The same sense of enjoyment, productivity, and professionalism as experts, professionals engage their citizen users to the best of their abilities, the cliches about lazy Government Employees repeated ad nauseam by unknowing politicians had no validity within these walls. Instead i became convinced as a ms. Sure most historians would share, that the National Archives is one of the true ornaments of American Culture for which this individual can only say, from the bottom of my professional heart, thank you very much. Amen. , now there are two housekeeping things that i have to discuss before i can turn to Edith Roosevelt. I need to make them clear. Doris goodwin coming next week you are in for about of what i can call pettiness during the next week. There will be teddy this and teddy that in every direction. You wont hear me use that term. I will talk about tea are, roosevelt, carole roosevelt, theodore and the president , but i wont use the word teddy. There is a simple reason. He did not like the nickname. If you knew him well, you didnt call him teddy. There were two family members that might call him tv, but you had to be close. When you hear the, i share an argument about commercial cable news gaspe, doing teddy this and teddy that as though they have this intimacy with Theodore Roosevelt. What they are demonstrating is that they dont know the first thing about Theodore Roosevelt. When you hear them going off on teddy, you can decide that you know better than those guys. The other point to make in a more serious way. I am going to be discussing how i found out and developed a thesis about Edith Roosevelt and her views on race and racial issues. This will require me at one point, discussing a song that was rendered at the white house to use nothing took word. I apologize in advance. It is a nice capable. Theres a second time with it happens, and that is the climax that i will leave for the moment, but it is coming up. It is necessary to do that. One of my major interests over the past 30 years has been the role of first ladies in American History. In 1982, i thought on the first lady. The spectacle of a man writing about women as a first lady produced a certain amount of notoriety, even before i started knowing the subject, i was being quoted as an expert. That shows you something about the news in our time. In the process i got to know first ladies, mrs. Carter, mrs. Forward, and especially ladybird johnson with whom i entered into our war day i was never a friend, but we exchanged information about her life and times. Interviewing her 1984 was one of the highlights of my research career. In those years i began to write about president ial wives, what they had accomplished, and the significance of their interests that grew exponentially in the eighties and nineties about their lives and their legacy. Articles and opeds came out of this work, and in those days when he wrote for the washington post, an article would appear on sunday. When you woke up actually would appear on saturday afternoon, and when you woke up on sunday morning there will be 100 or 200 emails in your inbox, generally friendly. But not always. There is one gentleman who is unhappy with what i said, who sent me an email message that red, i hope you burn in hell until the end of time. I recorded him as undecided. In 1998 my wife suggested that i should add it a series of books about 20th century first ladies. The university in kansas, the preeminent Political Press in the country, already had a similar series on the president s for which i had contributed about William Mckinley and Theodore Roosevelt. They agreed readily with the idea that we create the modern first lady series. We would start with Edith Roosevelt and go through the hillary clinton. We didnt get into the 21st century because we wanted the books to be based on primary sources, and in the unlikely it by lifetime that we will be able to look at the records of laura bush and mrs. Obama. That is 15 to 20 years in the future. And i will be otherwise occupied in that time. But the spring of 2011, we had 16 volumes that had appeared, covering how untapped i had contributed two of them. The others had been written by a variety of scholars who graciously and kindly, and for the royalty decided to write the book. The royalties were not much, but they were grateful anyway. The question then be game, how to handle Edith Roosevelt. She was the first lady from 1901 to 1909, and she was important. The problem was, there was an absence of other authors willing to step forward and help out. So i, as the editor of the series, faced a tough choice. I could look for an author to write a book. But that is often a problem or process which will take five to seven years. Fine fine them, do the research, write the book and time passes. I was in my early seventies when this prospect began, and the prospect of chasing an author and not finishing the process until it was almost 80 had a little appeal. You find diminishing energy for tracking down authors after a while. I decade finding another author had very little appeal to me. So i opted to write about her myself. I thought i could get it done quicker. There is one i, know