we are pleased this evening to be partnering with our neighbors across. the plaza, one of the gems of the university of texas at austin and, an archival treasure trove, dolph briscoe center for american history. and we're proud to be co-hosting tonight's special guest, our good friend pulitzer prize winning historian doris kearns goodwin, who has been called by president biden america's historic and doris his books include no ordinary franklin, eleanor roosevelt, the home front during world war two team of rivals, political genius of abraham lincoln, which served the basis for the stephen film. lincoln and her latest leadership interview and times tonight we celebrate the briscoe center's acquisition of doris. his paper, her illustrious career and those of her late husband, richard goodwin, a renowned figure in his own right, -- goodwin was a lion of liberalism. it became a dirty word, crafting speeches for democratic icons, including john f kennedy. robert kennedy and our own lyndon johnson, among other accomplishments, his american promise speech for lbj, a plea for the voting rights act in the wake of bloody sunday in selma, alabama which spurred immediate action from congress ranks as one of the most eloquent and effective and perhaps one of the most underrated presidential speeches in history. -- papers include holdings. that document key issues in the 1960s, including the civil rights, the vietnam war and the anti war movement, the acquisition of the invalid aba archives of -- and doris goodwin will add to the briscoe center as one of the most prestigious centers for study of american history and combination of the archives of the briscoe center and the archives of the lbj presidential library. make this a mecca for the study of the 1960s. joining on stage tonight are two other authors and friends. don carleton is the founding director of the briscoe center. he has published 13 books, including authoring red scare conversations with cronkite and last year's the governor and the colonel, a dual biography of william p hobby and of ida culp hobby, moderating tonight's conversation is the director of lbj presidential library, mark lawrence, the author, the end of ambition, the united and the third world in the vietnam era, which recently won the prestigious h. farrell book prize, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming mark lawrence don carleton and kearns goodwin. well, thank you, mark. and welcome everyone to the lbj auditorium for what promises to be a really memorable evening to mark the arrival of really important archive. all material archival collections of -- goodwin and, doris kearns goodwin. it's a memorable event, of course, for the briscoe center that will be the home of this material and for the university of texas more generally. it's also a wonderful event for the lbj library, whose holdings whose mission intersect in so many ways with both -- goodwin and doris kearns goodwin. i think this corner of, the ut-austin campus, can very reasonable claim to be one of the, as mark mentioned one of the places to go without question, for study of the 1960s in the united states. doris, i, of course, want spend some time tonight diving into all this material that's on its way to us and talk about some examples but start us off speaking generally about the importance of the -- goodwin material that's that's that's coming. what makes it so important as an archival collection? what's amazing about my late is that he saved everything over many, many years these boxes that were 350 boxes traveled with us. we went and were in basements and attics and finally we got open them. but it is really extraordinary. archive of the 1960s because he just was in the right place at the right time. some people have said he was the zelig of the 1960s or the forrest gump of. the 1960s just pops up wherever you want to pop up, you know, starting really in the late fifties when the seeds of 1960s are set, he was at harvard law school and then he clerked for justice frankfurter. and that had to do with the cases that were there. year with a follow up on the brown v board desegregation cases. and then he was the person who investigated the rigged television quiz shows some of you may remember the $64,000 question in 21. it was -- idea that he saw a grand jury hearings that had not come up with an indictment or no, they never open the hear, they never open the minutes. and he knew was weird. and so that's was that investigation was made into a movie by robert redford and then he's a young kid and he gets to work with john kennedy on the caroline plain as the second speechwriter under ted sorensen. and it's a very intimate setting when they're on plane and he kept everything that was related to that. and then he ends up meeting with and creative creating the alliance for progress. creating the alliance for progress with latin america. and he's sort of the peak of his powers. and then he gets a meeting with che guevara in the middle of the night which which right wing goes after him for, and he gets taken over to the state department instead. and then he leaves there because he's not happy there. and he goes with the peace corps. i mean, he just every single thing you want and, then what happens is he's about to come back to the white house and and john kennedy is killed. he going to be returning as a special consultant, the arts. and he has a diary of going to the white house right. the assassination and being in the middle of all the planning for the flame, how the body would be laid out. it's an extraordinary account of it. and then soon thereafter, he writes a speech for john for lyndon johnson, and he becomes johnson's chief speechwriter. and the most extraordinary time of all, not only as mark mentioned, the we shall overcome speech, but the great society speech. how would university speech, all the campaign stuff, civil rights act, voting rights act, signing statements and in the middle of the most extraordinary period, i think, of american liberalism in many ways, then he leaves and, then he gets involved in the antiwar movement. he turned against the war. he went up to new hampshire with. he's up there with with mccarthy. they call him the che guevara of the teenybopper. when he was up there. he loved that experience. but bobby kennedy was his closest friend in public life. so he left and he went to bobby kennedy's and was with bobby when he died. he was close to jackie kennedy, was working with her on a series of projects when he was in the white house. so he knows all those characters in the sixties, and he's an important figure but not the central figure. so he is thinking about all these other people. you hear what he thinks about jackie and bobby and and lbj and and has relationships with them all. so it really is allows you to time travel by going through these papers to this roller coaster of a decade which had extraordinary triumphs and extraordinary sadnesses. and i think in a certain sense, it's a metaphor for how we have to look at history, because we look at it and remember the sadness of the way it ended, the assassinations martin luther king and of bobby, the anti-war violence that was in the streets, the riots that were in the streets. and it seems like a decade of sadness, but it was a decade of great, accomplished men civil rights, voting rights, npr, immigration reform, education, and so many things head start that johnson able to accomplish in some ways that john kennedy had tried to. and then johnson them through in the end. so it you i think to relive a time which was an extraordinary time that i think will be talked about for years to come and he was a packrat. you can see memorabilia, you can see menus, things, you can see news paper articles, you can see magazines, you can see memos with the presidential on them. and you can see his on everything. i mean, for me as a presidential historian, his his archives and it was my guy that i looked through. so since my husband that i was able to go through these boxes with so it's pretty exciting. how did you come to the realization that you had all of this under your roof? well, at the beginning it was a pain in