>> John Haskell:
Welcome, everybody.
We're ready to get started.
Sorry for beginning
a little late.
My name is John Haskell.
I'm the director of the Kluge
Center here at the library.
The Center brings in
scholars conducting research
in the library collections.
Our mission is to bring
their work to policymakers
in the interest of the
public in various forms,
including conversations
like today's.
African American Passages: Black
Lives in 19th-Century America.
This one features
different perspectives.
Our conversations all
feature different perspectives
on the issues.
This time with a
prominent historian
and a prominent journalist.
Adam Rothman to the left
is professor of history
at Georgetown University and the
author of three books on slavery
and 19th-century US history,
including the award-winning
Beyond Freedom's Reach.
Adam was in residence here at
the Kluge Center at the library
as a distinguished visiting
scholar in the fall semester,
working on bringing to
light through podcasts
and blogs the writings of
slaves contained in the Library
of Congress Collections.
Jesse Holland has
reported on politics
for the Associated Press in all
three branches of government,
at the Supreme Court, the White
House and in the Congress.
He was the first
African American elected
to the Congressional Standing
Committee of Correspondents
who were charged with
credentialing reporters
for the House and Senate.
He is currently the race and
ethnicity reporter for the AP.
Jesse is the author of
Black Men Built the Capital:
Discovering African American
History in and around DC,
as well as a major work on
slavery, Inside the White House.
More recently, in tandem
with the Black Panther
movie last year,
Jesse developed the novels
and wrote the novels.
I was just talking
to him about it.
A little more attention
for those novels
than things he had written for
the AP in the last two decades
or the excellent
books he's written.
Please join me in
welcoming Adam and Jesse.
[ Applause ]
>> Jesse Holland:
Well, good afternoon.
I appreciate everyone
being here today.
I will apologize for
my slight tardiness.
I got stuck behind a
motorcade, so this is DC.
That sort of thing happens here.
You have to plan
for these things.
So I really appreciate
being here,
and I always appreciate being
back in the Library of Congress.
As a writer, as a nonfiction
writer, and I have to say
that I started writing
nonfiction before I
started fiction.
And that's where my heart is.
I've been a journalist for
almost 30 years which is nothing
but nonfiction writing.
And then I got into
nonfiction writing in my books.
And one of the things that you
learn quickly as both a writer
and a reporter is that
you have to do research.
Research is essential
to everything that we do
as nonfiction authors
and as journalists.
And one of the best databases in
the entire planet is right here
at the Library of Congress.
Back when I started
my first book
which was called Black
Men Built the Capital:
Discovering African
American History in
and around Washington DC,
I basically lived
in this building.
Actually, at that time
I lived in Capital Hill.
I actually lived right
down on 16th Street.
And so I would come down here
on weekends, on Saturdays
when it was open, and
after work because at
that time I was actually
working inside the capital.
And I would spend as much
time as I could going
through photographs, going
through old newspapers,
going through documents,
going through everything
I could find here
that would support my thesis
that there was a strong African
American history in Washington
that wasn't just in Anacostia.
It wasn't just in Georgetown.
It wasn't just on Yew Street.
That there was African
American history here
on the National Mall.
And I was amazed at some of the
material that you could find
if you just had time to look.
And one of the best things
that has ever been done for me
and any other researcher in the
United States is the Library
of Congress's website, where
we can now look through some
of this material 24 hours a day.
You're no longer dependent
upon the library being open
and being able to
get into the building
to do the research you need
to do on your projects.
So I owe a lot to my
start as an author
to the Library of Congress.
And I was really dependent
on the Library of Congress
for my second book which was
The Invisibles: The Untold Story
of African American
Slaves in the White House.
There is so much material
available here at the Library
of Congress, at the
National Archives,
through the White House
Historical Association,
but it requires someone to look.
And that's what's so great
about this material being
available to us as Americans.
Because when I travel
overseas, I just spent some time
in Kazakhstan back in September.
The things that we take for
granted, that we can come
into the Library of
Congress and we can look
through government material, we
can look through old newspapers,
those freedoms aren't available
for researchers everywhere
around the world.
And we sometimes take
that for granted.
So we really need to appreciate
places like this for the access
to the material that
they give us.
It's just amazing and I think we
should be really, really happy
that we have places like
the Library of Congress
to help us find this type
of material that we need
so we can understand not
only our past but ourselves.
>> Adam Rothman:
Jesse, I totally agree.
The Library of Congress
is really an
extraordinary repository.
When we think of a library, we
think of books but we also here
at the Library of Congress
have this incredible
manuscript collection.
Now the manuscripts
at the Library
of Congress are generally
collections of powerful people,
politicians, presidents.
And so at first glance you might
think it's an unlikely place
to search for and find
material connected
to African American history.
But as you just heard
from Jesse,
I think that's exactly wrong.
This is actually an
extraordinary place to research
and write about African
American history using
manuscript collections.
I would love to hear from Jesse,
what kind of collections
you used to write
that book, The Invisibles.
What kind of manuscript material
were you sifting through to find
that evidence that you needed?
>> Jesse Holland: Well,
especially when you're writing
about slavery, it's very rare
to find an actual account
from a slave in the area
that you're looking for.
Now my area of expertise
is slavery,
the slaves who were
owned by US presidents.
That actually started
out as my thesis.
I got my master of fine
arts in creative nonfiction
from Goucher College
up in Towson Maryland.
And my thesis started out
as a paper about the slaves
of the first five presidents.
I say five because we know
John Adams didn't hold slaves.
But I wanted to look at
those first five presidents.
And so I was looking
for a specific slave
at a specific location
at a specific time.
Now it's difficult to find
those type of stories,
especially when you're
looking at a specific location.
But the way -- if
you're studying slavery,
a lot of times what you do
is you end up reading stories
that other people are
telling about their slaves.
So for example, you go back
and you read the papers
of George Washington.