there are actually three published biographies of Edith Roosevelt, but there is the main one, written by Sylvia Morris, the wife of Theodore Roosevelts biographer edward morris. Published in 1981. It is a good book. It covers a long and complex life. Edith roosevelt was born in 1861 and she died in 1948. So, sylvia addressed the whole sweep of her life as the sort of matriarch of roosevelt clan. My task was different. I conceived the first ladies volumes as being the first book people would read on a first lady. So they had not what i call a doorstop i, book, but something that would bring together what was known in a convenient way, so you could dip into that first lady and then learn more about her. My task was to look at the seven and a half years that Edith Roosevelt was in the white house. I was going to have an introductory chapter to take her to 1901. September 14th 1901. Four or five chapters on the period when she was the first lady, then a concluding chapter that we take her from 1909 to 1948. I had one advantage that was denied to Sylvia Morris. It was a technological advantage, because research in american newspapers has been transformed in the last decade. Historians are gradually learning, but the public at large may not be aware of it. The internet now makes it available, the opportunity to research in american newspapers before 1922, anyway, in a way that was an conceivable for those who started out in the 1960s. In those days, if it was on micro film, it would hand you a real and you would have to put it on and started off by trying to find the date you wanted. There was no digitization. Nothing. You had to start reading and looking and hoping that you would find something. Now, with chronically america, bless you library of congress, and with the americas historical newspapers made available on the website, all you have to do it specify the dates, the newspaper, the name, click and you can have four or 500 entries pop up with it, nicely telling you with that little red information, where the story is. So, at home, sometimes in your pajamas, you can sit there and print out stuff about Edith Roosevelt that 35 years ago would have taken you six to eight months if you could have found it in the first place. I retrieved hundreds of specific articles about Edith Roosevelt that ten years earlier, they would have me i unable to escape until i wouldve had it all done. So, what Sylvia Morris did not have, i had an abundance, which was the article that showed that Edith Roosevelt was a much more covered, talked about and observed figure, as first lady, then we had realized. As i began my research with all the paper filing up, i confronted the question of what was Edith Roosevelt place in her husbands life . What role did she have . The consensus at the outset was that she was as close to a perfect first lady as anyone in the 21st century had been. 20th century had been. One source says she never put a foot wrong in the white house. Another said that she had no flaps and no controversies. Think what would happen to cnn under those circumstances. She had been a dignified and sophisticated matron of the white house. Moreover, she was a wise adviser to Theodore Roosevelt. The consensus among people who knew Theodore Roosevelt was that her political judgment was probably better than his in most instances. He tended to be a little impetuous. She was calmer. She had her skepticism about some of the men around. When he ignored her counsel, he faulted. When he followed her advice, he did well. She raised her six children, all of them appealing rascals in one way or another, with great skills, in an atmosphere of fun and excitement that served as a model for the first ladies who followed her. She was sort of the four text and everybody else was a variant from that. She sponsor frequent musical events that included artists such as pablo and others, setting the stage for similar cultural events throughout the 20th century. She also introduced bureaucracy into the white house as the role of the first lady by hiring the first social secretary, isabelle had dinner, who became a kind of surrogate Parent Parent to some of the roosevelt children, and foreshadow the apparatus that now surround the first lady. And give it as a little presidency within the white house she and her husband took daily walks around the white house garden where she talked to him. Conversations no records of what she said. They also rode almost daily. They were known as the last president ial horseback riding couple. They both loved horseback riding. She was an accomplished horse woman. And although she would tell him some of the senators and ambassadors would tell him tell her to tell him all in all, Edith Roosevelt was close to secular sainthood within the apparatus of president ial history as anyone could have imagined. I found other residents that were to her strength. She had been wealthy. She understood money. The adore roosevelt had no head for money. She would give him 25 dollars each day heading to new york. When he got back, he could not explain where he spent the money. 