The America That’s Still Possible
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What does America’s 250th anniversary signify?
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How did the Trump administration celebrate American greatness?
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The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com slash your world.
So it's the 250th birthday of America and Donald Trump is president. And I think the celebration you get from the Trump administration is going to be of a very specific kind.
Get ready, America, because we're putting our love of country on full display.
A celebration of American glory, American greatness.
Uncritical, I think, will be underselling it. There has been, I think, a split, a severing of two visions of American history. There's a vision that can only see glory and a vision that I think can only see suffering and sin. One of my beliefs about politics is that until we can reintegrate a story, until we have leaders getting able to tell a more holistic story of the country that's able to hold its triumphs and its tragedies together, it's going to be very, very hard to move forward. I'm in Montgomery, Alabama. I think of Montgomery in some ways as the birthplace of American democracy. Not where it was conceived, right? That's the founding. But where the actual thing promised at the founding began to really be born.
The people of Montgomery walked to maintain their human dignity and their rights.
This is where the Montgomery bus boycott began.
Let us all walk together for freedom, for liberty, and equality.
which led to the Civil Rights Movement.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.
Which led to the triumphs and the laws that for the first time made America some version of the democracy and the country that it initially promised to be.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
There's a series of really remarkable museums and sites here, the Legacy Museum, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, that have been created by the Equal Justice Initiative as ways of apprehending that history, holding horror and beauty, tragedy and triumph, inhumanity and humanity together. I think sometimes of wisdom as the ability to hold the totality of life. The wiser you are, the more of life you can hold. And I think this holds quite a bit in it. Bryan Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. He has done amazing work over the years, continues to do amazing work defending people on death row. He is the author of the book, Just Mercy, which was turned into a movie where he was played by Michael B. Jordan.
How many of us can say that? But over time, we began to expand that work into questions of remembrance, questions of our history and how we think about it and whose humanity we are able to see inside of it. Talking to Stevenson, I was interested in how do you create a history of this country that loves it in its totality? How do you work with America's past and its present in a way that doesn't trap you in pain, but doesn't force you to inhabit only an imagined glory? I'd have a story that pushes a country forward, that enhances rather than reduces the bonds of brotherhood and solidarity between the people within it. As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com.
Brian Stevenson, welcome to the show. Thank you. So we're speaking here not long before the 250th anniversary of America. What's your relationship to that day?
You know, I think anniversaries are always a time for reflection, to think about who we are, where we've been. But for me, more importantly, where are we going? You know, I think about this moment in terms of what will people be talking about on our 300th anniversary. The cage match? I hope that we will be past spectacle violence as a way to commemorate our nation. I don't think that violence, which is a part of every nation's history, but it's not the best part. It's not the glorious part. It's not... The battles won. It's the ideas that motivated people to stand up for things that they believe in that I think are most important.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does America’s 250th anniversary signify?
0:00–0:11
2
How did the Trump administration celebrate American greatness?
0:11–5:57
3
What is Bryan Stevenson’s perspective on America’s history?
5:57–12:24
4
How does the Equal Justice Initiative contribute to understanding American history?
12:24–17:21
5
What challenges do Americans face in reconciling history with present realities?
17:21–22:20
6
How does personal experience shape one’s view of America?
22:20–25:30
7
What lessons can be learned from past movements for justice?
25:30–31:25
8
What does it mean to choose to be a great American?
31:25–1:47:45