You read the papers
of Thomas Jefferson.
You read their correspondence
and inside those correspondence,
they will talk about
their slaves.
And then you try
to build a picture
of what that slave was like.
What I tell a lot of people
about writing The Invisibles is
that I had to study
George Washington to figure
out who Oney Judge was.
Because only late in her
life was Oney Judge able
to tell her story to newspapers.
But Martha Washington talked
a lot about Oney Judge.
George Washington talked
a lot about Oney Judge.
Some of the things that I
was able to find was an ad
that George Washington
placed in a newspaper
that described Oney Judge
because Oney Judge
had run away from him.
She had escaped.
So that was one of
the first descriptions
that we actually had of
what Oney Judge looked like,
was the newspaper ad that
George Washington placed
after Oney Judge ran away
from him in Philadelphia.
So unlike doing contemporary
history, you don't actually get
to hear from the person.
You take everything else that
has been written about them
and you try to build a
picture around that person.
One of the examples I
use, I teach research
and reporting at Goucher now.
And one of the examples
of stories I use is Gay Talese's
Frank Sinatra has a Cold.
Because it's an entire
story that's written
about Frank Sinatra that doesn't
have Frank Sinatra in it.
Frank Sinatra never speaks.
But Gay Talese builds this
picture of Frank Sinatra
by talking to all the
people around him.
So we build the pictures
of the slaves that I use
in The Invisibles by taking
the account of the presidents,
their wives and their children.
And you build this picture
up of these individuals
who never had a chance to
tell their own stories.
And a lot of that -- honestly,
it requires so much reading
of so much material to find
that one sentence that says
that Oney Judge got to go to
the circus in Philadelphia.
To find that one piece of
information that you're looking
for throughout all of these
newspapers, these documents,
these letters, this
correspondence, these records.
That each one is a small
piece of the puzzle.
And a lot of that
material was here,
especially when it comes
to Thomas Jefferson.
You find a lot of that
material in the archives here
and at the presidential
plantations where I also
of course had a lot of
work done there as well.
>> Adam Rothman: I had
the great opportunity
to spend some time last
semester here at the Library
of Congress looking in
the manuscript collections
for precisely the
thing that is so hard
to find in these collections.
Most of what we do as
historians of slavery is
to research what
other people said
about the people they
owned, as Jesse points out.
But there are these
needles in a haystack
where you can actually find
manuscript material words
written by enslaved
people themselves.
So my task here at the
Library last semester was
to find some examples of
that kind of material.
And we did a few
podcasts and other kinds
of media about what we found.
So let me just tell you one.
Jesse mentioned presidents
and their slaves.
I found a letter that was
written by a man named Harry
who was a blacksmith who
was owned by James K. Polk.
He wrote a letter to Polk just
after Polk was elected
president in 1844.
Let's see, 1844, did
I get that right?
Yeah, 1844.
He wrote this letter.
And this letter is here at
the Library of Congress,
and in fact it's been
digitized along with the rest
of the Polk correspondence.
And we're talking about millions
of pages of manuscript material
to find one letter
written by a person
who was actually
held in bondage.
The letter is sort
of mind-blowing.
He writes to his dear master --
that's the salutation,
"My dear master."
He congratulates Polk on
being elected president.
And he says -- so Harry
was actually in Mississippi
and Polk was in Tennessee.
He had been hired
out and was working
as a blacksmith in Mississippi.
He tells Polk that he
had actually gotten --
he had done electioneering
for him in Mississippi.
He had been campaigning
for Polk,
a slave campaigning for Polk.
Not only campaigning
for Polk; he was betting
with his white neighbors that
Polk would win the election.
Apparently he had been doing
this for many elections
and losing a lot
of money on Polk.
Because he tells Polk that
you know, finally he won.
Finally he won.
So most of this letter is
sort of buttering up Polk,
and then at the end
of the letter he sort
of gets to the chase.
He says that basically
he wants to be hired
out to a better person, somebody
who will treat him better.
So at the end there's this
request that Harry makes
as a slave to try to induce Polk
to get him treated
a little bit better.
So it's a really
remarkable letter.
It's sort of a unique
kind of document
and a needle in the haystack.
But these things do exist if
you look hard enough for them.
But it really takes time and
it takes a lot of reading
and it takes some advice.
So I was pointed to that
letter by a historian
at Penn State University named
Amy Greenberg who's just coming
out with a book on Sarah Polk,
James Polk's wife, and her state
and her relationship
to her slaves.
And she said, "Adam, you've got
to take a look at this letter."
So I owe a lot to her.
Even professional historians
need guidance in the archives.
But that's the kind
of thing you can find.
>> Jesse Holland: Right, and I
mean this is one of the things
that I keep having to bat down
when I talk about slavery.
A lot of people seem to think
that there's nothing new
that can be told about
America's slavery period.
And I keep having
to remind people
that we keep finding
new things every day.
When things get digitized,
when someone in another state
or even another country does
a new piece of research,
it points us in a
different direction.
I wrote Black Men
Built the Capital --
I started working
on it back in 2005
and it was published in 2007.
And Adam and I were actually
talking about this earlier.
Through my entire
work on that book --
I actually started
writing it in 2005,
but I had been researching
it for two
or three years before that.
The one thing I never could
find was an actual photograph
of a slave building the capital.
Because that's what I wanted
for the picture of the cover,
you know, Black Men
Built the Capital.
You want a picture of a
slave building the capital.
And I knew there had
to be one somewhere.
And so for about five years
I searched and searched
and searched, National Archives,
Capital Historical Society,
Library of Congress.
So about four years ago, I'm
doing research on something else
and I'm over in the photograph
room across the street,
just flipping through
photos, hard copy of photos.
Just flipping through these.
And I run across a photo that I
had never seen before of someone
who looks like an African
American slave getting ready
to hoist one of those columns
on the front of the capital.
Now the picture has no
identification on it,
no time period, nothing.
