For that introduction, thank you so much. I wish my parents could have heard that. It would have made my father very proud and my mother actually would have believed you. So there you go. Well, for me as you suggested, this lecture concludes an amazing year that began just a year ago when the library, the fred w. Smith library for the study of George Washington opened and i was able to take a seat as one of the inaugural library fellows. During that year, i learned what a treasure all of you have in mt. Vernon. Led by kurt v. Brands and with the library led by doug bradburn, the staff here is simply extraordinary. Theyre extraordinarily dedicated, theyre extraordinarily loyal and theyre extraordinarily collegial. For 150 years the mt. Vernon Ladies Association has kept this place special. And with the new library, the orientation and education center, no crop of those women have done a better job than the current one, at least since martha did it alone. Among those remarkable women, of
Move. There. We think of retirement as golf, bridge, a condo in florida with no grass to mow. But what would it mean to George Washington . He used the word often in 1783 as the revolutionary war was winding down and he prepared to resign his commission as commander in chief of American Forces in december. Mt. Vernon would be the and im quoting here, the seat of my retirement from the bustle of the busy world, washington wrote in one typical letter. Yet what did he envision . What did he envision that retirement to be . He was only 51 years old. And the most celebrated man in america, if not the world. The master of one of virginias largest plantations and both deeply committed to and profoundly concerned about the future of his newly independent country. If by to retire one means to rest, he knew that would not be the case. First, he had plenty to do on the plantation. An almost entire suspension of everything which related to my own estate for near nine years has accumulated an abund
Background, the context is the theater. This was an act that occurred in a theater, by an actor, with other actors standing by. And i wanted to look at it through the eyes of those people. And when i was working on the president s book and i was working on the lincoln chapters, i kept coming across this iconic playbill for our american cousin. I looked at it and i kept thinking, these are real people most of whose names have been lost. I mean, if you asked people on the street who the people were involved with the lincoln assassination, certainly people know lincoln, they know booth, maybe 1 in 10,000 would know laura keene. But almost no one would know the names john dyott, harry hawk, billy withers. These were major names in the events of that night. So i started looking even closer to get a sense of, who were these people . I began to find in some cases their names were spelled wrong or the names were a misrepresentation. In some cases its really difficult tracking down actors, beca
Fact he was talking to him every day about your slip the 14th amendment is supposed to mean. That may not have worked out so well rather than convincing. But i think the Supreme Court often does not go with what we might consider the correct interpretation of a particular provision. They have their own way of doing things and that is part of the reason. The other thing to say is that support for the kind of things that they know most interested in, fundamental rights fundamentally in the years following the civil war. Once you got out about ten years after the end of the war, there was much less public sentiment for doing these things because it was hard and people wanted to move onto othe on to other subjn some way that had an impact on the way the Supreme Court viewed these questions and it wasnt until the 1960s that you saw the second reconstruction red by Martin Luther king, kind of the vindication of him other things he was trying to do. Some judges who say they believe in the ori
Inspired all the time either work of these young scholars. A day that farah came to speak to our class, the work were studying was pain, which is already one of my favorite books. It was so moving because i realized while she was giving us this wonderful guidance, the first time id been taught literature by a black person, besides my mother who was of course my first instruction in reading and writing but its one of those moments that if you like should be marked and i want to extend my gratitude for that, and you continue to inspire me. Thank you so much. Thats the great joys of teaching, you dont know who is sitting out there in terms of this extraordinarily talented young writer who i would read it many years later without knowing that she was one of the students in the class. So its really lovely to think it also for being here tonight. I wanted to ask farah to share with us the introduction of harlem nocturne. Is really a beautiful way she brings these women onto the page pics i w