A Harvard scholar takes a look at the Great Emancipator

Racial jokes? Shipping freed slaves to Africa? These aren’t the sorts of things most people generally associate with Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday is on Feb. 12. In a new book, “Lincoln on Race & Slavery,” and a new series airing Feb. 11 on PBS, “Looking for Lincoln,” Harvard professor and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. takes a fresh look at the 16th president. (For more on Lincoln, see Dorothy Rabinowitz’s television review and the book review.)

PBS

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The Wall Street Journal: There have been 14,000 books written about Lincoln, according to you, more than any other American. Isn’t that enough?

Mr. Gates: The only person who has received more attention in print is Jesus, which is astonishing. But, no one has done a book or film from my particular perspective.

Which is?

Here’s the complicated truth: Lincoln was always opposed to slavery as an institution, [but] he was deeply ambivalent about the status of black people. He gave a speech [in 1858] in Charleston, Ill., in which he said he was opposed to interracial marriage, opposed to blacks serving on juries or serving in the military and said the difference between the white and black races was permanent and fixed by nature. This is a long way from being the Great Emancipator, man. He had a penchant for the n-word [before 1860] and he proposed a constitutional amendment funding the colonization of the freed slaves.

Yet you grew to like him even more after delving into his racial attitudes, correct?

The difference between Lincoln and everybody else is that he had a capacity to grow. In the last speech of his life, Lincoln said for the first time in the American presidency: “I want to give the right to vote to [a few] black men.” He thought the Declaration of Independence included black men. Thomas Jefferson didn’t do that.

We’re in the midst of a Lincoln revival. Steven Spielberg is in the process of doing a Lincoln movie with a screenplay by Tony Kushner and Barack Obama has been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” about Lincoln’s cabinet. Why is he so enduringly popular?

There’s a Lincoln for all seasons in America. There are dozens of Lincolns. There’s Lincoln the atheist, the Northern Lincoln, the Confederate Lincoln, Lincoln the war criminal, Lincoln the savior of the union, Lincoln the humorous, Lincoln the melancholy. One guy wrote a book about Lincoln as gay, another of Lincoln the heterosexual lover. Lincoln the white supremacist; Lincoln the Great Emancipator…

In the film you criss-cross America, visiting a high-school class in downtown Chicago, the Ford Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated, and the Harlem office of President Bill Clinton. In Lincoln’s New Salem, Ill., a recreated town inhabited by Lincoln devotees, a woman threatened to eject you for hinting that Lincoln had an affair with Ann Rutledge. Were you surprised?

New Salem is all reconstructed log cabins and [its people] are dedicated to protecting the myth of Abraham Lincoln — the idea that he did no wrong. I find it charming, but as a scholar, it’s ridiculous.

Barack Obama swore the oath of office on the Lincoln Bible and references Lincoln frequently in speeches.

Barack Obama is the logical extension of Lincoln’s decision to abolish slavery in the South and his embrace of black rights at the end of his life. Also, Lincoln was the Great Reconciliator “with malice toward none”: That’s Barack Obama.

In the film you show “Abraham Obama,” a work by street artist Ron English that melds Lincoln and Obama’s faces into a single image. Do you think the comparison is appropriate?

When we filmed they gave me a poster. I’m looking forward to having Abraham Obama sign it.

—Christina S.N. Lewis

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Takes a Look at Lincoln in His New Book and PBS Series – WSJ.com.

No related posts.

Tags: african american, civil rights, Education, History, multicultural, Politics, racism, research, Social History, social justice, united states

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Arts & Culture, Books & Films, civil rights, Education, History, Politics, racism, research, Resources, Social History, social justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.