But it's the closest that
I have been able to come
to finding someone who looks
like -- it looks time-specific.
The dome is not yet
built on the capital.
It looks like the exact
thing that I was looking for,
and I have a copy of it now.
I paid for a copy of it.
It probably was there the first
time I was looking for it.
But the physical
ability to be able to go
through each photograph
in that time period
in the photograph division,
I just did not have the time
to spend to go through
every single photograph.
Now once again, now that
things are being digitized,
it's a lot easier.
But we're finding new
things all the time.
I tell people -- I mean,
when I talk about this issue,
I tell people all the
time, there is a document
in someone's attic right now
that is incredibly important
to the history of this country
and that person doesn't know it.
I have a lot of people
who come and ask me
about writing their
family's histories.
And I say, "The first thing you
need to do, you need to go look
through every photograph
your mother, your father,
your grandparents have.
You need to take photographs
of those photographs
with your iPhones."
Because a lot of our history
is stuck in these attics,
stuck in these basements,
stuck in these boxes
in people's houses and
we don't know about it.
So a lot of times, every day
we are finding out new things
about slavery, new things
about America's history.
New things about
periods in America.
Once again, I'm a journalist
with the Associated Press and so
over the last few weeks
I've had the occasion
to study up on blackface.
Not something that I would
ever figure I would study.
>> Adam Rothman: Jesse,
why are you doing that?
[ Laughter ]
Satiric.
>> Jesse Holland: And I
was able to find things
that I didn't know
about blackface.
For example, blackface is where
we get the name Jim Crow from.
But I didn't know that
Jim Crow actually started
as an African trickster,
and was then converted.
And then Thomas Rice turns
it into a minstrel show,
cultural appropriation.
And then African Americans
take the name back and turn it
into a description of
discriminatory laws
in the south, Jim Crow laws.
So maybe there were
historians out there that knew
that whole path, but I didn't.
So we are able to discover
new things about ourselves
as a people every day.
I mean, once again, if
you have unlimited money,
this would be the place I would
be sitting every day just going
through records.
Because you learn so much.
You learn about things that you
didn't know you didn't know.
So this is why the
library of Congress
and the manuscripts
here are so fascinating.
Right now I'm reading
through some Library
of Congress manuscripts still
about the whole Jim Crow era.
Because there are
parts of that story
that haven't been told yet.
And just sitting as both
an author and a journalist,
being able to point back
to an original source
that says this is what happened
-- I mean, honestly in the world
that we live in now where we
doubt everything and everybody,
you have to have your
original sources to say,
this is how I know this.
And that's what the
manuscript division,
the photograph division, that's
what this place is so great
about being able to
give you as an author:
that stamp of approval
to be able to say,
"You don't have to believe me.
Here's the original document.
Go read it for yourself."
I'm going to give you the link
to the Library of Congress site.
Go read this and see
if you don't come
to the same conclusion.
And so once again, this is
why this place is so vital,
especially to me as both
an author and a journalist.
That I'm able to point to a
photograph that you can download
and see that of course
this is what this was.
Because here's the
photograph that shows it.
Of course there were colored
only signs in this place,
because here's a
photograph from Memphis,
Tennessee on Beale Street
that I just looked at.
Download yourself, see
if you don't believe me.
So a lot of the stuff that
I do both as a journalist
and as an author revolve around
the material that's here.
>> Adam Rothman: Jesse,
the things that you're
saying are spinning off
so many ideas in my own mind.
And just something about
discovering things that are new.
I think there's two things here.
One is if you spend
time in the archives,
you will discover
things that are new.
Stories that have not been told.
Although of course
our discoveries
as researchers depends
a lot on the work
that archivists have already
done to catalog these materials.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> Adam Rothman: And it's very
important to keep in mind.
We do discover -- keeping that
in mind, we do discover things
that allow us to tell some
new stories about the history
of slavery and emancipation.
And we discover new
documents that tell us things
that we didn't already
know about people
who might be familiar.
So one example of this, there
was a man named Robert Pin
who was actually a free man
of color who was born in Oho,
born free in Ohio in
the early 19th century.
He eventually joins
the Union Army
and fights in the Civil War.
He fights in one of the
US colored troop regimens,
because he is of
African descent.
And he had tried to enlist
at the beginning of the war
but was rejected because black
people were originally not
allowed to fight.
But as the war goes on,
Lincoln authorizes the use
of black soldiers and Pin gets
his opportunity to enlist.
He fights bravely.
He fights in a battle called
the Battle of Chaffin's Farm
in which he gets injured and
loses the use of his right arm.
And for his bravery
in that battle,
Pin wins the medal of honor.
He's one of a handful of
African American soldiers
who wins the medal of
honor during the Civil War.
And so for that he's actually
not an unknown figure.
He's not a well-known figure,
but he's not an unknown figure.
And here I think there's
something important,
which is that there's knowledge
that a small group of scholars
and historians know that
the public doesn't know.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> Adam Rothman: So one of
the things that we have to do
as historians, and part of what
was motivating my project here
at the library last semester,
was to try to find some new ways
to tell these stories that would
reach people beyond my students
and colleagues at Georgetown.
So that's the idea
of the podcast.
But here's the thing about Pin.
In the fall of 1865,
he writes an essay
for a left-handed penmanship
competition sponsored
by a newspaper editor who is
trying to highlight the cause
of disabled veterans, a man
named William Olan Bourne.
There are hundreds of
entries, hundreds of essays
that were submitted
to this contest.
And all of those essays are now
here at the Library of Congress
in the William Bourne collection
which has been digitized
so you can find them,
including Pin's essay.
Where he writes about his
life and his military service
and the sacrifice that
he made for his country.
So here is somebody that at
least some people already
know about.
But I'm pretty sure nobody
knew about this essay
that he had written for
the left-handed penmanship
competition which I think opens
up a whole set of questions
about African American military
service and how veterans,
black veterans and especially
disabled black veterans,
navigated the landscape
of post-Civil War society.
