Why we must confront the painful parts of US history

Not that long ago,

I received an invitation

to spend a few days at the historic
home of James Madison.

James Madison, of course,

was the fourth president
of the United States,

the father of the Constitution,

the architect of the Bill of Rights.

And as a historian,

I was really excited
to go to this historic site,

because I understand and appreciate
the power of place.

Now, Madison called his estate Montpelier.

And Montpelier is absolutely beautiful.

It's several thousand acres
of rolling hills,

farmland and forest,

with absolutely breathtaking views
of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

But it's a haunting beauty,

because Montpelier
was also a slave labor camp.

You see, James Madison enslaved
more than 100 people

over the course of his lifetime.

And he never freed a single soul,

not even upon his death.

The centerpiece of Montpelier
is Madison's mansion.

Now this is where James Madison grew up,

this is where he returned to
after his presidency,

this is where he eventually died.

And the centerpiece
of Madison's mansion is his library.

This room on the second floor,

where Madison conceived
and conceptualized the Bill of Rights.

When I visited for the first time,

the director of education,
Christian Cotz --

cool white dude --

(Laughter)

took me almost immediately to the library.

And it was amazing,
being able to stand in this place

where such an important moment
in American history happened.

But then after a little while there,

Christian actually took me downstairs
to the cellars of the mansion.

Now, in the cellars of the mansion,

that's where the enslaved
African Americans who managed the house

spent most of their time.

It's also where they were installing
a new exhibition on slavery in America.

And while we were there,

Christian instructed me to do something
I thought was a little bit strange.

He told me to take my hand

and place it on the brick walls
of the cellar and to slide it along,

until I felt these impressions or ridges
in the face of the brick.

Now look,

I was going to be staying on-site
on this former slave plantation

for a couple of days,

so I wasn't trying
to upset any white people.

(Laughter)

Because when this was over,

I wanted to make sure
that I could get out.

(Laughter)

But as I'm actually sliding my hand
along the cellar wall,

I couldn't help but think
about my daughters,

and my youngest one in particular,

who was only about two
or three years old at the time,

because every time
she hopped out of our car,

she would take her hand
and slide it along the outside,

which is absolutely disgusting.

And then --

and then, if I couldn't get
to her in time,

she would take her fingers
and pop them in her mouth,

which would drive me absolutely crazy.

So this is what I'm thinking about
while I'm supposed to be a historian.

(Laughter)

But then, I actually do feel
these impressions in the brick.

I feel these ridges in the brick.

And it takes a second
to realize what they are.

What they are

are tiny hand prints.

Because all of the bricks
at James Madison's estate

were made by the children
that he enslaved.

And that's when it hit me

that the library

in which James Madison conceives
and conceptualizes the Bill of Rights

rests on a foundation of bricks

made by the children that he enslaved.

And this is hard history.

It's hard history,
because it's difficult to imagine

the kind of inhumanity

that leads one to enslave children

to make bricks for your comfort
and convenience.

It's hard history,

because it's hard to talk
about the violence of slavery,

the beatings, the whippings,
the kidnappings,

the forced family separations.

It's hard history, because it's hard
to teach white supremacy,

which is the ideology
that justified slavery.

And so rather than confront hard history,

we tend to avoid it.

Now, sometimes that means
just making stuff up.

I can't tell you how many times
I've heard people say

that "states' rights" was the primary
cause of the Civil War.

That would actually come as a surprise

to the people who fought in the Civil War.

(Laughter)

Sometimes, we try
to rationalize hard history.

When people visit Montpelier --

and by "people," in this instance,
I mean white people --

when they visit Montpelier

and learn about Madison enslaving people,

they often ask,

"But wasn't he a good master?"

A "good master?"

There is no such thing as a good master.

There is only worse and worser.

And sometimes,

we just pretend the past didn't happen.

I can't tell you how many times
I've heard people say,

"It's hard to imagine slavery
existing outside of the plantation South."

No, it ain't.

Slavery existed in every American colony,

slavery existed in my home
state of New York

for 50 years after
the American Revolution.

So why do we do this?

Why do we avoid confronting hard history?

Literary performer
and educator Regie Gibson

had the truth of it when he said

that our problem as Americans
is we actually hate history.