the --, because they just traveled with us everywhere and we didn't have room for them. in fact, for most of the time when our kids were were young, we on a house in main street in concord, and it was more like a townhouse than a big. but we loved it because was i always wanted to live in the city. so i was sort of in the middle of concord center, so we had to send them off to storage. and then finally our books overran the house. we had too many books, the house. so we finally moved to a big house that had room for our books. but it also meant we could bring the boxes back from storage. and then what happened is that the years that we had them, he never really wanted to go through. i just thought why i knew some of was in them because he felt so sad about the ending of the sixties. and i thought he thought it would make him sad, but then once he reached his eighties, one day he just comes floating down the stairs. he says, it's time i'm going to go through the boxes. i'm now in my eighties. if i have any wisdom to dispense, it better start being dispensed now. so the wonderful that happened was in the last years of his life, including the last year when he had cancer, and it gave him a sense of purpose. we went through the boxes together and and we started, you know, in the fifties and we went up through the sixties and and right up until the end. and then he did other things after and we went through those as well. but by reliving it together, he came to a different feeling about lyndon johnson remembered the great moments and the anger that he had felt softened and the respect that he had had at the beginning began to increase. i had always been a lbj fan, so i was thinking john kennedy never got through the congress. it was only lbj who got it all through. but i began to see as we went through the boxes, the inspiration that john kennedy had provided. and it made me feel differently. jfk and him feel differently about. lbj it's almost like they were two halves of a whole and and it really, i know in those last years his life, especially the last months when he kept thinking i was going to help write a book about this, that it gave him sense of purpose that made him handle the fact that he knew that cancer was taking his life away. but he felt a sense of fulfillment as he looked back. what not only he had done, but what the people around him had done in people that he'd worked with and the colleagues. and it was that sense of your legacy before you die that made him sense a sense of feeling good. it meant these boxes mean everything. me and now they're going to be here in texas. don. don, what were your impressions when you first discovered this trove of and how did your thought process develop as you learned more? well, i mean you know, i want to say that i was in new york. this was right before covid. and mark called me and said, are sitting down. so i'm always sitting down. so but anyway, i said, well, what's up, mark? what are up to now? i have some new scheme of yours and i said and he said, no, you said i'm just left concord or maybe he was in concord. i don't recall. now and he was working on this wonderful jfk book that he's published and he said he'd just through the good, the good archives and papers. and so we talked about that and was pretty much freaking out over the telephone and got me very excited and so we agreed it. i think the next thing that happened is that we got on the telephone with you and that's how i met. doris is actually on the telephone. and then we got hit with covid and that sort of froze in place everywhere actually. and after that and then the last finally when things started opening up last summer, we had doris come here and we met with we had a very nice dinner with president hartzell. jerry hartzell. and you invest last year beth laskey is her chief of staff who was key much of this as well but anyway it was a wonderful dinner doris really really impressed president tremendously and. i have to give him full credit. this none of this would be happening right now if it wasn't jay hartzell. and jay hartzell deserves tremendous credit for it. thank you. yes yes. but at any rate, so we jay pulled me over while we're in the president's office and he said, what we do next on this? and i said, well, i need to go to boston where the papers are stored and make sure that there's not 500 bags of sawdust. instead, papers and he's okay, go to it. so went i flew to boston and met you there and we started going through the material collection and i was like a little going through a rare of baseball cards of a brooklyn dodgers maybe, i think boston red sox will work as well. yeah, i'll and you know you you said to packrat thing i mean i was thinking my god thank god for packrat i mean this is this is what saves history mean this is why we have these material. so i went through as much as i could this enormous collection, the two different archives. and there very large and so all i could do was sample, you know, do a sample. and i didn't have to see very i mean, it a gold mine if you're historian it was just one thing after another and everything the dawsons just described to you about her late husband's career or his documented every document, i would pull out, would have some relationship, a key relationship with all the things you were just talking about. and so i just, you know, was terribly excited. and so i realized that this would be a huge, huge thing for the come us. and thankfully we worked out that, you know, making that happen but when was there doris and i went to went to a dinner with some with a friend of and at her house and we were able to talk a lot and in the car going back the hotel i told her i doors you know we there's no question about the value of this incredibly significant historically significant collection of your late husband's but we want your papers. and she. she literally was going oh way no way and we talk more about it and and i told her i said you know you're you're a significant cultural figure in this country. your late husband was also incredibly important in american history. but you yourself as she's a is everyone here as the reason you're probably is in the knowledge that she is an important cultural figure and she's also a very significant public intellectual so you know said yes we need to bring both of these they both need to be in the briscoe center and thankfully she she consented to that and so we have this enormous collection now and we couldn't be more excited i mean it's just covers all the bases that you just mentioned indoors. you live in concord massachusetts. you're a famous red sox fan. why the briscoe center? why austin, texas, for your material and your late husband's material? well, i think it really felt like i was coming home mean my political presidential career started here with lbj no question about that. when i think back it, i would have been an historian. i my ph.d. was in supreme court history. i would have been studying those people in their robes of presidents, except the fact that when i was 24 years old, i was a white house fellow, as sure as many of you know, and ended up for lyndon johnson, despite having written an article against him in the new republic how to remove lyndon johnson power and somehow it came out two days after the dance at the white house that celebrated our white house fellowship. and instead of kicking me out of the program he said, oh, bring her down here for a year, and if can't win her over, no one can. so it was an extra injury experience. i look back on it now and i just wish that i had known what i know now. i would have asked him so many thousands of questions because i mean, there times when i didn't want to even be down there because had a boyfriend at home and how could you think of not spending every minute you could with this president and with ladybird? but it was i took me into his family in ways and i, i stayed at the ranch many of the times and listen him mostly i just listen to him talk, talk, talk, talk. did he ever talk and never really stopped? and as some of you know, i always tell the story of the i was doing very well with everything i worried