So we've got a podcast episode
called Robert Pin's Left Hand
about his essay.
But we have more than that.
Jesse mentioned photographs.
There's a photograph
of Robert Pin.
It's a fairly well-known
photograph.
It was actually collected,
compiled by W. E. B. DuBois,
none other than DuBois for an
exhibit that he was putting
on in Paris celebrating
African American achievements.
So we have his essay,
we have his photograph
in which he's proudly
displaying the medals
that he won in the civil war.
And the combination of
the written document
and the photograph gives us I
think a more three-dimensional
portrait of him than we
might otherwise have had
if say all we had was
his pension record.
So you spend enough time in
archives, these are the stories
that you can cobble
together with a collection
of different documents.
>> Jesse Holland:
And I want to bounce
of something he just said.
I found when I first moved here
-- I've been in DC since 2000.
And once again, I
started working full-time
on Black Men Built
the Capital in 2005.
And as I'm going through
all of this material
about Washington DC --
because of course I start
at the National Mall, but I
spread our around Washington DC.
And one of my favorite stories
has to do with something
in Capital Hill, Lincoln Park.
So the statue of Lincoln
Park, the statue in the center
of Lincoln Park is of
course of Abraham Lincoln.
And it was one of the
first statues in America
that was funded by
African Americans.
It was funded and put there by
an African American society.
It's a statue of Lincoln
and at Lincoln's feet is
an African American slave
being released.
So the model for the African
American slave is also a
real person.
And I was able to track him
down, track some records
from the statue being put there
through the Library of Congress.
But then I started calling
historians about this.
And every historian, every
DC historian I talked to,
I was amazed to find this out.
Because at that point in
my research, I was looking
for representations of
real African Americans
in the District of Columbia.
And at that time
there were only two.
One was the slave
in Lincoln Park
and the other one was the
bust of Martin Luther King Jr.
in the rotunda in the capital.
At that point there were
only two in all of DC.
Now there's a third, there's
a statue of Carter G. Woodson
over off of Rhode Island Avenue.
And there have been more put
up around DC since that time.
But at that point
there were only two.
And every DC historian I talked
to about this statue said,
"Yeah, of course we
knew it was there.
Of course we knew
who this guy was."
But I was like, "Nobody
else does.
Who did you tell?
How can anybody else
find out about this?"
And so that was one of the
things that inspired me to move
out of journalism and
start writing books,
because there's a
lot of information,
a lot of this history
that only historians know.
And it doesn't do the
general population any good
for only a few people
to know this,
and for the general
population to have no way
to access the information.
So that was one of the
reasons why I started working
on Black Men Built the Capital.
Because I was hearing all
of these great stories
from historians in DC.
But if you didn't talk to
that one particular historian,
you wouldn't find
out the information.
There was so much about
the city that's fascinating
but only a few people know.
Once again, this is
before the digitization
of all the material here
at the Library of Congress
where you had to actually
be here to find out.
Like for example, one of the
few African American women
to have her own statue
in Washington DC is also
in Lincoln Park, and
that's Mary McCleod Bethune.
Lincoln sits in the middle
and Mary McCleod Bethune sits
in the east end of the park.
Well, one of the fascinating
stories I was able to track
down through one of
the newspapers here was
when the statue of Lincoln was
originally placed in that park,
it faced west because of course
they want President Lincoln
to be looking at the US capital.
So then the statue of Mary
McCleod Bethune is added
to Lincoln Park, but it's
added to the east end.
So Mary McCleod Bethune is
now looking at Lincoln's back.
So there were some people who
thought that would be wrong,
that Mary McCleod Bethune
was such an impressive woman
that Lincoln would never
turn his back on her.
So the statue of Lincoln
was picked up and turned.
So now Lincoln's back is to
the capital and he's looking
at Mary McCleod Bethune's face.
That was the honor they did
for Mary McCleod
Bethune in Lincoln Park.
Now those type of stories I
think are worth remembering.
But if you weren't in DC and
read the newspaper that day
or if you weren't
here and didn't know
that story, it would be lost.
And that's one of the reasons
why we do the things we do,
that we spend these
hours in archives looking
for these stories, looking
for these fascinating
pieces of America.
Because those are stories
that everyone should know,
not just a selected few.
That's knowledge that
should be shared nationwide
and internationally and not just
condemned to a file somewhere
where maybe someone in
the future will read it.
No, we have to share
this kind of information.
>> Adam Rothman: Well, just
let me ask you a question,
and this might be painful for
me and my historian colleagues.
But why do you think
that happens?
Why do you think that there's
a gap between the world
of scholarship, what
scholars know
and public understanding
of history?
Where is that gap?
Why does that gap exist
and how do we bridge it?
>> Jesse Holland:
Well, I mean I have
to say I now straddle
those two worlds,
so I have to be fair
to both sides.
It takes effort to
become a specialist
in any one area of history.
And for a lot of us, our goal
is to find out this information
because it's so hard
to find it out.
It's a whole different thing
to be able to publicize
that information, you know?
All historians aren't authors.
All authors aren't historians.
These are two specialized skills
and they don't always
combine into one person.
So a lot of times when
I talk to historians
for my journalism
job, what we find,
what I find personally having
done this for 30 years,
what I find personally is
that historians and experts
in any category speak to people
as if you already know
everything they do.
And it's very hard for them
to pull their minds back
to the Joe mechanic level
after having spent 30 years
researching quantum mechanics.
It's hard to explain
the interesting thing
about your field to
someone who knows nothing
about quantum mechanics.
So a lot of times it's
difficult for historians
and experts frankly on
any topic to be able
to not only explain what they're
doing and the importance of it,
but to be able to convey
that explanation in words
that everyone else
will understand
and understand its importance.
So I've been lucky enough
to have been a journalist
for 30 years.
