 At my mother's behest for piano lessons with Mrs. Toll, who had been a professional classical pianist, what was my mother thinking was going to happen with that? In other words, Texas is where my mother's balanced dreams for me took flight. It's also where I learned to think that people could and should try whatever way they can to make life better for others alive today and for those to come. That this feeling, this thought came to me in a place that was at once so very difficult, so full of good things, and so full of potential shaped my thinking and actions in important ways. About the difficulties of Texas, love does not require taking an uncritical stance toward the objects of one's affections. In truth, it often requires the opposite. We can't be a real service to the hopes we have for places and people, ourselves included, without a clear-eyed assessment of their and our strengths and weaknesses. That often demands a willingness to be critical, sometimes deeply so. How that is done matters, of course. Striking the right balance can be exceedingly hard. I hope I've achieved the proper equilibrium. And so, I wanted to end on that note to reassure people. The Texans and family members and people that I knew would be reading this, that this is not a hatefest, by mentioning all of the problems that exist in Texas, along with some of the good things. They're the fun things, the crazy things. I love the craziness of the place in lots of ways. The outsized nature of it. But to talk really about a larger question, about not just Texas, but about the United States. We're in a very difficult time at this moment. And how we feel about the place, what we want to sacrifice, how we want to continue to hope for it, and what steps we're willing to take to make sure that the experiment goes better, goes on, goes forward in a better way, will come out of a sense of responsibility towards it, even as it breaks our hearts in lots of ways. And that's the Texas story, the lot of ways that's the American story. So, that's what I wanted to get off of my chest and write this book. And I will come back to Texas at some point in a different kind of way. Probably not personal, I would say, but in a way that tries to show it as a place that's really, it's always quintessentially American. It has some points I make in the book is that it starts out as a diverse place. It's not, it didn't have to become diverse. It starts out with indigenous people, people of African descent, the 1500s of the Spanish. You know, it's not necessary to start this story with the English. The Spanish were there before, and that's a part of the story as well. And we need to have a much more encompassing, much more broadly based look at the United States to understand who we come from, all the people we come from, Europeans, Africans, Indigenous people all together. So, with that I'd like to take any questions you might have. No questions? You used the term cowboys, and I just read that the term evolved. And I wonder whether it's true. Most of the ranch hands were black initially in the West and referred to as boy. And that was where the term cowboy came from. Is that true? I don't know that that's, it's possible certainly, but even with the Spanish or carers, there were equivalent of cowboys before then. And a good number of the cowboys were black. That's right, and I see it in the book, even though cowboys seen now as synonyms with white men, lots of the cowboys were in fact black, and certainly Latino as well. So, I don't know about that part of it. You did do a lot of traveling before you came to Dartmouth. But I wonder, what was it about growing up in Texas that prepared you for being a young black woman in New England in Paddivert, New Hampshire? Well, I don't know that it prepared me. Well, it didn't prepare you. Well, it didn't prepare me. Well, it was, I wanted to do something completely different. I wanted to go away. The idea of college away in New England, this sort of romanticized version of what all of that meant, I didn't want to go to a big school. We were talking yesterday about Stanford was the second choice for me, and I could have gone, I could have met my husband there because that's where he went on the grant. But the idea of being away in a small New England town appealed to me. And being away from school, being away from it all. I didn't grow up in a big town. I don't know why I thought, why I wanted to go to another. I didn't think I was prepared for a city yet. And so I didn't, you know, apply to Harvard. I didn't apply to Columbia or any of those places. I just wanted to be away in New England at school. It just, it's, there's the romance on it. You know, when you're 17, who knows why you come up with these kinds of things. And my father was enthusiastic about it for one reason or another. I heard from a lot of schools. I did well on my PSAT and the SATs. And so everybody was writing. And so he was reading. I didn't realize this, but he was paying attention to all of these things. And it was something about their approach to me as a student that really attracted him. I think that influenced me as well. I didn't prepare. I was telling yesterday, I wasn't prepared for the days that ended at 3.30 or 4. I didn't think, I mean, I just, I knew it was in the North, but I didn't, I just never thought about what that meant. And the sun that was sort of always over there was never over your head. This is strange. So there were, there were things, I wasn't prepared for that. But the small town nature of it, because I've grown up in a small town, small towns are pretty much, pretty much the same. The people, you know, you know how far you can go and how far you can't go. And so that was really familiar to me. The urban setting would have been much more difficult, I think, at that stage. I just wanted to thank you for so much work. When I was getting my master's in history, my professor used your first book, the Thomas Jefferson Sally Hemming