that he had somewhat of a womanizing reputation. i knew i was a young girl, but i kept talking to him about steady boyfriends, even when i didn't have any of them at all. and everything worked out perfectly. until one day he said he wanted to discuss. our relationship, which sounded rather ominous he took me to the lake nene nearby. lyndon johnson, of course. wine and cheese and a red jack tablecloth and then he started out, doris, more than any other woman i've ever known. and my heart sank. and then he said, you remind me of my so. so anyway, so this was the beginning of my presidential history career. so i am so grateful to him was an extraordinary most probably the most political figure i've ever met. and my first book was on him. and then i think what i what mattered so much that i looked at him from the outside in when i was in the anti-war movement and i was young, you know, yelling things about feeling a sense of judgment from the outside. and when i got to know him, it wasn't that he changed my mind necessarily about the war, but he changed my mind about him. and i became much more toward him. and i like to believe brought that empathy to all the other subjects that i did after that, as i moved to kennedy, as i moved to franklin roosevelt, as i moved abraham lincoln, and finally and taft, not just trying to judge them, but to try and understand them from the inside out. so i'm so grateful. so that's a huge part of the reason. and then is another big part of the reason he was pretty irresistible when i met him and i really could see the briscoe center was going to these these papers come. they weren't just going to be sitting there that that they've they've been able to not only open them to the public and to researchers get documentaries written about them to get books done about them, to have exhibits made about them and want them to live. and i want i love history so much and. i just have this feeling in today's world. i've a lot about not having so many people wanting to study history anymore. and the majors are going down. and it's a heartbreaking thing to me so that if this place can help to get young students, to get interested in primary sources, get interested in in history, it will mean an enormous to me and i owe that back to texas. and if i can make that happen and i'd love to be with students again, i loved teaching when i was young and then i ended up becoming a full time writer instead. but always missed it. so i'm hoping i'll be able to be with you students and and, you know, tell them stories just i was listen to stories from lbj. i have stories i can tell them. so it's the right place. it's the right place. i'm very. but we're certainly glad you feel that way. don, talk about how these collections fit within the holdings, the briscoe center and the mission of the well as, far as the mission is concerned. i mean, we we go out and gather the evidence of history and bring it in for people like yourself to do research or original in history. and there's also we contribute to teaching as well so any, you know, this whole collection couldn't fit better in terms with us in terms of our mission because this is rich collection for certainly for original research but also for teaching purposes. so that's why we're hoping that. but also fits in it goes it fits very well with work that we've already done several years and that is bringing in collections that really relate to two without thinking that, well, we're going to collect this because it relates to the good one's career. it certainly does. i mean, everything from our our collections that document the period, the good one was active and widespread and beginning. if you just think about it one of our star collections is the walter archive, who embodies the sixties more i think in terms of that but also also have james farmer's archive james farmer dr. farmer was the head of core congress racial equality. we have the agitator abbie hoffman we his papers these are quincy's central 1960s collections and we have a huge photojournalism and documentary photography archive with about nearly 9 million images in it. and several of the photographers whose work we have whose archives we have documented the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement. and i think particularly for like philip schulke, his entire archive is with us and. when i say we have the photo archives of these individuals, i'm not talking about, you know, ten or 12 prints that we've selected we're talking about everything. they're negatives. the prints there, you know, contact sheets, their papers and so forth. so flip schulke, martin luther king's personal photographer, we have the largest collection of images of martin luther king existence in one place because of flip schulke. we have the photo archives and talking about goodwill, we have a photo archives of charles moore who photographed and has the most famous photographs of the of the really the birmingham movement, the 1964, where you you know, the his images when you see the of fire hoses being you know directed at protesters and dogs poor you know biting that's charles moore's war we have his entire collection and then finally also in terms of photography that goes along with collection is the selma the collection we have that documents the selma movement. we have the photo archives of a photographer by the name of spotter martin who is the person who took all of these famous photographs that. you when you think of selma, when you think of that scene on the on the edmund pettus bridge where john lewis is getting beaten to death. those are spot or martin's photographs. those were two alabama boys, by the way, who in civil rights. but so we've got all of these collections really directly. and we have we have massive collection of congressional papers of people that certainly did. goodman worked with us at one time or another. people like congressman jack brooks from beaumont it was a powerful chair of the judiciary committee. we have. oh, and speaking of photographers, we have the jack lew archive. lew was very close. the kennedy family, some of the most famous photographs of john and jackie were taken. jack lew. oh, these are all at the briscoe center. and so, you know, it's i'll be side by side. they'll all be side by south. that's exactly right. so it's it fits. and we have, you know, we also have some lbj related to harriet mcpherson's papers or with us, you know, with house busby pardon me. bill moyers. yeah bill moyers is another so just you know, it's that's really the connections are all over the place don you and your great have already set up a small exhibit of some of the items from the -- goodwin collection and everyone should go see this as i did for the third time i think this afternoon it has wonderful objects. a box that came from that was a gift from che guevara. but i think that my favorite are ones that mark updegrove alluded to in his introduction, the drafts of speeches, you can see how those famous words that were very often spoken by jfk or lbj were crafted through drafts and memos and all the rest that goes into a speech. those are some of my favorite items. and i've only, of course, seen a small. doris, let me ask you, what are some of your favorite items from the collection that we're getting? well, i think probably for me personally, what matters the most is that i wanted to know what my husband was like when he was a young man because he was 12 years older than me. and i've always envied who married their husbands or wives from high school that you'd know them all the way through. and i kept asking, what were you like as a young guy? and it's, i don't know. i was too busy being him i don't i cannot know what to tell you. but it turned out that when he was college, he made a best friend who he wrote 50 letters to. from the time he was in college to harvard law school all the way through. and the friends saved, the letters and gave them back to him and and they're incredible. i mean, i just, i fell in love with this. i would have loved the guy back then. it just meant so much to see what he was like. he was so earnest. he started a diary when he at tufts