25 dollars may not seem like much, but remember inflation. It accomplished a similar effect today, he would have to give him 475 dollars a day, and he blew it with regularity every day. Much like former president george w. Bush, Theodore Roosevelt got a big hit out of cutting trees down. It was one of his great recreation at saginaw hill. Unfortunately, by the time he was no longer president , his hand i coordination had gone into the dumpster. He would come come back and injured himself in the course of cutting trees downed and he would come back sometimes covered with blood and find edith and a friend sitting on the veranda, and she would say, dont bleed on the porch, theodore, go inside and clean yourself up. In short, edith was what we used to call in my day, a tough cookie. In fact, in 1920, and i found this, this is not in the book because i found it later. She told her daughter in law, my dear, at no time in my life what i have hesitated to chop all my children into pieces for their father. So going into research for the book, i saw a little immediate reason to question this interpretation of ediths role and character. There were some hints from roosevelt family members that she could be tough to live with. One person said she was as mean as a snake, but would that necessarily mean . And that living with Theodore Roosevelt was not always easy. These elements did not who a negative interpretation of Edith Roosevelt. She deserve great respect. I thought i can probably enhance some details, but im not going to find anything strikingly knew about Edith Roosevelt. Little did i realize. Over the years i have collected a fair amount of material from mrs. Roosevelt, just doing the surge in that period. Working out such things such as the president ial election of 1912. Now, any researcher will tell, you look at the stuff you have first before you venture off into new material. So, i did that and this brings me to a gentleman named warrant and dawson, about whom probably youve never heard. His papers, i encountered in 1976. My wife was a medieval list and she went to a summer seminar in the summer of some 1976. As a good has been, i went along. Alas, there were no basketball games in the summer. I dont think and there wasnt much else to do, so i turn to the library and said, what if you got on Theodore Roosevelt . They responded they had the papers of a man named warrant and dawson. And they were filled with unexplored letters from theodore, edith and all the other roosevelts. Few people have heard of warrant and dawson 1878 1962. He was in american reporter living in paris and he became a friend of Theodore Roosevelt in 1909. You will recall that after turning over the reins of government to William Howard taft in march 1909, roosevelt and his son kermit went off to africa on a hunting expedition for the smithsonian institution. Their goal was to hunt big game and collect specimens for the smithsonian. On wall street, who disliked Roosevelt Roosevelt also got into animal stories as well. He once was having dinner with some friends and a member of congress and he said to a member of congress that there was nothing wrong with congress, that turning a man eating tiger loose on the floor that congress could not cure. That someone would congressman said, mister president , dont you think that the animal might make a mistake . Roosevelt said, not if he stay there long enough. Roosevelt was a huge celebrity. I think the kardashians geometrically squared. You get a sense of roosevelt in 1909. He was the most famous man in the world by every measure. The working press followed him to africa. They wanted to be there and they also wanted to report on every aspect. Now words of that was very good at courting the press, but no he was no longer president and he did not want the press around. He needed an intermediary at arms length. He decided that warrant and dawson was just the fellow, who made his money turning in stories for newspapers and in the course of doing that, dawson became an intimate member of the roosevelt family. He was also very friendly with the novelist contrast. I learned yesterday in the papers of Theodore Roosevelt junior at the library of congress, and eventually dawson would be put on the payroll of the family and they were giving him 60, 70 80 dollars a month. Just as a kind of ancillary benefits dawson was a native of South Carolina. The son of a newspaper editor who was instrumental in ending reconstruction in South Carolina after the civil war. Sharing his fathers views on racial issues, dawson had in 1912, written a book in french called the negro in the United States. He praises the ku klux klan and he criticize black politics for corruption during the 18 sixties and this was fairly seventies. Standard historical stuff at the turn of the century. At a time of that period in American History was in ill repute. By the 19 sixties, as many you know the whole interpretation would be swept away and we would have a new, are more favorable interpretation of reconstruction and there are only a few isolated enclaves in American Life that now retain the older view, one of those being the supreme court. Four years after the book came out, in 1916, theodore and edith decided to get away from the cold weather of