Story in American Controversy. And it really changed the way that I looked at how stories are told. And the fact that so many New England historians were not willing to see that Thomas Jefferson could have had a child with Sally Hemming's, in fact, contorted themselves in all kinds of positions to not make that so. And you have changed, you've changed the field. I just, I had to tell you that, and your biography of Andrew Johnson is amazing. And I just, for those of you who don't study history, this woman has changed the field. And I just, I need you to know that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, similarly, in the early 2000s, I had a professor sign your book on Jefferson Hemming's. And I was a young man, I was less culturally aware at the time. With everything going on in the resistance, you see the things like the 1619 project. Did you experience a lot of criticisms for, you know, what many people I assume would have seen as like a, you know, a challenge to traditional notions of like American myths when you first put that out? Well, I mean, I had some resistance, not as much as I thought there was going to be. I thought that it would be much more virulent. A woman named Fawn Brody wrote a book about Thomas Jefferson's, Helen Hemming's, or the autobiography of Jefferson, and sort of incorporated Hemming's into the story in 1974. She got a really, really virulent, tough response. I mean, there were people who were hostile. There are still some people who are hostile. But for the most part, I think that historical, wouldn't you say it's a historical profession that, you know, come to a point where they didn't think it was real, but it was not, they're not, you know, with pitchforks. I mean, being attacking, you know, attacking people in certain ways. It's just that it was taken as a story that had been told that wasn't likely true, and it wasn't that important. I think that's really what it was, is that people didn't see that it's very difficult to add a woman and seven children, forward to live to adulthood, to a person's biography, and not change what's going on in that place. You know, you're reading about Ellen and all of the mid-popular forests going along, and you find out, if you look at the letters, that Madison and Eston and Beverly are along with them. So here's your grandfather with you, when you're telling these nice stories about them. He also has his three illegitimate enslaved children along with you. That's a different picture. To think that it's not, people thought it wasn't important, that it was just sort of a sex scandal, because it involved, you know, an African-American person, and so it can't be, this is just a sex thing, and this is period for us to talk about it without getting at the point that, what it says about the institution of slavery, it's not just, you know, making people work for no money or whipping people, it's blended families. It's people, Jefferson's wife has six enslaved half-siblings, and she brings them with her to Monticello, and you just think, what was that like? I mean, I can't, the only people, novelists are the only people who can tell that story, or the playwrights can tell that story, but to know that it's there, even describing them, when they talk about Jefferson going to France and saying, well, he went with his servant James, or just a servant, sometimes you can mention the name, but James, if you describe him as Martha's half-brother, and then it explains a lot of his behavior towards them, towards James and Robert, sometimes he doesn't know where they are, they're sort of wandering off and, you know, hiring their own time and keeping their own money. What's going on here? Why are they different than these other people? You see that familial connection, you understand why that's a possible answer to this story, as to why these people are so different, so a long answer to this to say, it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I think it's because people had sort of moved to the point that it was not just some vigorous insult, it's just that it's an irrelevancy, and we don't think it happened, but it's not even that important, even if it did. And now that we're trying to tell the stories of other people, and a broader sense of what Monticello was about and slavery was about, then it becomes important. You see that the story in a different way. It seems, I read several of your books, and I agree that the way you tell the Heming story is just revelatory in a way that has changed the way that some people certainly think about Jefferson. But it seems to me that you also approach history from a very different angle than historians, American history people were looking at the story of America back when I was in college, for example. I mean, then it was big ideas. It was the Constitution. It was the format for government. It was the Pilgrims, or it was the Puritans, or it was the Quakers, sort of the influences that made the country what it supposedly was. And one of the things that I just totally love about your writing is the way, at least in the Hemings' and Monticello, so much is told through people and the information you have, or in some cases you don't have about who the people were and the interactions that they had. I'm wondering if you think the teaching of American history and American universities has changed demonstrably in the last 30, 40 years, partly because of the stories like you, where I think we're focusing more on people and the way society is affected by the people in it and sort of the other way around. Well, I think talking about people, history from the bottom up, that kind of thing has been in folk for a good while. They're still talking about ideas and people, but I think that there is more young graduate students, there are lots of folks who are interested in finding untold stories and talking about marginalized people. There's definitely more of that. I don't think the old, it hasn't gone away, totally, but