“The Learning Curve” podcast series

Cara Candal and guest co-host Derrell Bradford of the Pioneer Institute’s “The Learning Curve” podcast series, talk with David Blight, Sterling Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Blight shares what drew him as a teenager in Flint, Michigan to the study of America’s past, and to Douglass in particular. He explains the role of Walter O. Evans, to whom he dedicated the book.

Listen to the podcast: https://pioneerinstitute.org/civil-rights-education/yales-pulitzer-winning-prof-david-blight-on-frederick-douglass-slavery-emancipation/

A new battle is being waged over how we teach our country’s past. But old feuds remind us that history is continually revised, driven by new evidence and present-day imperatives.

Once again, Americans find themselves at war over their history—what it is, who owns it, how it should be interpreted and taught. In April, the Department of Education called for a renewed stress, in the classroom, on the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism” and the “consequences of slavery.” In response, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a formal letter, demanding more “patriotism” in history and calling the Democrats’ plan “divisive nonsense.” Like all great questions of national memory, the latest history war has to play out in politics, whether we like it or not. This is especially true as we limp, wounded, from the battlefields of the Trump era, when facts were nearly rendered irrelevant.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the recipients of its highest honors for excellence in the arts. David W. Blight has been awarded the Gold Medal for History. The Gold Medal is awarded to those who have achieved eminence in an entire body of work.

View a clip of the award ceremony: https://youtu.be/a8BtzybfGyE

Biographies are a critical component of our collective historical record; one consequence of allowing certain lives to be neglected is an incomplete historical record. At a critical moment for biographers to engage in a broad conversation about why certain lives have been overlooked and what can be done to remedy this, BIO has invited two world-class, Pulitzer Prize-winning historians and biographers to illuminate the subject, David W. Blight (Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom) and Annette Gordon-Reed (The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family).

View video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVWJMbj7Bjk

What an old poem says about the search for justice following the Capitol riot

Marches and mobs in Washington, D.C., have been much on the minds of Americans of late. So, too, for James Weldon Johnson in 1930, when the longtime secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People crafted the poem “St. Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day.” First published that year in a private printing of only 200 copies and then in 1935 to a larger audience, Johnson’s remarkable six-page creation warrants our reading now as the FBI pursues hundreds of insurrectionists from the Capitol riot on January 6.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) loves the great African American leader Frederick Douglass. He has a portrait of the former slave in his office at the U.S. Capitol. Does that make you feel any better?

Just now many Americans are weary of, indeed fed up with, Republicans’ venality, hypocrisy and lies. But if we were hoping for at least a weekend off after the second impeachment trial ground to its inevitable end, it was not to be.

For years, commentators have talked about the culture wars, but increasingly, scholars and others are beginning to refer to a “truth divide,” suggesting that beliefs held by Americans are now so different that we are essentially living in two separate realities. Reflecting on the attacks on the Capitol, the presidential inauguration, and other recent events, David Blight (Yale University), one of the country’s leading Civil War historians, discusses what it means to live in and think about prospects for unity in a divided nation.

View video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTQpK1hTd6g&feature=youtu.be

Lately, Americans seem obsessed with Civil War references—and there’s a good reason why, says David Blight.

The idea of a new Civil War has been coursing through the national conversation lately, as Americans try to make sense of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, or the polls showing a majority of Republicans still don’t recognize Joe Biden’s election. Fox News segments have warned that Democrats want to force a “new version of Reconstruction” on an unsuspecting public.

If Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass could visit Joe Biden today, and advise him on his inaugural address, what would they say?

View video: https://medium.com/@schuldermichael/the-wavemaker-conversations-inaugural-edition-c957fe37a717

The Confederacy built a lasting myth of victory out of defeat. Trump and his followers may, too.

One hundred and fifty years after the emergence of the Confederate Lost Cause ideology, a new Lost Cause invaded the U.S. Capitol with the incitement of the president of the United States. Waving American, Confederate, Gadsden and, especially, Trump flags, Donald Trump’s loyalists desecrated the greatest symbolic edifice of America.

Trumpism has already become a lethal Lost Cause. It does not quite have martyrs and a cult of the fallen in which to root its hopes and dreams. But it does have a self-destructive cult leader about to leave power in a defeat that has been transformed into a narrative of betrayal, resistance and a promise of political revitalization.