My whole job is explaining
things to people.
That's what I do.
Especially for the
time that I worked
over at the Supreme Court,
you learn to take these
difficult topics and be able
to break it down to
their most simplest forms
where everyone could understand.
And there's a secret
phrase I use
when I'm talking to an expert.
I say, "Talk to me like
I'm a six-year-old."
And then if they can
talk to me like --
a lot of newspapers will tell
you to tell people to talk
to you as if they're
sitting at a bar,
you're telling this
story at a bar.
Well no, I'm like, "Talk to
me like I'm a six-year-old.
Explain it to me in the
simplest fashion you can."
Once I understand it, I can
then make it more complicated
for my reader.
But a lot of historians have
spent their entire lives --
I was actually talking
to someone today
about voter suppression
in the south,
and he told me he'd been
studying it for 45 years.
Now it's hard for someone like
that to come in to someone
who knows nothing
about the subject.
And you say, "Well, explain
to me voter suppression
in the south."
He cleared his throat and
said, "Do you have an hour?"
Well, of course, no
I don't have an hour.
But I think that's
the barrier there.
When you get to a point
where you're such an expert
on the subject that it's
hard for you to understand
that there's probably
nobody else
on the planet that's an
expert the way you are,
so you have to figure out a way
to explain it that's simplistic.
But all of our topics
are never simplistic.
So it's hard to break
it back down to a level
where other people can
not only understand it,
but you are satisfied in the
way that you're explaining it,
if that makes any sense.
>> Adam Rothman: Yeah,
it makes a lot of sense.
And I think that professional
historians and other kinds
of scholars are really invested
in making arguments
about history.
And that can be a
little bit dry sometimes
if it's not clear
what the stakes are.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> Adam Rothman: But I think
what really captures public
imagination is historical
storytelling.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> Adam Rothman: If you
can find a good story --
I mean, the stories you're
telling are wonderful stories.
I think storytelling is one
way that we can really bridge
that gap between scholarship
and popular understandings
of history.
And that's something we've been
trying to do in these podcasts,
tell stories about real people
using the manuscript collections
to pain the portraits
of these lives.
I was struck by one thing you
said, you were really interested
in looking for stories about
African American women.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> Adam Rothman: And that
was part of the motivation
of looking at the
Bethune statue.
And that was an interesting
challenge
for this manuscript project,
because we're actually able
to find a number of sources that
were written by enslaved men
and free men of color.
But at least for
the 19th century --
now I'm not talking
about the 20th century
where there is a much
broader range of material.
For the 19th century it
was very difficult to find
in the manuscript collections
material written by black women.
So that was a real challenge.
But I did come across
a really intriguing set
of manuscript materials in a
collection here known as --
it's called the Black
History collection,
and it's really a hodgepodge
of a lot of different kinds
of materials connected to
slavery and emancipation
in the 19th century and beyond.
And this collection
has been processed.
There's a finding aid online
but it's not digitized.
So you can't just flip
through it online.
You actually have to go to
the reading room and look
through this material.
So there was one
folder and the title
of the folder was Adeline
Henson, a woman's name.
And this is what was in
this folder: a bill of sale,
a letter and two photographs.
That was all that
was in this folder.
The bill of sale was a bill
of sale from December 1861
in which a 41-year-old woman
named Adeline Henson was sold
to a Mary Price.
That was the bill of sale.
This was in Baltimore
in December of 1861.
Then there was a letter.
The letter was from Mary Price's
daughter donating this bill
of sale to the Library of
Congress and explaining
who Adeline Henson was.
Adeline Henson was an enslaved
woman who was about to be sold
from Baltimore to Georgia just
on the eve of the Civil War.
But her owner basically at
Adeline's pleading sold her
to the Price family where she
had been working as a servant.
She remained with the Price
family for the next 50 years.
And according to the letter
from Ida Grimnald, the daughter
of Mary Price, she
was a faithful
and devoted servant
to the family.
That was how the
letter described her.
And the family thought
so much of this woman
that they wanted her story
preserved in the Library
of Congress, preserved
in the record.
There are also two photographs
along with this material.
One was a photograph of
Adeline Henson around 1860
as a 40-year-old woman.
This is the photograph,
if you go to the African
American Passages Podcast web
page, that's the photograph
on the front of the web page.
And to me it's a
stunning photograph.
It's a woman with a
kind of downcast look --
everybody who looks at this
photograph finds it filled
with sadness.
It's a very moving photograph,
but then there's another
photograph from about 1910
or 1911 in which Adeline
Henson is now an elderly woman.
She's in her 90's, sitting
on the stoop of a house
in Washington DC where
the family had moved.
So I just thought
this was captivating.
And so we did a podcast
about her life just using
these manuscript materials
and other information we
can find out about her
through the census
and things like that.
So it was a real challenge to
try to piece her life together.
But here is somebody who's
completely lost to history
but because there is this
documentary record sitting
in the Library of Congress, we
can now reconstruct her life.
And I found that to be a
very moving experience.
>> Jesse Holland: Well,
let me just add on to
that about being able to find
things here that just take you
down roads that you never
would have expected.
While working on Black Men Built
the Capital, once again I'm
over there in the photograph
room flipping through all
of these old photographs.
And I find a map.
And it's a map of a village
in Arlington, Virginia.
And I start looking at this map
and behind the map
there's a photograph.
And it's a photograph
of African Americans
in period dress holding
books in their hands,
all lined up in a row.
And I remember taking
this photograph up to one
of the researchers
and saying, "Hey,
is there anything you all can
tell me about this photograph?"
Because it's a great photograph.
And the researcher
points me to a couple
of other sources
that I can look at.
And I find that this photograph
is a photograph of the people
who lived in Freedman's Village.
Now a lot of people don't know
what Freedman's Village is.
I didn't know what Freedman's
Village was at this point.