it's been broadened. And I think a lot of people are not, some people aren't happy about that at the expense of thinking about bigger ideas, but that's still there. It's just that the pool has gotten bigger, the pool of stories and subject matters has gotten much larger. And I think they complement one another, actually. I mean, that's the idea. You have to have both of those things, one to the exclusion of the other. That's why it's good to have more people, different types of people doing it, thinking about things from a different perspective. I'm interested in people. I grew up reading biographies and I've discovered times through people, one of my favorite books, experimented in autobiography by H.G. Wells, who used to be a really, really famous person. Oh man, we know who he is now and we know the world of the worlds, but I mean, he was in his time, I mean, the most famous man in the world, one of the besides chaplet, maybe, but it's a great, and I read that as a teenager and it struck me, it was so modern. Here's the person who's born in the 19th century and his writing and the way he tells stories and talks about himself, all those kinds of things are just, I go back and look at it periodically because I just think, for me, it was a very, very influential thing. So my approach comes from the things that I've been doing since, from a teenager, it's looking at people in a particular moment of time, how they explain themselves and what they think they're doing. And so it was natural for me to do that, that that would have to be my approach because I do think it makes, one of the things I didn't like about my kids' history education, they had great education in lots of ways, but I don't think their teachers did talk to them enough about people and they didn't make the subject of history alive for them. They were talking about the insular cases and treaties and I don't think, why in middle school are you doing this? Do you know who Frederick Douglass was? Do you know who these people are? This is a way, you start with that and then you can sort of broaden out to other areas. And I think that's why I meet so many people who say I hated history when I was in school and they don't really learn to love it until much later on. But I think if you were prepared for that, introducing people and their times and then moving on to the next phase where you talk about ideas and so forth, that would be really helpful. Can I just ask, where do you are? Are you a fan of the Lincoln Steps? Yes. The other biography of Lincoln Steps is one of my favorite books. He was amazing. Another person who was incredibly famous and is pretty much unknown now. You were a history in your small town when you went to that desegregated school. What, so you're part of the issue. What, and you kind of answered it with the previous question, what sparked you on your path to the Lincoln Street? I think that that did, that was certainly a part of it. I had an understanding that what was going on was historic. And I also think it helped me think about law even early on because I understood that the law was involved. I didn't understand exactly how, but I knew that this was a process that was taking place in courts and the courts had a role to play in it. But I definitely think that that experience and also the experience growing up in a segregated place, you know, going to the movies and sitting in the balcony and going to a doctor's office and sitting in a separate waiting room. You wonder why is that? How did this come about? Where did this come from? So, because it wasn't a natural, it didn't make sense to me, you know. And so I think that is really, that the society, the school was important, but the segregated society, trying to figure out what that was about pointed me to history. Because it pointed me to slavery and I understood that this was something that was an outgrowth of that and it was an attitude towards black people. And so it was a natural subject. I was just thinking about what you're talking about in terms of the entryway and stories of people as opposed to just concepts and how that applied to my experience of reading the book Cast. And I think one of the reasons I think she's the author of such an amazing writer is because she's found that balance between concepts and looking at the lens through which we viewed history and she balances it with stories about people. And honestly, the stories about people that have been subjected to so much violence with the racism is extremely difficult to read which is probably why we don't see it in print more. So I have found it easier to absorb all the historic information she has of comparing how the Nazis analyzed American law that basis of racism and how the untouchables in India were so connected to key people in America that were fighting racism so I can get intellectually involved and then she'll give a small vignette of a certain lynching or something like that and then just going back to the intellectual piece makes it a little easier to absorb the other. She's a fantastic person and a fantastic writer and it helps you figure these things out. It helps you see the point of it and the stories because you can empathize with people and that's what you're looking for to get people to understand what would it be like to be treated this way and to be stuck in a system that is difficult to get out of and it makes it explain why it's been so hard to get out of it as well. Hi, so with everything that has been going on in this country one of the biggest talking points has been this idea of critical race theory in New Homesville, Texas there was a deal that was introduced aiming to teach Texas history patriotic history and I was just wondering about what's your belief or just your thoughts on that and what are you seeing with connections between the Emmings and your book on Juneteenth that was just recently made of critical holiday? Well, the critical race theory controversy has sort