I had two colleagues, friends and colleagues, Zoe Trodd and Celeste Bernier. We spent five years really scouring all of the libraries and archives, and museums in the United States actually and in Europe and the places where Douglass we knew traveled or lived and essentially did a huge amount of research, counting up the number of separate photos, not duplicate of an existing photo, of Frederick Douglass. And that's essentially how we were able to document the fact that Douglass is the most photographed American in the 19th century because there are other scholars who've done the same on Lincoln, the same on Custer, the same on Whitman, the same on Twain. Twain, actually, there are more separate photos of Twain than there are of Douglass. But most of the photos of Twain were in the 20th century, in the last decade or so of Twain's life when photography became much more popular than it had been in the 19th century, owing to the Brownie camera, the Kodak Brownie camera, which is the first time that an amateur could photograph. Before that, you had to be a professional. So that's essentially how we were able to obtain that. And then we lay out all of our evidence in the catalog raisonné in the last part of the book. So people who want to interrogate our number of-- it's, I think-- 160 photographs now, they can challenge us. So we lay out all the evidence in the catalogue raisonné, which is what a catalogue raisonné can do for you."

John Stauffer is a professor at Harvard University who teaches on abolitionism, race, the Civil War era, and Frederick Douglass. He emphasizes how our view of the past shapes our actions in the present and future.
 
Transcript: "Hi, I'm John Stauffer. I'm the Cates professor at Harvard University and I teach in right on abolitionism race. The Civil War era, Frederick Douglass. I'm happier too happy to answer any questions. You have about those topics, either then in the 19th century or how the past continues to shape and inform the present. One of the things I emphasize is the degree to which, how we understand the Past profoundly shapes, and influences, how we understand and live and act in the present and future."