sag more hill in new york and also to escape, some interest in this running for president 1916 and to take a cruise to the French West Indies in february of 1916. Since carnival cruises had not yet been founded, they could make the trip in relative safety. Eat it took dawsons book with her to read on the boat. While she was on the cruise ship wrote him a letter, dated march 1st, 1916, from british diana which provided me with the first clue that there is another more complex Edith Roosevelt in the historical record. I had photocopy this letter in either 1976 or 1980. I frankly now forget. But i had not examined it in any detail. I just put it in a full bird said ill get to that sometime. I found her saying the following in response to the examination of american blacks in dawsons i book. And now i quote her, alas, we cant stand every knee grow in the United States to africa the. And i suppose could we i do so, we would still have some moral responsibility towards them. I i stopped at nine of the west Indian Islands and cannot feel that their method is any better than ours. I cant begin to write all ive seen and heard and thought, but i am still firmly convinced that any mixture of races is an unmitigated evil, and of quote. Now as historians will tell you, most of the research we do is drudgery. Most of the time we are looking at a lot of letters and documents in a lot of boxes, and the smoking gun is usually another folder away or youll get to tomorrow. But this stopped my clock. You know, when i looked at it, at the photocopy, i said now, wait a minute. Theres something going on here. I read and we read the letter to make sure i had not missed her meaning. So her meaning was pretty clear, any mixture of races is an unmitigated evil. Its hard to get much racial liberalism out of that. Here was a different figure from the biographical historical impression of Edith Roosevelt them. The former first lady had racial values that were more intense than her contemporaries. Of course one letter by itself does not survive conclusive evidence. But as thoreau said about circumstantial evidence, sometimes it is important when you find a trout in your milk. So i needed to look for more evidence of her attitude in this sensitive area. Once i began to dig around, more information surfaced. In those online newspapers that i earlier mentioned, one could find an abundance of information about life as president and first lady. In those days, washington reporters covered the white house and brought back information about such matters as who visit, what happened at social events and other information dear to the hearts of historians, unlike Washington White House reporters now whose favorite subject is themselves. They actually looked at what the president was doing. Mrs. Roosevelt brought musical artist to the white house. One of the performers was a woman named mary leach. She appeared before the president ial audiences and evenings in 1902 and 1903. She had a specialty which were songs in black dialect, which were called cohen songs in those days. And each of these two occasions she rendered with a title, heres what i warned you about, just a little , your mine all mine, written by paul dresser, the brother of the novelist theodore dries are and the composer of the mega hit of the day, moonlight on the wawa. Which is the indiana state song as many of you know. A song is a lullaby of a black mother to her child, with these lyrics that ran as follows. There aint no using crime now, so go to sleep, there aint no use and fasten so babies go to sleep we aint got the comforts of the rich and fine here just a little mine all mine. This was not going to threaten mercer or heart as lyric writer, but it indicated what the audience thought about black issues at that time. One had to conclude that mrs. Roosevelt approved of leaked since she invited her in the first place and asked her back to render it a second time. Mrs. Roosevelt was deeply involved to the selection of artists and what they saying and how they performed. This was another evidence in a certain direction. By now i had a sense of where was going with this. But other than a letter to dawson, i had few actual quotations from mrs. Roosevelt about racial issues. Then the generosity of a friends helped me more to learn about her. Three of her five children by theodore, Edith Roosevelt was closest to her second son Kermit Roosevelt. He was in his teens during the presidency and she wrote him several letters a week when he was attending the grand school, a place that he did not like. The roosevelt boys did not like where their father and mother had sent them. I think the cold showers in the morning was probably one deterrent. But she wrote him, has a fistful mother correspondent two letters a week. And sometimes more letters than that. And the letters are pretty much standard stuff. How are you greats . Do you need your clothes washed . Heres some food. How are your friends . Doing the usual material that we are all familiar with. And he had to write her a couple letters every week. If he didnt she made a point of asking him about what was going on. Kermit was a free spirit who hated the school. His