(Host) This time of year many school children and families visit our
nation’s capital. Teacher, historian, and commentator Vic Henningsen
suggests that visitors would be wise to approach our national shrines
with care.
(Henningsen) Have you
ever noticed that, in their Washington D.C. memorials, Jefferson,
Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. are surrounded by words? Words on
the walls surround the statues of Jefferson and Lincoln; words on the
statue itself define King. And surely that’s appropriate. Their words
made our nation, preserved it, and summoned Americans to meet its
highest ideals. Those words connect us to our past by recalling us to
our founding ideals and enduring principles. Every American should visit
these memorials at least once, if only to remember that, alone among
the world’s peoples, ideas are what make us a nation.
But what
happens when those words are misleading; the past they depict
inaccurate? Last August we learned that designers changed the central
quotation on the King Memorial in order to fit the size of King’s
statue. That quotation reads, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and
righteousness." To many people the inscription is both misleading and
pejorative. Poet Maya Angelou said it makes King look, "like an arrogant
twit."
The quotation does sound self-congratulatory, especially
when we consider that what King actually said, in a sermon not long
before his death, was a warning about the evils of self-promotion.
Here’s the actual quotation: "[I]f you want to say I was a drum major,
say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for
peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other
shallow things will not matter."
What a difference "if" makes.
King was preaching humility, not claiming greatness. The message of the
monument reverses his intent.
Across the Tidal Basin Jefferson,
too, is surrounded by words, among them a stirring statement condemning
slavery. "Nothing," it proclaims, "is more certainly written in the book
of fate than that these people are to be free." Uplifting stuff – until
you find the original source, a partial autobiography Jefferson wrote
in 1821. Here’s the actual quotation: "Nothing is more certainly written
in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it
less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same
government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of
distinction between them."
Here again, the memorial’s designers
edited language to suit their purposes. Here again the edited quote
contradicts the original meaning. Jefferson wasn’t an abolitionist; he
was profoundly ambivalent about slavery. Although he worshipped freedom
as an ideal, he couldn’t imagine sharing it with black people and never
freed his slaves. But designers of the monument sought to convey an
American ideal, not a more troubling and more provocative American
reality.
Washington’s memorials present a selective version of
the past, an editing that reflects how later Americans viewed these
great men, or wanted to view them, or thought we ought to view them. Too
often, official monuments present a past that we’d like to believe, not
a reality we must struggle to understand.