and he talks about how when you have a diary, it's your friend and you have to be honest to it and will you be will you be faithful to the diary? and i was so excited thinking, oh, my god, i'm going to read diaries of his. and it turned out that the only page of the diary he got too busy. he finally resumed it. he got into the kennedy administration, but these letters took the place of that, and the letters from harvard law school are just golden. i mean, he's under enormous pressure like everybody was at that. and he was very funny, though my husband was really funny. it was the best part of him. no matter how mad i'd get with him, he would something funny and i couldn't stay mad at him anymore made me even matter. but you can feel that humor in letters. he's talking about how he knows it's crazy. it's his first year in law school that he's worrying about even every minute that he's spending eating, that he's not studying because, the next guy is studying more. and then the next guy will do better on the log exams. and then he'll get the girl and he'll get the job and he'll have a wonderful life. and he said, i know this is nuts, but this is the way i feel. and then they get to their practice exams in that first year. and he says the dean has assured us that only seven people had to be hospitalized last year. and anyway, then finally writing to george, his friend and then he has a piece, a note after in july of his first year and he says for want a stamp. i didn't mail you this letter, but have huge news for you. i just got my grades. i'm number one in the class. i can't believe it. so. but the most amazing thing that happens. he then goes back for his second year. when you're on the is on the law review, then of course and he's supposed to be working for the other professors and he's in the and he feels claustrophobic cause i've been in libraries my whole life. he leaves and goes out and volunteers for the army. i mean, crazy in a way, but he had to get away. he felt the pressure was too much. he was afraid that he was just going to need to. and he had an incredible time. he was in the army in france, in southern france. and he wrote 100 letters to his parents during that time. so i read that and they're just wonderful. he's he had never traveled abroad before and he goes to st moritz and there's this wonderful that he writes about being with these two swiss girls and his army buddies. and they're at some great restaurant, which he kept the menu from the restaurant and. and he said they had a decanter was turned over like a teardrop and and the food was so good. i'll never forget this day as long as i live, he said. i was near close to tears and i just thought i brought that letter to him and i said, oh my god, this is the guy i fell in love with. but anyway then there's important stuff that happens. at the same time, he becomes the president of law review. and then we found a picture of him in the law review holding the baton 50 white guys and two women on one side and the other one being ruth bader ginsburg. and then meanwhile, i'm reading letters that he's writing to george, talking about the fact that, oh, my god, they're traveling us in the law review all around the country. they couldn't have any job i want is a burden choice. should i take it so you know it's a special thing abroad or should i clerk for a justice he does? or should i get a big job? and meanwhile, ruth bader ginsburg can even get an interview for a job. so i got all mad at him as if it was his fault. i kept bringing it. and then i finally saw the other picture had i passed it four years and i decided, woman, i'd like to know who she was. and i went to interview her in california. nancy box was her name and she told a great story. she actually got a job in the summer and got to simpson thatcher. she got a start at that. the reason she was jewish like right ruth was and she was a woman, but she had not children. she wasn't married. so kept her on until she got pregnant. and then she told me, they said to her, they came to her and they said, we're not embarrassed by your situation, you know, as if pulling the stomach for being. but our clients be so they let her go. but she described how she went back to a harvard reunion and and she was some years later and her professor was young woman with a short skirt and boots and pregnant. and she thought progress has been made. so, so anyway, just to be able to follow him to justice frankfurter and then early days of kennedy through these letters to. george i think personally that's what meant most to me. i found i found the young guy that i never knew a lot of the collection of course sheds light on -- goodwin's relationship, first with jfk and then with lbj. i want to ask you about a document that's on display over at the briscoe center that really jumped out at me. -- goodwin writes to lbj in march of 1965 and suggests that the president gave -- goodwin permission to write an article for called show magazine. and -- goodwin says, this is an opportunity to really highlight all that the johnson administration is doing for the arts and lyndon johnson presumably sends this back to goodwin with a note scrawled at the bottom and the note says, i don't want you to get too occupied with in articles where you won't have time to think and for me what does this tell us about the relationship between goodwin and lyndon johnson? yeah, it's funny when what the way he got over to the white house in the first place and it's very reminiscent of this in a sense is that was asked to work on a message on on poverty. he was still he was still working in the peace corps at that point with sergeant shriver. and he did one draft. and then another draft. and johnson liked it. and he finally i finally listened to the tapes. and at one point, he's talking to bill moyers and he said, you know, we need somebody to be a speechwriter here. that can have a little rhythm. churchill and rhythms. and we have to put some sex in our speeches. and who do you think could do that? and moyers suggests because he'd worked with with -- in the peace corps, he says. -- goodwin but says, interestingly, because there was a real fault between the good, the kennedy people and the johnson people, he said, but he's not one of us. you know. in other words, he's he's not a kennedy person. i mean, he's not he's not a johnson person. and so but finally he decides he's going to take him on because he then writes another that he really likes. and so meanwhile he's still being it's a long, complicated story, but he's being paid by the state department, even though he was in the peace. so we have to call up dean rusk and hear it on the tape saying, i want that goodwin to come over here and i think we better him a little $50 raise. and if you have to take it out of my group, you can take it out of that. but i want him to come over here. i'm going to work him and night i'm going to put him in a little room. i'm going let's make him right. and it was great. i mean, they had a very complex relationship because johnson i think really did respect what -- was able to do. and despite my saying that, my personal favorite are those of my knowing him as a young man. nothing mattered more to me than to see the draft of the we shall overcome. i mean, the idea that what happened is that on sunday night, a week from bloody sunday president johnson decided he was going to give a speech to congress to talk about voting rights act. and it meant that -- only had monday morning from monday morning till monday night to write speech. and i couldn't have done that if my life depended on it. and you see the draft. and it's so beautiful, you know, every now and then, history and fate at a certain time, in a certain place. so it was in lexington and concord, so it was in appomattox. so it was in selma, alabama. this is not a -- problem, not a white problem, not a northern problem, not a southern problem. it's not a moral problem. even because it is simply wrong to deny your fellow americans the right to vote. i mean, it's so beautiful and it talks the real hero where were the --, as they were called then. but the only time he bothered -- whole time