One of the darkest days in American history played out in a barely two-square-mile area, but it rippled across the globe. Authoritarian leaders were gleeful about the chaos in the world’s most powerful democracy. As armed insurrectionists, white supremacists, and rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, the Foreign Minister of Venezuela—a failing state with rival claims to the Presidency, and shortages of power, food, and medicine—tweeted a warning about political polarization in the United States. With more than a whiff of Schadenfreude, Jorge Arreaza wished Americans well in finding “a new path towards stability and social justice.”

New-York Historical Society Public Programs On-Demand

Since the nation’s founding, Americans’ aspirations towards a more perfect union have been punctuated by an ongoing progression of rebirth and renewal. From the Civil War to the civil rights movement and beyond, the United States has been forced to reckon with its imperfect fulfillment of its democratic ideals. In the wake of the 2020 election and the moral and philosophical fragmentations that it has reaffirmed, historian David W. Blight, in conversation with Lewis H. Lapham, illuminates the evolution to our contemporary experience and the path forward.

Listen to the conversation: https://programs.nyhistory.org/video/info/a-conversation-with-david-blight-the-spirit-of-democracy

David Blight on the History of Divisive Presidential Elections

Yale University American History professor David Blight talked about the history of divisive presidential elections in the U.S. and parallels between the 2020 election and the election of 1860 which led to the Civil War.

View Video: https://www.c-span.org/video/?507322-5/washington-journal-david-blight-discusses-history-divisive-presidential-elections

MAGA, the New Confederate Lost Cause

White supremacist myths turn defeated leaders into heroic victors. Will Donald Trump now get the same transfiguration as Robert E. Lee? If history is our guide — as it often is on this show — then there's reason to worry about the answer to that question. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dr. David Blight (Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and the author of "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom") joins Kai to tell the story of the Confederacy's Lost Cause mythology — how it was created, why it still matters today, and how similar it may feel to the new Lost Cause of Donald Trump.

Listen to the podcast: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/527667974/united-states-of-anxiety

Frederick Douglass dreamed of a country where all people could vote and he did everything in his power to make that dream a reality. In the face of slavery, the Civil War and the violence of Jim Crow, he fought his entire life for what he believed was a sacred, natural right that should be available to all people - voting. NPR Throughline podcast episode featuring David Bight and Carol Anderson.

Listen to the podcast: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/02/919532810/the-most-sacred-right

Democracy works best when politics don’t mirror the country’s deepest social divisions, and all sides can accept defeat and a transition of government. As Trump flags replace Confederate flags on truck caravans and at Republican rallies, we are about to experience a presidential contest, perhaps the first since 1860, when it is possible that millions on each side will not find defeat acceptable.

In his convention speech, the former president sought to renew faith in the democratic project.

On Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020, standing in front of an exhibition about the Constitution in Philadelphia, Barack Obama fully became an American Jeremiah.

Unlike that Hebrew prophet, Mr. Obama did not shatter the earth, nor predict the destruction of all our temples, nor see our Jerusalem quite yet in its deserved ruin. He did not tell us that collectively our “clothing is stained with the blood of the innocent and the poor,” as Jeremiah did. But he came close, even as he delivered a moving reassertion of American “ideals” and “creeds.”

David Blight speaks with Peter Almond, Gloucester Writers Center Writer-in-Residence, about emancipation and reconstruction and the practice of history in a time of upheaval over race and change in the United States.

View Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILoqxVX4Z6U&feature=youtu.be

“There’s a Chance to Tell a New American Story. Biden Should Seize It.”

Who should we be building monuments to in America? Few figures have pushed for a truly fair and equal society in this country like Frederick Douglass. A man who saw the full promise of American democracy even years before the start of the Civil War. This week Chris sits down with professor and historian David Blight to talk about his Pulitzer winning book Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. The two discuss the life of the freed slave, orator, and writer whose words would go on to push America toward the multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-ethnic democracy that we still are striving for today.

Listen to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/id1382983397?i=1000485596124

On July 9, former Vice President Joseph Biden announced a new slogan for his campaign: “Build Back Better.” In economic terms the tag line makes sense even if it lacks moral inspiration. It complements the call others have made for a “Building Back Freer” Covid-19 recovery process that both incorporates our current racial reassessment in the United States and responds to an escalating crisis of labor exploitation and modern slavery across the globe.