But Freedman's Village
was a black town that sits
where Arlington National
Cemetery is now.
Freedman's Village
started out as a city,
as a town where the slaves
of Robert E. Lee lived.
Now at the time of the Civil
War, Robert E. Lee lived
in Arlington House right across
the river, big house on top
of Arlington National Cemetery.
So when Robert E. Lee takes
on his position as general
of the Confederacy, he
is living in Washington.
So he has to leave.
So he leaves Arlington
House and goes to Richmond.
Well, he doesn't take
his slaves with him.
So the US government crosses
the Potomac and takes his house.
Now one of the legends of
Arlington National Cemetery is
that how Arlington National
Cemetery got started is the US
government never wanted
Robert E. Lee to come back.
So how they felt they would
keep him away was they started
burying dead soldiers
in his front yard,
and that's how Arlington
National Cemetery gets going.
Well, the second thing they
did was they gave another part
of his land to his former
slaves for them to live on.
And this becomes
Freedman's Village.
And over the years
during the war,
Freedman's Village
gets bigger and bigger.
Because not only does it take on
Robert E. Lee's former slaves,
slaves who escaped from
Virginia come up to Washington
and start living in
Freedman's Village.
So it becomes not a village, it
becomes a town or a small city
that sits right across
from Washington DC.
And it apparently becomes
a national phenomenon.
Harper's Bazaar writes about it.
There are newspaper
articles about this city.
Sojourner Truth moves
into Freedman's Village.
And there's the famous
painting of Sojourner Truth
and Abraham Lincoln
inside the White House.
Well, it was from
Freedman's Village
that Sojourner Truth
crosses the Potomac
to meet with Abraham Lincoln.
And she then starts working at
Freedman's hospital which goes
on to become Howard
University Hospital.
So this entire city
sits across the Potomac
and no one knows about it.
And the only way I found out
about it is that one photograph
and that map that's
sitting still to this day
over in the photograph room.
That you can find this
material that takes you down all
of these great paths that
have these great stories.
And by the way, let me cosign
the whole story thing here,
because as Americans, we
live by the narrative.
Everything is a narrative.
We don't remember things
if people don't tell
us stories about them.
But once you hear a great
story, it's unforgettable.
One of my favorite books,
in fact one of the
books I'm teaching
from in my writing class this
year is Warmth of Other Suns,
Isabel Wilkerson's story
about the Great Migration.
And for a lot of Americans,
they would not know
about the Great Migration
if not for that story
that Isabel Wilkerson
pulls together
from these great stories,
this great research
and these people
that she interviews.
So I would say the
best way for historians
to start sharing their stories
with the world is to find
that compelling narrative,
find that compelling story.
I mean, who would have
thought that a book
about the first treasury
secretary would turn into a play
that more people now know
more about Alexander Hamilton
from that play than years of
teaching and research about him?
But Lin-Manuel Miranda found
a way to tell that story,
to create a narrative about it.
Now of course there
are some arguments
about whether his
narrative is correct or not.
But at least that we now know
more about Alexander Hamilton
than probably any other
generation in the United States
since Alexander Hamilton's time.
Because Lin-Manual
Miranda was able
to find a story to
tell about him.
>> Adam Rothman:
My eight-year-old
daughter saw a statue
of Alexander Hamilton recently.
She only knows Hamilton
from the musical.
She saw a marble statue
of Hamilton and she says,
"That can't be Hamilton
because Hamilton's black."
[ Laughter ]
So anyway.
But these stories
start in the archives.
So I think we're
going to open it
up to some questions now, right?
>> John Haskell: Before
we get into questions,
I wanted to first of all thank
Adam for his time in the library
and the Kluge Center on the
other side of those doors,
which ended in December.
But he keeps giving
back through podcasts,
blogs that you can consume
and I hope you will.
And of course this event.
And Jesse, great to have
you back at the library.
We hope to have you
many more times.
Thank you both.
[ Applause ]
So between this and a reception
with wine and other things,
we would like to see
whether there's questions.
And we have two folks with
microphones, and this lady
over here has a question.
>> Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I have a question as a family
historian, an amateur historian.
You mentioned that we are
collecting information
in our research.
But who is collecting
those stories?
Where each of us as
family historians,
we're collecting
tidbits of information --
like you mentioned the stories
in Isabel Wilkerson's
wonderful book.
But all of these stories are
being collected by thousands
of us across the country.
Where is a repository for these
so that someone can
weave the thread of this?
>> Jesse Holland:
Well, I will tell you
that there are several
organizations
that collect these stories.
You have organizations
like Story Corps.
If you don't know
who Story Corps is,
they're an absolutely
fabulous organization
that literally allows
people to tell their story.
Whatever the story is,
Story Corps is a great one.
I don't know if they
still do it now --
I know they did it
when they first opened,
but the Smithsonian
Museum, National Museum
of African American
History and Culture.
There was a booth there
when they first opened
where you could come
in and tell your story.
And I've actually written
stories from the stories
that they collected
just through that booth.
And always -- I mean,
talk to your local museum,
talk to your local library.
There are always people who are
out there collecting
these stories.
Every story won't make it
into the Library of Congress.
Every story won't make
it into the Smithsonian.
But I promise you there
are always people out there
who are willing to help
you organize, collect
and save this vital information.
And as my last piece of
advice, there's always you.
There's never anything
stopping anyone
from writing their family story.
Now does this mean that
you're going to be published
and be in Oprah's Book Club?
Maybe, maybe not.
But I guarantee you, your
descendants will remember you
for writing your
family's history.
My mom has been working on
my family's history book
for the last 30 years
in fits and starts.
I know relatives I wouldn't
have known any other way
if my mom had not started
writing the book she has
tentatively titled, The
Backwoods of Bentham County,
because that's where she grew
up, Bentham County, Mississippi.
It does not take a historian
to save this material.
It only takes someone who cares.