of come out of nowhere and it was pretty clear that it was manufactured. In critical race theory one of the founders of that movement was a classmate of mine at Harvard. She's in my section actually, Kim Critishaw with her mentor Derrick Bell who was also at Harvard and it's a law school topic. It's not even in all law schools actually. It's about how law is the sort of racism is embedded in law and the structure of law and why passing individual laws don't seem to change things that much. I mean they change things some but not as much as people hope for it and what you have to do is to sort of really look in and see how it's embedded in law and that's a difficult it's not a concept for kindergarteners. It's hard for me to imagine that a lot of K through 12 people are actually teaching critical race theory and what it means is that all talk about race is critical race theory. So all critical race theorists talk about race but not all people who talk about race are critical race theorists and they've made it that way and so you can't talk about the ideas that you're not supposed to talk about race because it might make white children feel bad to know that their great-great-grandparents used to go to lynchings or did things and it fascinates me the idea that there was a complaint about a sort of child's biography of Ruby Bridges because they had a crowd of white people standing outside the school yelling what they were they did that, that happened and there was a white teacher who taught her, you know, continued to teach her but they didn't want the parents were upset because it made white people look bad but why not identify with the teacher why do you assume that they would identify with the people out of the mob and they wouldn't and the question is do you not want them to revive those people and what is it that are you upset that they think that those people were doing something wrong and why would they not identify with the teacher so a lot of it is you know very interesting it's very instructive about current day attitudes about race wanting to maintain the hierarchy you don't want things that sort of break it down you don't want your kids to think about things in a different way and we'll see what happens with that some of that stuff has to be unconstitutional I mean it will be challenged we'll see how far they go with it but for Texas and how do you talk about the Republic of Texas without looking at the Constitution that promotes slavery and says black people can't live there black people can't become citizens you're gonna redact that from in the class you take those provisions out so I think it's a culture war stuff I mean it's essentially a manufactured controversy to keep people's minds off of other more pressing issues that we have anytime that happens someone says culture war and they can count on people to come out and complain about things that they don't even really understand you know critical race theory is not the sort of anti-racism curriculum that people complain about it's not critical race theory anti-racism people believe that you can teach individual people not to be racist the critical race theorists say it's not about individuals it's about a system so they're not they're really not together they're talking about race but they're talking about race in a different kind of way and yeah I do think that people are it's sort of a backlash because teachers have been talking more about race talking more about native peoples and so forth and that makes people uncomfortable so I think it's a manufactured crisis we'll have to see how it goes we have so many other issues serious problems that to attend to and that's in my book is not one of them 1619 you know I think it's another area where they fixated on a couple sentences in the project that in some ways she has walked back anyway about 1619 it's a real founding of the country not 1776 and it's both of them 1619 informs 1776 it created it was the part of the society that existed the existence of slavery was part of you know the American founding and people had to argue about that there was a compromise over it it was not a non-issue so both of them worked together and I think she has said that that was more of a rhetorical flourish than anything but people took it and ran with it and you know what happened with her Fiasco in North Carolina and now in Howard so both of them it's a way of diverting people's attention I think from real problems I work with students at Harvard what are you most encouraged by in terms of what you see people in their early 20s and their intellectual development pursuits their enthusiasm their commitment they like to do stuff they want to be involved in things there are a million projects they have they're involved in public interest things, they're involved in NGOs I think it's their commitment to action they are very very and my daughter's generation my daughter could be at Harvard she's not in law school but after the last 2016 election she became galvanized politically we were bundling money for candidates and one of her friends ran for office and won as a state rep in New York and she's just they have been on their own fire in a lot of ways about politics and about running for office and being part of it and school boards, all kinds of things in ways that we were not I mean we were political but I don't think people thought that becoming a part of running for office and doing those kinds of things mattered, I think they do because they realize that sort of hesitancy about it allowed a lot of people who are doing some of the things that we don't feel so great about now to take those places and it should be a competition there should be Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives participating in the system and not just turning it over to one group of people, that's not the way to go so I am heartened by their commitment their sense of commitment and their enthusiasm about things thank you very much