that day, he knew what he was under. he called him up and said he'd like to talk about cotulla and didn't know exactly what that meant because those days the speechwriters were in the west wing, they weren't in executive office, weren't thousands of the men were just a few of them. and what had happened is when johnson teaching at southwest state teachers college, he took a year off and he went and taught in a small mexican-american community, cotulla. and he saw the pain of prejudice. he often said on those kids and wanted to do everything he could for them. and he did everything he could. he used his money for soccer and baseball and all sorts of stuff that they could play. but the way it was written into the speech was when i was there in 1927, and i saw these kids and i couldn't do what i wanted to do for them. but now i'm here. it's 1965, and i have the power and i intend to it. i mean, it was a great part of the speech, but to just go on one more minute when when i i was at the civil rights march in 1963, as a young person in college, in graduate, we all were listening together to what happened at the pettus bridge in selma. and if i'd thought when i was watching that and then listening with my friends at graduate school at harvard to that selma speech and tears were in our eyes. that speech was so beautiful. if i ever could have imagined that three years later, i would be working for the president who delivered speech and ten years later would marry the man who helped craft those words. i couldn't have believed it. it was an extraordinary thing. so that matters enormously. you know, see, of the giver, give you some of what the the connections that we're talking about here between well, we've do at the center and the collections that we have can be more and with this collection with goodman collection couldn't be more beautifully than that story you just told about selma and how he was inspired to write that incredible speech and just thinking here you've got good ones thought processes this is a great thing about the papers. it's not just a finished final copy of the speech. it the whole history of the speech, how it was conceived, how it was thought about going back and forth, edited annotations on it. and i'm just thinking about how excited i how exciting it is to think about that. and then having the illustrations of, of spider martin's that and you just mentioned the edmund pettus bridge and the interactions of that because johnson and goodwin and all the others were looking these images and that is what really inspired them. so to bring them together at the briscoe center is exciting. doris, thanks to dan's persuasive, persuasive techniques, apparently your archive is also coming to briscoe center. how is it different from -- goodwin's collection? well, it is really different. it's really it's really about all the research that i did for all the books that i've written, i mean, i was a pack rat about that, not much about myself. i mean, i think what happened i try to think back on it. i started a diary when was in high school and then my mother died when i was 15 and i couldn't figure out what am i going to say. i'm not up to that idea of being able to absorb this on written page so i never can never finish the diary. never kept the diary i didn't keep letters that i wrote to people of my friends have sent letters back to me just george did to to my husband. but what i did do was to keep every of research that i did for every that i wrote so that think what people will be able to for it is the whole process that you go through in writing a book at the beginning, there's a that you want to tell. i mean, one of the things that's been difficult me is that i've always chosen to write about people. a lot of other people have chosen to write about because they're the most interesting characters. no, what? but when you choose abraham lincoln, it's kind of scary. since 16,000 books have already been written or franklin roosevelt about whom so much had been written. so in each case i had figure out when i started, what is the story i can tell that won't just simply a biography of these characters and and what you see in the papers you'll see an original outline of what i thought i was going to write. i thought, i was going to write about franklin, about abe and mary like i'd written about franklin and eleanor because franklin and eleanor had worked. but then i worked for two years on abe and mary and didn't work because she wasn't a public figure that could carry the story. so then i found out about these other characters seward and chase and bates and meant that it was quadruple biography. and you could write a biography about each one of them. no wonder books get so fat. i was going write about teddy and taft because i was so interested in their relationship and they had letters. it's always letters that i want because they you feel like you're looking over the handwriting. somebody is writing henry, looking over their shoulders and you hear what they're feeling, not just about the other person writing to about it, their wives or their children and diaries. i love and you can have those in the olden days. so all of that stuff is in this material. but then i turned out with teddy and taft. i also wrote about the muckrakers. so again it became a quadruple biography so that people will be able to see how your mind goes in different directions and you have thousands time, more research than even my fat books can can carry. and so i think they'll be able to watch the evolution, just as you're saying. you can watch the evolution a speech. you can watch the evolution, a book. and i'm really excited to think that there'll be a lot of material there for people that they can take their own books or their own articles off because. there's so much more. you could write a book about mcclure, whose magazine was the important progressive magazine during teddy roosevelt time, or about ida tarbell, who i adore, you know who brought down standard oil or lincoln steffens or william allen white and. and i think similarly you could write another book about taft or you could write a book about, you know, blacks in the army. there's so many different subjects that become it that that i feel really of of having all that there. and it's sort of a it's a different of thing. i wished i had saved everything and. how could i, as an historian, not have saved like he did? i mean, it's like he knew more me than i knew about myself, but but it's a different kind of archive and i think, it does complement his in a, in a interesting way. yeah it's i'm going to say something about her her archive distinct from from goodwin's archive this is truly a writer's archive and and by that i'm saying that you you can go into her papers and you can as she's she's mentioned and you can see the creative process. you know no authors about the don't as far as i know and i haven't made any sense down to roger you know writes it all down and that's it and then they publish it it is there is a process to this creativity and and she's got all of that there. i mean, it's right there. for many years, i taught a historical methods course and a history department to young beginning. some of them weren't so, but beginning ph.d. students and history. and if too had this collection, it's a perfect example, a case study of how historian works, how they can come up with a topic of they the research they do pulling things together. maybe their things in there that know they'd want to it not being related to what you working on but but it's a process and if i was still teaching that course i would go you know i will assign that those papers your papers to these young historic to show them how this is done. it's a real practical kind of thing. so that's one of the great attractions of her papers but also the. she herself as i said earlier, is a significant figure. so anyone wants to do any work on you doors as a topic has it right i mean there would a biography of doors whether you like that not doris and the stuff is there and not only that but it's more than than doors to i as a historian myself mark we that we can go into someone's and