So if this material
is important,
all it takes is you deciding
to get a photo album,
an archive-safe photo album,
starting collecting
this material
and putting these
photographs in.
Taking a digital tape recorder,
sitting down at your
family reunion saying,
"Tell me your story."
Now it was much harder -- I
will tell you it was much harder
in the past for this
type of work to be done
with cassette tapes and
their deterioration.
I really wish I had
sat my grandmother
and my grandfather down, even
with those old materials,
and had them tell their life
stories before they passed.
Because now that they're gone,
I only have secondhand stories
of what it was like
in 1930's Mississippi
as an African American.
I know what they
told their children,
but as I become a parent,
I've begun to understand how
the stories get sanitized
as you start telling
them to your children.
But when you tell
them to other adults,
the story becomes
a bit different.
So I would say to
anyone with iPhones,
with digital tape recorders,
with 1-terabyte storage drives,
there's no reason
for this information
to ever be lost from
this point on.
All it takes is one person to
decide that it's worth saving.
>> John Haskell: If you wonder
where he gets all
this teaching from,
both of your parents are
teachers, if I recall, right?
>> Jesse Holland: Both
of my parents were
public school teachers
in Mississippi and Tennessee.
>> John Haskell: Exactly.
Do we have any others?
Right here.
>> Awesome.
Thank you so much for your
colorful stories today.
I think it's really
important to put a name
and a story behind someone
because it humanizes them.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> So I wanted to kind of hit
upon your point of this call
to action from researchers.
The conversations that we're
having today are pretty
privileged to be able
to be in this room
and understand what's going
on, especially about a lot
of the people that
we're talking about --
they're the ones
being represented.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> So can you speak about
like the call to action
that researchers do have to get
this a little more mainstream
for people who may not have the
luxury to have a photo album
or to come to talks like this?
How do they kind of get this
information to know, "Hey,
this wasn't just an
enslaved individual,
but this was John whoever
and this was their story"?
>> Jesse Holland:
Well, one of the things
that I have been
grateful of just
in the past 20 years is
there has been an explosion
of interest in African
American history.
Where we've seen researchers
who actually want to find
out this information, want
to write articles about it,
want to write books about it,
who want to do the
research about it.
Back when I started
back in 2000 --
and feel free to correct
me if I'm wrong on this.
Back when I started
in this area in 2000,
I really didn't find much
enthusiasm for interest
in the subject of
African American slavery
in the United States.
When I started writing
Black Men Built the Capital,
I did not find many people
who wanted to A, help,
B, endorse, or C, read.
But literally since 2000,
I have seen such a great
desire for this information.
And with the technological
advancements we've had
since then, even
if you're not here,
you can listen to the podcast.
With the digitization of
archives, not only here
but at the National Archives,
at the Presidential Plantations,
you're able to access
information in a way
that you were not
able to in the past.
And frankly, just over
maybe the last decade,
maybe last 15 years, people have
started to monetize this desire
for African American history.
If you go down south, I
grew up in Holly Springs,
Mississippi which may be about
40 miles south of Memphis.
Every year that I
lived in Holly Springs,
here was the Hollis Springs
pilgrimage, which was a tour
of the old southern mansions
where people would dress
up in period costumes,
hoopskirts, et cetera,
et cetera.
I will tell you to this
day, I've never been
to the Holly Springs pilgrimage
because I wasn't interested.
But just in the last five years
or so, there's been an addition
to the Holly Springs pilgrimage
called How the Other Half Lived,
that actually talks about
the people who made the lives
in the southern mansions
actually possible.
That I'm interested in.
Same thing in Colonial
Williamsburg.
My wife took me to
Williamsburg --
I married a woman
from Washington DC.
And my wife took me to
Colonial Williamsburg
for a birthday trip.
And we spent a day there
and it was really
fascinating colonial America,
really fascinating.
But once again, there was one
tour that was also called,
How the Other Half Lived.
And to this day, that's
the part that I remember.
The tour that talked about how
the Africans who were enslaved
and brought over to Jamestown
and Colonial Virginia,
how they lived.
So people are now figuring out
that there are people who want
to hear those stories.
So it's becoming a
lot more accessible
than it was a decade
ago or two decades ago.
And the literature about the
period is just exploding.
You can find such great
work that's being written
by historians and amateur
historians like myself
who are looking for
those great stories.
The information is there.
You still have to have a
desire to go out and find it.
But it's a lot more available
now than it was 20 years ago,
and definitely a
lot more available
than it was when I was a child.
>> John Haskell: Do you
want to add to that?
>> Adam Rothman:
I would just add
that most people don't get their
history from history books.
It's just not where most people
absorb their sense of history.
They get it from TV and movies
like 12 Years a Slave
for instance.
They get it maybe from museums.
And I think that those of
us who are sort of steeped
in the history of slavery
and emancipation really need
to find ways to collaborate
with these other kinds
of culture makers to try
to infuse people's sort
of broader historical
consciousness with true stories.
True and compelling stories
that really shed light
on what actually happened.
So I firmly believe
that scholarship should
keep writing scholarship,
articles and books.
But we also need to
do more than that.
We have to collaborate with
the people who are really
on the front lines of
crafting a sense of history.
But those people also have to
be willing to work with us.
>> Jesse Holland: Right.
>> Adam Rothman: You know?
It would be nice if that
collaboration went both ways.
>> John Haskell: Great point.
Any other questions?
>> We have someone over here.
>> John Haskell: Yes.
[ Inaudible ]
Hold on one second.
We'll get you on a microphone.
>> Sorry, one second.
She actually --
>> Nice.
>> You can go right after here.
>> John Haskell:
Two more questions
and then we'll move
to the receptions.
>> Thank you for your talk.
I really enjoyed it.
My question comes
from the perspective
of someone who's a scholar
of Iberia and Brazil.
I wondered if -- I know you
focus very much on manuscripts.
I wondered if you take
other cultural texts
into consideration.