mothers letters sustained him through a bad patch. These documents are available in the city in boxes nine and ten of the Kermit Roosevelt papers at the library of congress. A dear friend, a scholar named christy miller, who is with us today, photocopy for me hundreds of pages. And if you figure shes at school for a good nine months, and you get several hundred letters over five or six years, happily they were fourpage small letters, but thats a lot to photocopy. He was impossible then for me to travel away from home. I was deeply grateful and still am deeply grateful for her doing this kindness. Within this huge stack of letters, some of which talked about horseback riding and pelts, but within this huge body of letters, Edith Roosevelt had a lot sailboat race. There were some clues. She told kermit on one occasion about meeting quote, for old dark ease on one trip, and encountering out an old old darky on another. White american spoke this way about black americans at the turn of the century. In fact, would roll wilson told darkly stories during the campaign of 1912. If you had a candidate to do that now youd have wolf blitzer quoting himself on camera. It would be sensational news. But at that point is pretty regular material. In october 1918, the roosevelt entertained at the white house a prominent british diplomat. A few years earlier there had been a vacancy in the post of ambassador to the lighted states from great britain. The current occupant of the post and tea are did not get along. And he said to british government, youve got to take him back and get me somebody else are not going to be able to do business. So they are looking at potential candidates. And rod was not chosen, instead james price got the job. This is roosevelt said to kermit that his wife is quote, believed to have a touch of the tar brush in her background, which made her husbands appointment as edith put it, inadvisable. That was how the progressive era describe someone with 11 touched black ancestors. I have subsequently learned that mrs. Rod, whose full name was georgina lilac guthrie rebel rod, who is known as lily, and she was known as black lily because she allegedly had west indian blood. How mrs. Roosevelt found out about this, im not sure. But i suspect that theyre good friend, the british diplomat was probably the culprit. He was a gossip. He was antisemitic, and so he would be my first choice. But there may be others. John kennedy once called washington the city of northern sherman southern efficiency. It was also a place of intense racial segregation at this time. Even a taint of alleged black blood was sufficient to dam and individual among whites if they possess that disability. , so i was now more convinced but still not quite there. In 1906 president and mrs. Roosevelt traveled panama to inspect work on the canal that had begun two years earlier. This was a fairly big deal, in those days as many of you know, there is tradition that the president did not leave the continental United States during his presidency. Now president s globe tried everywhere, but then it was a major innovation. How could he go to panama which is clearly not the continental United States . Well in the treaty where, ronald waken would say he took panama, we exercise sovereignty even though we didnt really own it. It was kind of a legal fiction. So you could make the case that you are going to american territory. It also bears on john mccains eligibility to have run for the presidency, but thats another story. Anyway, either throat kermit discussions of what she had seen as they travel to panama. And she said, we landed on thursday morning it cologne and we were taken across the isthmus on cars stopping it station where is little groups of chocolate drops led by a School Master or mistress saying patriotic songs and waved the flag. And where there was an indescribable mixture of pathos and humor and those poor little scraps of humanity borne of jamaica knee grows mostly, singing, land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims pride. Some of you will know the similarity in language to what she said to washington dawson. By this, time i was convinced that anywhere Edith Roosevelt stood. Yet like jack mccoy on law on order, i thought i had enough to go to the grand jury, but i didnt have enough to get a conviction. So i kept turning pages. I needed i felt, something concrete from Edith Roosevelts own hand and minds to clinch the arguments that was developing, there might not be anything those letters. I had no way of knowing. But i can only be sure if i read all the correspondence. So i went back to the stack of letters and perused as carefully as i could all that she had written. The smoking gun, at least for me, emerged in the course of a letter to kermit in november of 19 oh. Its up to this point i have not mention Ethel Roosevelt, the daughter of edith and theodore. Unlike as Alice Roosevelt long worth about whom professor stacey has written with much insight and skill Ethel Roosevelt lack charisma and star appeal she was an engaging, attractive young woman who is kind of a surrogate mother to her two younger brothers. She was not a glamour girl. She probably