we may not be working on that person but that person may have been involved in things that we're actually working. and that's true. just think of all the books that she's written and the topics that she's covered and all us know we've published books, you do the research and so forth. there's a tremendous of material that your publishers not going to publish unless you want to a five volume book or you know, of books. and so that research that she's to do is just think of all books, type of team of rivals, that's all sitting basically just they're waiting to be used and maybe nothing to do with what you were originally looking at you so right down you know i got interested when i was doing the fitzgeralds and the kennedys in medical history. john fitzgerald, rose kennedy's father went to harvard medical school and. i have two sisters that are nurses and a brother in law was a doctor so i've always loved medical history. so i wrote an entire chapter on what medicine was like in the 1880s when he was at harvard medical school. and the publishers came to me and said, this would be fine if he had become a doctor. he dropped out after a year and it became a politic. so i couldn't use hardly any of it. i was i was horrible. so it's there wasted effort. so somebody is just going into an archive. right. right. doris, your your papers are full of research into the lives of the presidents. you sometimes called my guys. let's, let's, let's let's talk a little bit about your relationship ups with the presidents about you've written both the ones you got to know and others that you got to know through archival record. what's your most experience with the living president? yeah, i think in some ways probably it's with president obama. i mean, had happened was when he was running for the presidency one day he was still way behind in the polls. but one day i got a call on my cell and he said, hello, this is barack and i've just finished reading team of and we have to talk. so i went to his senate office building and he just wanted to talk about lincoln's emotional intelligence. he was just really overtaken by the idea that he could forgive past resentments, that he could put these rivals into cabinet, you know, that he was able to tamp down human like envy and anger and jealousy. and we talked about just lincoln's lincoln's emotional intelligence at that point. and it was the beginning of a relationship that we established. i mean, i'll never forget inaugural also. then what happened is then, of course, the campaign goes on and eventually he wins nomination. and somebody said him after he won. would you really be willing to put into your cabinet a rival, even if that spouse was an occasional pain in the --? he'd had some problems, of course, with bill during the campaign and then quoted lincoln. he said, you know, country is in peril. these are strongest, the most able people in country. i'll put them by my side. so then team of rivals sort of became a code word for for what he had done. and i'll forget i was down for nbc the night of the inauguration and there was a party the night before and and hillary clinton was there. she came over to me and she said, you're responsible for my becoming secretary state. i said, no, not me. but but abraham lincoln, perhaps so. anyway, then he had me come and do a series of historian's dinners for him, which were really fun. my fellow historians. and i went and we didn't get dressed as our presidents, but we brought them in our heads to give him whatever advice was happening on whatever he was going on through that. president biden has had one of those a couple of those dinners as well now. and it's just a wonderful thing as an historian to be able to look at what a president is facing right then and tell them what another president in the past be able to advise them for because they're our heads. so, you know, we would presidents have studied jefferson or jackson or or or reagan were all there. we were all there together. it was wonderful for all of us. and then the other experience that the experience with president obama brought me was, i did an exit interview with him before. he left and it was a really wide ranging talk about lincoln, about and i told him the story he knew the story from reading team of rivals that lincoln used to when he got mad at somebody, he would write what he called a hot letter to the person. and then he called psychologically put it aside and hopefully need to send it. so i said to president, do you ever do this? he said, yeah, i do it all the time he said, what do you mean? so, well, i write letters to people and i met him as well. what do you do with them? so i throw them in the wastebasket and they got all, my god, if we'd only known that we could have had them. but what a great thing to be able to do. then the last thing that just saved about this because of what we've been going through and watching the the whole festivity surrounding or the celebrations or the sadnesses surrounding the queen's death, he invited me to the dinner that the had for him in 2011. and then the next night there was a dinner, a smaller dinner that he for the queen, and it was an extraordinary occasion. i mean, there is something that pageantry i mean, i had to have a dress made my husband had to be in white ties. we had to wear gloves and. you had to know you didn't have to curtsy, but you didn't have to touch her. and anyway, that all worked out fine and it was just so much fun anticipating all this. and she gave a lovely speech the night at buckingham palace. she talked about what america had meant to england and how we'd rescued england twice. and then the marshall had kept kept them on their feet. and there were common values and common language. but then she was funny. common language, even if we don't speak the same words, actually, and it was just so graceful and it was late at night, she she was in her mid-eighties, i suspect, that time. and then the next night when we had the ambassador's dinner for the ambassador's house, obama's dinner for her for some godforsaken reason, there was a table of about eight people, and i was at that table. there was tom hanks, was there, queen david cameron's wife, because the men in the they were separated. admiral stavridis, me and david beckham. so so i mean, if i hadn't known obama, i wouldn't have gotten to meet the queen but anyway it was a i've been friendly with obama then and i think the great thing about being a presidential story in which you know which mark to grove knows is that you cross party lines because you're you're a historian so that as mark has been able to know you bush the bush presidents. well i've been able to meet them. i've been able to meet with the various people along the line because they they care about history at least most of them do. not just. better have some water. if you could if you could offer actually maybe you've done this so i shouldn't phrase it that way when you speak to president biden, how do you draw your knowledge of american history and of the presidency in particular to offer advice? what is the advice you offer based on your knowledge? well, when when we had the the that president all meeting with him and we supposed to talk about it but then everybody went television and talked about it anyway so i can now talk about it. he had asked each of us to say something him and he asked me to talk about five such chats and about just how it was that fdr was able to that intimate bond with the people. and it meant using short rather than long words. it meant having a conversational tone of speaking. somehow roosevelt was able to make people feel he'd start them off. my friends and and he would explain things to them explain the banking crisis to them so that they understood it. what it meant when he first came into office and he was going to have to solve crisis. and i was able to talk to him just about how i remember saul bellow. i don't remember, but i read this that saul bellow was he would walk down the street sometime in a hot chicago night and you look in the window and you could see everybody at their radios and in their living room with their kitchen and