I know you mentioned the lack
of the storytelling availability
of the slaves and so on.
So are other cultural
texts considered,
for example religion
or music and dance?
Are those taken as
the voices of slaves?
And my second question very
quickly, I was just wondering
if you take a trans-Atlantic
approach in your research.
I know that from an
Iberian perspective,
there are cultural
texts that exist.
For example, I'm thinking
of the epic poem written
by one Latino in
the late 1500's.
So can fruitful results be
gained from perhaps looking
across the Atlantic to look for
close parallels or contrasts?
Thank you.
>> John Haskell:
That's a great question.
Adam, do you want to start?
>> Adam Rothman: Yeah,
let me say one thing
about the trans-Atlantic
context.
The first podcast in
the podcast series is
about a man named Omar Ibn Said.
Many of you may have
heard about Omar Ibn Said
because the Library of Congress
recently acquired Omar Ibn
Said's autobiography which he
wrote as an enslaved person
in 1831 in Fayetteville,
North Carolina, in Arabic.
He had been born in what is
today Senegal around 1770,
captured in a war around
1807, shipped across the ocean
to Charleston where he was sold
to a man he considered
an infidel.
He ran away, made his way to
Fayetteville, North Carolina,
was basically captured
and eventually purchased
by the Owen family
in North Carolina.
And he stayed with that family
until his death in 1863.
But that's a trans-Atlantic
story.
That's a story that spans
West Africa and North America.
And it's such a remarkable text
because he wrote it
as a slave in Arabic.
And that text has survived,
the only one of its kind
at least in the United States.
I think when we consider
the history of slavery,
precisely because for the
most part enslaved people were
prohibited from reading and
writing, it is imperative
that we look to other
kinds of sources to try
to tell the stories
of their experiences.
There are cultural artifacts
like song and dance and music.
There's archaeological evidence
of the way people lived.
There's just a whole
range of other kinds
of material besides manuscripts.
It just was just that I
happened to be working
in the manuscript collections
here at the Library of Congress.
And we're both trying to say
there is so much material
in the manuscripts collections
that it just rewards
research to no end.
>> Jesse Holland: And let
me just add in quickly,
and frankly sometimes
it's about funding.
I was literally just
having this conversation,
maybe three weeks ago.
I wrote a story -- I wrote the
first part of a bookend series
for the Associated Press.
I wrote about the
first Africans to come
into English North
America at Jamestown.
And another reporter wrote about
the last slave ship to come
into America that came
into Africatown, Alabama.
Which Zora Neale Hurston
wrote about Barracoon.
So we both found
out we were working
on these projects completely
separately from each other.
So we decided to make it into
a series, first and last.
Well, the first Africans to come
in through Jamestown were
actually from Angola.
And Angola was not --
Angola had been colonized
by Portugal already
at this point.
So there's a written
history in Angola
about who these people were
and where they came from.
But it's not digitized.
So it would require someone
to go to Angola or to call
and hire a researcher in
Angola to find this information
and bring it back over here
so we can complete the story.
We know who that first 20 and
odd were, who came to America
on the White Lion and the
Treasurer to Point Comfort
and then up to Jamestown
in colonial Virginia.
But what we don't know is
who they were in Angola.
And that requires research
which requires funding,
which requires someone
to be able to say,
"This is worth the money for
us to find out who they were."
And I will say that
there are people
who are working on
that right now.
Frankly, I know of at
least two books coming
out in the next year and a
half about those first Angolans
who were brought to America
in bondage on the White Lion
and the Treasurer, because of
the 1619 anniversary this year.
So we do understand that
the stories are not complete
when you stop at the Atlantic.
Sometimes it's just the
difficulty of being able
to complete the story by
crossing over the Atlantic
and finding the information from
the original sources in Africa.
Believe me, we do know
that the work is lacking
by not having it, but it's
just the access to the material
and the ability to get to it.
>> John Haskell:
One last question.
>> Thanks.
I'm Joretta Hechsure.
I'm the early American
specialist
in the main reading room.
I wanted to thank you both so
much for what you said today,
and just to say two
quick things.
One to all of you, don't
overlook the needle
in a haystack stuff
that can also be found
in published 19th century
sources which you would access
through the general collections,
including in the
main reading room.
But as far as a question
to our speakers today,
I'm also the wife of a middle
school history teacher.
What in the world can
historians do to get
through to the material that is
taught to kids which can just --
it's such a battle to keep
it from being dry, rushed,
defined by rubrics
which have nothing to do
with compelling narratives.
I'd love your thoughts.
>> John Haskell: Great question.
>> Adam Rothman: Well, I would
say the most important thing
that we have to do,
and it's very difficult
in this educational environment,
is we have to get
out of the textbook.
We cannot teach history to
seventh- and eighth-graders
or even to high school
students through a textbook.
I mean, textbooks have their
place and they're very useful
for historical context.
>> John Haskell: And
you're the author of one,
just for full disclosure.
>> Adam Rothman:
Yeah, except for mine.
>> Jesse Holland:
Full disclosure.
>> Adam Rothman: Mine
is full of rainbows.
But I think the most
important thing
that we can do is
introduce students
to original source material.
Have them look at this
photograph of Adeline Henson.
Have them look at a list
of the end-state people
whose owners were paid wages
to work on the capital.
Have them directly examine
those -- well, not the originals
but copies of those materials.
And have them think
about what this means.
How do I read this?
What does it say?
I think when you do that,
students will get excited
about history because it
becomes a puzzle and a mystery
and an enigma that they have to
then think their way through.
It's not something
to be memorized.
History is not something
to be memorized.
It's something to be studied.
>> Jesse Holland: I can't
say things better than that,
so I'm just going to say ditto.
[ Applause ]
>> John Haskell: We hope
you'll stay for the reception,
and you can corner these guys
if you have more questions.
>> Adam Rothman: Thank you.
[ Applause ]