had the most developed social skills of all the roosevelt. In washington, as a teenager she thought a sunday school class for African American children at an Episcopal Church near the white house. This was not something that upper class ladies and washington did hot in the year that she was to be presented i was at the roosevelt. Buckets it was a very interesting letter writer, who had supported civil rights into the 1960s when her brother archie was taking a very different point of view. So in november 1908, edith her usual sunday letter and referred to her daughter, her daughters class and their other plans for the morning. Ethel has gone off and when she comes back we are going to see the life of the german ambassador and so forth. I looked at the word in that sentence many times. What else could it be no other context in the obvious ones being credible. With that said i concluded that i had a solid case for the proposition that Edith Roosevelt had gone beyond soft genteel bigotry and to racism at that point, you may say so what . So what . It was sad to read such language from a first lady. But after all, she was only the president s life, not the president or a politician. That conclusion as i thought about it, and i thought about it a lot i, was misguided. Much attention has been devoted to Theodore Roosevelt racial views. Historians have looked at his dinner with booker tea washington in 1901. His views on lynching, which he blamed often on members of the black community who refuse to turn in criminals. His appointment of blacks in the south, and his sometimes negative opinions about the future of African Americans in the United States in general. Roosevelt liked to think of himself as a direct air of abraham lincoln. Carrying forward the ideals of the great emancipator. Precursor of Stephen Spielberg and daniel de lewis, if you will. In fact, he fell well short of these lofty, self imposed expectations. What has not been explored and you will look in vain in this literature about Theodore Roosevelt and race, is any inkling that edith had any views that were different from her husbands. So we now must ask what was the effect of Edith Roosevelt on Theodore Roosevelts thinking about race . That his wife harbored strong antiblack views and used racial slurs in her correspondents, presumably shaped the setting in which she talk to him about racial matters. Take, for example, the most celebrated incident involving t. R. And race in his presidency. The shooting spree allegedly blamed not blamed, not allegedly blamed, blamed on black soldiers that occurred in brownsville, texas in august 1906. The town was shot up. The white population said it was the soldiers stationed at a nearby fort who were responsible. The accused man denied all knowledge of the episode. Subsequent evidence has pretty well demonstrated for me, that they were innocent. They had not been responsible. The army and the president concluded that the black soldiers were either all guilty, or they knew who was guilty and were covering up for their comrades. So, on november 5th, 1906, roosevelt ordered, without honor, the discharge of all three companies of the black soldiers implicated in their minds, with either perpetuating the shooting, or refusing to tell what they knew. The soldiers received no hearing, no lawyers, no defensive tierneys, no support, no real opportunity to defend themselves. They were just out. Roosevelt simply dismissed them from the service peremptory. Four days later, the president and his wife depart for panama. On the journey, Theodore Roosevelt gets a wire from the secretary of war, William Howard taft, suspending the president s orders until there can be a hearing. Roosevelt immediately directed that his order be carried out at once and the men were dismissed with no recourse. It was a gross miscarriage of justice, and it is remains that it is a major stain on Theodore Roosevelts historical reputation. The historical record doesnt tell us whether you to throws a vote commented on this episode. But remember, this was at a time when she was referring to chocolate drops and little scraps of humanity as her impressions of black panamanians. Her husband at the same time was insisting on severe punishment for accuse African Americans at home. During his second term, when he no longer needed black votes to get the republican nomination, roosevelt was less respectful than he had been the first time around of the aspirations of African Americans, as he had been during 1901 to 1904. Until now, there has been no exploration of what he might have been hearing on racial issues from his wife on their frequent walks around the white house grounds, on the boat to panama, or anywhere else. Did she mention the tar brush . Did she discuss little . Did it matter that Edith Roosevelts view of blacks whistle prejudiced . This opens up for me, a whole range of issues about t. R. Race that has been unexplored. Few prominent americans have been more studied than Theodore Roosevelt. We have some distinguished historians of Theodore Roosevelt here with us today in the audience. Edmund morris has written three extended volumes on t. R. s life, and Doris Kearns