and he said, you could keep walking and, not miss a word of what he said. and then there's a story of a construction worker hurrying home. one night and his partner said, where are you going? he well, my president's coming to speak to me in my living room tonight. it's only right i be there to greet him when he comes. so we talked about that. but then of course, it's so much harder today because in those days know eight out of ten people would be listening more. any other radio, any entertainer or big sporting event. some of the people who didn't like him might have thrown the radio of the window so they didn't have to listen to him. but people were. there was a common sense of the country listening as a whole. and i think one advice one could give to president or to any of our current presidents, president roosevelt understood, that if he spoke too often, they would lose their effective ness, that people said, you got to go on the radio every night. the only way to sustain morale, he said, if my speeches ever become routine. they won't. the same power he only delivered 30 fireside chats in 12 years as president, which only two or three a year. now there's a compulsion to be on the air all time and speak so they don't have the same cachet that they have when you're waiting and waiting for those kind of speeches. so i think that's one thing we did talk about. if were to go back to talk to him. i still feel so about one thing i'd love to see done if i were younger, i think i'd make my cause right now and that be. we've got to figure out some way, get people from different sections and countries and parties to feel a common sense of of of humanity, americanism and a part of the country and and i think teddy roosevelt warned that democracy would be in peril if people began to each other as the other, rather as common citizens and i keep thinking about and teddy roosevelt was for this and so was eleanor roosevelt and so are people today. some sort of national service program to take kids from high school before they go to college or before they go to vocational. and just think of it if the kid from the city can come to, the country or the country could go to the city. internal peace corps. we have, americorps, we've got various projects city here but this would be if it become a real thing where people did it and they worked on disaster relief or teaching older people or helping and they had a sense of mission. they knew what it was like as you do in the military to have a common mission that crosses all party lines and all class lines. maybe then we could break this terrible plague of the otherness that's facing today. i did mention it to president biden when i was there, and he did like the idea, but it would take it's going to take somebody with a passion to really make that happen. but if i if there was one thing, if i could mobilize all my guys to come back and make happen, i'd love to see that happen. dawson it's so easy. these to feel a sense of despair about polarization and to feel a yearning for new effective leadership. is there a leader out there whom you particularly admire? well, you know, i think when you look at president zelensky, how can one not help but admire the leadership and just you know, i have a special connection to it in my heart because. my youngest son, joey, who graduated from in june of oh one and then joined the army right after september 11th, was in iraq for a couple of tours of duty, earned a bronze star, came out, was in afghanistan, came back, sasha and i the parents are like my parents and they can't leave right now. they're stuck in the same city where where zelensky grew up. so that i knew that i just feared that that putin was going to retaliate and he did not long ago, last week and took hydraulic system out for a while but most importantly just watching it's got rings of churchill, rings of fdr what is that magic. a leader is able to project his own confidence and courage onto the people. so, as they said about churchill, they went into battle armed by his words i mean he just seemed pitch perfect is it partly that he was an actor and he knows how to project himself he understood the importance of theater around but it was with him and i remember this video that they had at one point where where people talking about the rubble that was in their in their city that had been almost destroyed and this was my this was my dog. this was my. and then he said, you know, he said, we will we will build again. we will those responsible for these war crimes. we will sing again. i mean, it was just an extraordinary and and that's what churchill was able to do. i mean, he would give those talks night when the bombing was going on, and then the next day there would be a somebody out in the same that was bombed at the entire shop, had been shattered and the windows were gone and they'd put a big sign out, come write in more open than usual. come in. i mean. that's what that's the magic of leadership that that you can transpose your own in your countrymen so so much so there was a recent poll that said that 98% of the ukrainian people think they're going to win the war. 91% support, 92% support. zelensky i mean, any leader in our country would give anything for that kind of approval, but it just shows what happens when when when a country unified. and again, you just you wish it for us on ourselves some degree of that i mean roosevelt was able to that during world war two, even before pearl harbor was able to get us begin to get out of that. and we for that connection between the citizens and the leader once again you are both such accomplished historians. let me throw this question. both of you do. you see a role for history, prince, in addressing what seems to be going wrong in american society. doris, why don't i start with you and then history can come to the rescue without a question. now, i, i actually do. i mean, i that when when think now that we're living people will say to me on the streets when i walk down sometimes if they know, if they know who i am and they know i'm an historian, is this the worst of times tell me, is this the worst of times? and clearly we've been through really tough times before. and i think if history can remind us of what it like during the civil war, what it was like when the depression was at rock bottom, what what it was like in the early days of world war two when it wasn't at all clear that we could win when we were on the 18th and military power and england desperately needed our help. and i just in my mind sometimes what lincoln have faced when he came into office 11 states seceding from the union and the anxiety he said he felt if he'd ever known what it was, he couldn't have thought he could have lived through it. fdr when he took over and he's somebody said to him, you know, if new deal program works, you'll be one of the great presidents. if it doesn't, you'll be one of the worst. he said, no, i'll be last president. democracy itself fail. it seemed like democracy was failing at the turn of the 20th century when their anarchist bombings in the streets, when the big business was swallowing up, small business when the industrial revolution had shaken up the economy, the tech revolution and globalization should have done today when there was real sense of hatred on the part of the people in the country for the people in the city. and there was a lot of immigration. it was a tough time. so was it tough to win when lbj took over if the assassination of jfk and yet in one of those instances we not only the leaders that we needed for those in time we had citizens that were willing to fight for what was necessary. and i think that's the connection. it's not just a matter of looking for somebody. when lincoln was called a liberator, he said, don't call me a liberator was the anti-slavery movement. and the union soldiers that did it all? it was the progressive movement that was already active in the cities and before teddy roosevelt came in, in the settlement house movement, the social gospel and religion, and of course, it was the civil movement behind lbj and then the women's the gay rights movement. so i think what we