What we love

is nostalgia.

Nostalgia.

We love stories about the past

that make us feel comfortable
about the present.

But we can't keep doing this.

George Santayana, the Spanish
writer and philosopher,

said that those who cannot
remember the past

are condemned to repeat it.

Now as a historian, I spend a lot of time
thinking about this very statement,

and in a sense,
it applies to us in America.

But in a way, it doesn't.

Because, inherent in this statement,

is the notion that at some point,

we stopped doing the things

that have created inequality
in the first place.

And a harsh reality is,

we haven't.

Consider the racial wealth gap.

Wealth is generated by accumulating
resources in one generation

and transferring them
to subsequent generations.

Median white household wealth

is 147,000 dollars.

Median Black household wealth

is four thousand dollars.

How do you explain this growing gap?

Hard history.

My great-great-grandfather
was born enslaved

in Jasper County, Georgia, in the 1850s.

While enslaved, he was never allowed
to accumulate anything,

and he was emancipated with nothing.

He was never compensated
for the bricks that he made.

My great-grandfather was also born
in Jasper County, Georgia, in the 1870s,

and he actually managed
to accumulate a fair bit of land.

But then, in nineteen-teens,
Jim Crow took that land from him.

And then Jim Crow took his life.

My grandfather, Leonard Jeffries Senior,

was born in Georgia,

but there was nothing left for him there,

so he actually grew up
in Newark, New Jersey.

And he spent most of his life
working as a custodian.

Job discrimination,
segregated education and redlining

kept him from ever breaking
into the middle class.

And so when he passed away
in the early 1990s,

he left to his two sons

nothing more than a life-insurance policy

that was barely enough
to cover his funeral expenses.

Now my parents, both social workers,

they actually managed to purchase a home

in the Crown Heights section
of Brooklyn, New York, in 1980,

for 55,000 dollars.

Now Crown Heights, at the time,
was an all-Black neighborhood,

and it was kind of rough.

My brother and I often went to sleep,

by the mid-1980s,

hearing gunshots.

But my parents protected us,

and my parents also held onto that home.

For 40 years.

And they're still there.

But something quintessentially
American happened

about 20 years ago.

About 20 years ago,

they went to sleep one night
in an all-Black neighborhood,

and they woke up the next morning

in an all-white neighborhood.

(Laughter)

And as a result of gentrification,

not only did all their neighbors
mysteriously disappear,

but the value of their home

skyrocketed.

So that home that they purchased
for 55,000 dollars --

at 29 percent interest, by the way --

that home is now worth
30 times what they paid it for.

Thirty times.

Do the math with me.

That's 55,000 times 30, carry the zeros --

That's a lot of money.

(Laughter)

So that means,

as their single and sole asset,

when the time comes for them
to pass that asset on to my brother and I,

that will be the first time
in my family's history,

more than 150 years
after the end of slavery,

that there will be a meaningful
transfer of wealth in my family.

And it's not because family
members haven't saved,

haven't worked hard,

haven't valued education.

It's because of hard history.

So when I think about the past,

my concern about not remembering it

is not that we will repeat it
if we don't remember it.

My concern, my fear
is that if we don't remember the past,

we will continue it.

We will continue to do the things

that created inequality and injustice
in the first place.

So what we must do

is we must disrupt
the continuum of hard history.

And we can do this by seeking truth.

By confronting hard history directly.

By magnifying hard history
for all the world to see.

We can do this by speaking truth.

Teachers teaching hard history
to their students.

To do anything else is to commit
educational malpractice.

And parents have to speak truth
to their children,

so that they understand

where we have come from as a nation.

And finally, we must all act on truth.

Individually and collectively,

publicly and privately,

in small ways and in large ways.

We must do the things that will bend
the arc of the moral universe

towards justice.

To do nothing is to be complicit

in inequality.

History reminds us

that we, as a nation,

stand on the shoulders of political giants

like James Madison.

But hard history reminds us
that we, as a nation,

also stand on the shoulders
of enslaved African American children.

Little Black boys and little Black girls

who, with their bare hands,
made the bricks

that serve as the foundation
for this nation.

And if we are serious
about creating a fair and just society,

then we would do well to remember that,

and we would do well to remember them.

Thank you.

(Applause)