Colbert King of the Washington Post is someone about whom not many people know, perhaps because the focus of his columns is usually local. As a resident of the DC Metro area I look forward to reading him, especially on a Saturday morning such as today, the start of a three-day weekend - I don't have to rush to school, nor must I immediately turn to correcting papers and planning lesson. I have time to reflect.
And his column this morning, entitled A New Face for Lincoln's Washington is worthy of such time and attention. It is framed between the author's great-grandfather, who as a Black cavalryman in the 1860s met Lincoln, to King himself, who attended the gala at Ford's Theater at which President Obama spoke this past weekend. King's column is the basis of this diary, which offers additional thoughts of my own.
Consider the differences King offers us between the two encounters.
Isaiah King, his great-grandfather, was at a banquest Richmond celebrating the victory of the Union Army, and Lincoln walked in, with no fanfare. Colby (as he is known) King was among a throng who had to pass through metal detectors - not invented in 1865, although as he noted that their presence might have prevented Lincoln's assassination - to be in the theater that the Obamas would enter. We are now in an age of automobiles, invented only well after Lincoln's death.
Yet the real contrast upon which Colbert King focuses is not that of technological change. Nor is it the different level of security now provided for the presence of our Chief Executives. Instead King notes
It is, rather, a marvel at the America we have become in the 200 years since Lincoln's birth.
Ford's Theatre is now often a place for galas, full of luminaries, as was the event Wednesday night.
What made Wednesday's occasion a standout, however, was the new face of the black-tie gathering.
King's great-granddaddy and the other black troops were not allowed to be part of the official victory celebrations in the National Capital in 1865, excluded by the actions of William Tecumseh Sherman, whose statue stands a few blocks away, honoring his important victory in Atlanta. King writes
Great-granddaddy would have been unwelcome in the parade. He probably wouldn't have found a seat at Ford's Theatre, either.
This week, two front-row center seats at Ford's Theatre were occupied by America's president and first lady -- respectively, the son of a black African father and white American mother, and the daughter of black Americans.
That was then. This is now.
King also mentions other notables in the crowd, for example Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife. Also present were the mayor and his wife,
two people of color -- and a biracial gathering of city council members.
How different today's Ford's Theatre audience; how different Washington, D.C.
After all, the local government of DC in the 1860s was an all-white Board of Alderman (and thus also all male) and even though the Compromise of 1850 had banned the local slave trade, that could not erase the history of being a center of that very trade. King writes of those alderman
When the Senate took up a bill for emancipation in D.C. in March 1862, aldermen were so fearful of freedom's consequences that they passed a resolution urging Congress to provide "safeguards against converting this city . . . into an asylum for free negroes, a population undesirable in every American community."
and then states simply That was then.
And now? King tells us that the official celebration of the Lincoln bicentennial far more, especially for a nation now in crisis, than merely "an acknowledgment of official Washington's changing hue." Consider:
Words from Lincoln's second message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, capture and embolden the spirit of today's Washington: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."
Lincoln informs our times.
That must make great-granddaddy King smile.
Lincoln informs our times. Although perhaps not the minds of our current Republican party, who while they bear the party label under which he was elected seem to have forgotten the moniker that was so often applied to perhaps our greatest president, "The Great Commoner." Then a Republican president reflected the aspirations of the ordinary people from whose rootstock he had arisen. Now our most recent president of that party joked that his base were the rich and the super-rich.
I am 62. I have lived through the myriad changes (for the good) of the Civil Rights Era. I have unfortunately also lived through the restratification economically of America in the almost three decades since the election of a Republican president erroneously labeled "The Great Communicator." And yet, as Barbara Jordan said in the context of the impeachment proceedings of yet another Republican president,
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
We have elected as Chief Executive a man who has studied and taught and honored the Constitution. We look to him to restore the meaning of that document, to reshape our polity to reflect the inclusiveness of the "We, the people" with which Jordan began her famous remarks.
I am white. I cannot claim the the familial experience of exclusion to which King points when he writes about his great-grandfather. I am the descendant of immigrant Jews who were often excluded in other ways - from jobs, clubs, schools and colleges. My wife is in part the descendant of people who crossed on the Mayflower, who held positions of military leadership in the Revolution. Our marriage would have been considered in their circles as shocking as that of Obama's Kenyan father and Kansan mother were in the 1960s.
That was then. This is now.
I teach social studies. I have taught American History. I now teach government. Too often we have our students read and learn famous expressions from Lincoln's words, whether at Gettysburg or at his inaugurations, but then forget the generosity of the spirit behind those words. Lincoln was killed, and in the succeeding decade the words from his second inaugural were totally ignored in the impositions of a radical Reconstruction. Did those responsible somehow forget words spoken only months before his death by the martyred president? Consider
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
That was then. Will WE listen to Lincoln's words, embody them in our words and actions so that when we say "This is now" we will see a clear contrast with the past 8 years, a restoration of the vastness and generosity of the spirit of Lincoln, who even before warned us at Gettsyburg of our task,
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Colby King chose to offer us less well-known words by our 16th President. After quoting Lincoln King wrote, I remind you, that Lincoln informs our times. We are informed, but it is up to us to act in response to our being informed.
For too long we have perhaps dishonored Lincoln's words. We repeat them, but we do not act in accord with what they teach us.
That was then. This is now.
We can and should in this bicentennial year of his birth turn again to the vision of Lincoln and help complete it.
So let me repeat the words King quoted:
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
Dogmas are inadequate. Stormy present. Think anew and act anew.
My faith in the Constitution has been under stress during the past 8 years. We have won an election based on hope. The words of many come together in my mind - Jordan and Lincoln prominent among them. Our work is not complete because the times remain perilous, and not merely in terms of economics. I will be critical, will challenge and question, for such is my role, both within and without my classroom. But I will not despair.
Gerald Ford once told us as Vietnam was ending that our long national nightmare was over. We have similarly been awakened from the nightmare of an administration that did not believe in the Constitution, that rationalized its actions, that ignored the Congress and the American people as much as it violated Constitution, Bill of Rights, and international agreements.
That was then. This is now.
It will not be easy to quickly right the wrongs - of the economy, of the ship of state, of our international relationships. But right them we must, and we shall. For I say again with Barbara Jordan that My faith in the Constitution is whole With her I affirm that I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
Change comes from the bottom up. We were told that many times in the campaign. I intend to hold this administration to its own words and aspirations. No longer will an administration run roughshod over the will of the American people. No longer will an administration ignore the expressed desires, hopes, and needs of the vast majority of Americans while favoring the powerful few.
That was then. This is now.
Peace