have to look for is the is not necessarily that history is going to tell us in just searching for that leader. in fact, that's something my came to at the end after all these, leaders that he had loved so much, some had died, some had failed. it's up to us, the citizens, to write the next chapter of this. and i think that's what history can us that we've been through. this country's been through really tough times. there's a strength in this country. i still believe in. and i know he believed in that that can that can come through. we have to be active. we have to be ones that are not spectators have to vote. we have to vote. that is what lyndon johnson said. the most thing of all is voting is the indispensable right, which all others depend. and unless we get out and make our views felt and begin to steal our divisions, then then we are democracy is in peril. but i suspect that citizens are waking up more and more and that more things are going to happen. i have to believe that as an historian and i think it's right. don, i love your thoughts. well, i. i couldn't possibly top that, you know, but i would add as a supplement, maybe that that that, you know, what can historians do? well, historians if you're really a historian, if you don't do this, you're not a historian. a historian bases their their judgments and conclusions on on the evidence. if dogged. you're not a historian. you may call yourself a historian, but historians, real historians who are credible with a reputation have the evidence to back up what they're saying and of course, this is our mission. this is the mission of, the lbj library's mission of the briscoe center, and that is to accumulate all this evidence about what really happened in past. you know everything has, a history, everything has a history. everything that you look at has a history. everything belongs to history. and it is a fundamental part of understanding our culture and much, much less the political environment that you live in. and, you know, i think it's incredibly important, particularly now you're talking about now to the health of our civil society and our the very existence of our democ racy that we that we use evidence to show. you know to to be available there when politicians just make up when they just make up the history without anything behind it. while we these collections the goodwin archives for example the evidence of what happened in the sixties that -- goodwin involved in. well, some politician can go just make it up and the other thing about this evidence that we have and is is we we live in an age where truth itself is totally under assault. the whole idea of truth and this is, again, something that's so fundamental that we have this evidence. we can people can go back. they can go to our collections and they can do research and do this. will historians do that so they tap into what we have. you know this. i know what doris certainly knows. and with that, we have a saying is a storage where there are no records. there is no history, none. and that's what do we have to do this for? preserve the study of history. and i you know, this this evidence that we accumulate. i mean, what other protection do we have from from history, denial or without actually having the evidence to disprove of the lies that they peddle? the conspiracy theorists of the we have the evidence that you can go and see if correct or not, if it really happened or not. so it's a it's a fundamental thing. and like said, it's incredibly important to the good health of a democracy that what historians do. here, here. don, it is it's tempting to end on such a resounding note, but i have to ask you to spend a minute or two telling all of us how can experience these that are either already at coming soon to the briscoe center? can we see the goodwin and doris kearns goodwin papers? what a great question. well we have a sample of materials that we brought back from boston and to aaron purdy on my staff went up there and, worked with doris and we have some of those as has already mentioned, on display now in a kind of a sampler show in the briscoe center. but we're moving most of the archive from boston this coming monday and we will have the entire thing in hand truck yes a big truck many many boxes as they say and but will take us a while to digest that and pro and processor and catalog it. and i'm hoping that it will be the collections will be available at least for some level of research and reference late next. in the meantime have a philosophy at the center. we don't close everything up until the last letter is cataloged. we don't do that we will open up some phases as a collection of before. maybe the whole collection is available. we're also going to do a major exhibit and we have a 3000 square foot exhibition and gallery and briscoe center right next door that. we're going to do really show off the treasures that are in this collection and so that people can come and just come in and see and look at them. so between that and we hope to have the exhibit, by the way, opened in april. so the staff and i have a whole of a lot of work to to get to make that happen. but we will have a formal opening of the archive in april and we will have doors back down to cut the ribbon on the on the exhibit will even provide the scissors if i could just make one more comment about history because i think that was such an important way to end this. lincoln wrote something when he was young about the fact that the revolutionary war heroes were dying, and he was worrying that the idea goals of the nation were not being taught to the next generation as a result, because the living battles were no longer there for people to. so he was wishing that everybody every mother could read to every child what the revolution was about, remember the ideals so that they'd become real in their minds. and i think that's what we need more than anything right now for us is to remember what it was this nation was founded upon the of independence, the ideals that we're not meeting in some ways right the gap between the reality and those ideals just so that they're not lost and in a in in a metaphorical way, as i say, the people from the 1960s are dying off right now. and so that's the one thing i'm so proud of. i mean so many of the people i'm talking to right now are are in their eighties. the people that i'm remembering that are remembering this period. and i want that decade with all of its triumphs, as well as a sadness to live on so that we can learn it. we can learn from the mistakes. we can learn from why it worked, why it was a time when young people really cared about the country, they were out there active. there was a activities, activism then, which is what we need again by now. and i just have hope if young people get into those archives and they read about what it was like when young people felt they were making a difference, when they were really lives cut across private lives in a thousand different ways, whether was even fighting against the government with the war in vietnam, there was still that sense that they were fighting for their country. and clearly the civil rights movement was extraordinary movement of young people were willing to give up their lives and everything else for a cause that mattered. and that's what we need again, is that feeling of people, citizens, as i said earlier, feeling a sense belonging to fight for this country, fight for the rights that they feel are being taken away. and and if they can feel, that from looking back at history when that and those times were extraordinary times that live on in our memory, then maybe that will give them a spur to to want to get active today even more so. so beautifully put. i hope that everyone here will have the chance to go over to the briscoe center here and see the small exhibit that's already and everything that's to come in the months ahead. doris kearns goodwin, don carlton, thank you for all you've done to bring this extraordinary collection, austin, and to make it available to to all of us and really to scholars and interested parties everywhere. thank you to our speakers. thank you all so much for being here.