Goodwin is bringing out this week 928 pages of roosevelt, taft, and the election of 1912. Taft and roosevelt had once been 18, but now were rivals. If it sometimes seems that there is nothing new to be said about a charismatic president who wrote more than 100,000 letters during his lifetime. In fact, yours truly published a study of Theodore Roosevelts presidency two decades ago, and which i repeated what was then the conventional wisdom about Edith Roosevelts impact on her husbands ears in the office. Like many other historians, i did not see any need to examine Edith Roosevelt correspondence with her sons. And, i like many others, missed a key point about the first lady. I passed on a big story when at the time, i only sampled eat its letters to kermit. I was not willing to expand with the germans called sitting and reading all these letters. Okay. Yet, as i hope i have demonstrated, the moment when a historian thinks that the subject or a historical figure has been defined and put into a permanent mold, that is precisely the time when you evidence and new interpretations are likely to emerge. Hubris is a professional sin for historians in that regard. Every history teacher has heard the student question, do we have to know all those facts . They think that historians have rooms full of facts where we go in and assemble our books, one from column a, one from column b, put them together and there you go. There are some who try that, but not many. Often, we try to explain to students that our knowledge of the facts is contingent on interpretations we place upon the significance of historical events. Consider the nature of the fact they got me started toward a revision of Edith Roosevelt. Her 1916 letter to warrington dawson. It was a fact that she wrote the letter in 1916, but no one knew of her views on race, but she and mr. Dawson. For the next 60 years. As the letters sat in his papers until his death in 1962, and then was ultimately transmitted to the duke library where years later, i came across it in 1976. At that point, i was just collecting documents. Indispensable, but i did not process them. And so the letter went into a folder. Edith roosevelt, post presidency. Other subjects engaged my interest over the next 35 years, and so the fact of her racial views sat there while Sylvia Morris wrote her biography, and i worked on other things. Then, in the spring of 2011, i turned to edith as a topic, looked at the letter, and put the old fact into a new context. The perfect first lady who never put a foot wrong had expressed racial views. The facts about Edith Roosevelt, which, of course had been facts all along, now changed to accommodate a new reality. Her racial opinions, common in 1916, now seemed objectionable, and to some, but alas not every american, seemed often repulsive. The way we see a fact change is the meaning and the significance of the fact. And so changes how we see history. A wise historian once told a seminar of which i was a member, more than half a century ago, that if you press the fabric of history at any specific point, it will reveal how fragmentary and tentative our understanding and knowledge of the past really is. I submit that this case did he have Edith Roosevelt underscores edmund as morgans point, one of the great historians of the 20th century. There are many ways in which the picture view to throws a belt as a paragon among first ladies, represented a genuine historical truth. She was not a monster, and the contributions she made to the evolution of president ial spouses were important and lasting. But she was also a woman with an intellectual flaw that characterized her life in the white house and her effect on her husband. Seeing people in the past and all their dimensions is the continuing task of historians. And i hope these remarks have indicated why members pursue these issues with an enduring fascination. Thank you very much. applause i have been told by management that the microphones are necessary so that cspan and other media can make sure everybody who has questions get heard. So if there are questions, if i havent convinced you of the absolute validity of everything ive said, or you want more, fire away. Anyone . Yes, john. John cooper. Okay. Well, we do have john cooper the distinguished for me, the preeminent biographer of woodrow wilson, is that the microphone. Kristie miller is here, a partner in that wonderful cspan program about the mrs. Wilsons. And joanna stern, the granddaughter of Alice Roosevelt is also with us today. So we have a distinguished cast. Just a couple of questions. One, strictly factual. I take it edith was there at the dinner with booker tea washington. Did they ever entertain another African American as a guest after that in the white house . No. That is what i thought. The second thing is, and im curious, how much do you think she was influencing him on race and how much do you think they may have been reinforcing each other . How much he was influencing him . Its interesting. There are a couple of things i did not quote. Im going to start out to try to edit the correspondent of edith and Theodore Roosevelt
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