As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, historian and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. says he’s feeling rageful. He opens his new book, America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, bluntly, with the declaration: “I do not love America, and never have, especially now.”
“What I was trying to do with this book was kind of write some security underneath my feet. So that I could actually get this rage under control, to get my sadness, my melancholy under control,” Glaude says.
“America has to grow up. It can no longer hide in its adolescence,” he says. “America imagines itself at once as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And to hold those two things together … deposits the kind of madness at the heart of the country.”
I had written some version of the introduction and it didn’t land. I thought I was holding something back. … And so I returned to that first paragraph, and suddenly this sentence just came on the page. And I got up and I started walking around my study and I was afraid of what this would mean if I left it there. And then something inside of my head just simply said, “But this is what you have to say. You have to begin here and then you can explain.” So I left it.
Each of these moments, the country has to tell a story about itself. It has to tell a story about its founding. And so here we are in the 250th and look at the kinds of the contours of the story — just don’t look at the UFC arena or the Great American Fair or the garden of statues of heroes. But they’re going to tell a story [about] the saintliness of the founders, a story about the sacredness of this grand experiment.
Sometimes patriotism, to my ear, sounds like a rebel yell. Those people who embrace the flag, who wrap themselves up in the piety of the country, are often, more than not, folk who think I should be in my place, folk who are behind the assault on voting rights, folk who want to deny the specificity of the experiences that shape how I see this place. So usually when I hear a robust, visceral embrace of love of country, you know, my head goes on a swivel. Who sang it, and for what ends and for what purposes?
[The guide was] walking us through the House and then the Senate, and he’s telling us these stories and finally talks about the conflict. [He says] that they weren’t divided according to party but, you know, region and whatnot. And [he] said the biggest conflict is that they came from the South and the North. And I was like, OK, here we go. We’re going to start talking about slavery. And then he says they didn’t know how to shake hands. That was the example of the conflict between the congresspersons, that one would bow [and the other would shake]. And I was like, that’s it? And then I just saw ghosts. I saw ghosts all around Congress Hall. But it was an example for me of a startling example of the storybook version of the country.
Transcript:
TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley, and my guest today is Eddie Glaude Jr. He’s a professor at Princeton and a familiar voice on the country’s hardest conversations about race and democracy. He’s the author of “Begin Again,” lessons from the late James Baldwin, and “We Are The Leaders We’ve Been Looking For.” Those books look clearly at this country’s failures but still held onto something hopeful. But his latest book set sentimentality aside. It’s called “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows The Nation’s Anniversaries.” In it, Glaude takes us to the country’s big birthdays – 1876, 1926, 1976, and now the 250th – and shows us the same ritual each time.
The nation throws itself a party and quietly edits out the parts of the story it cannot bear to face. He goes back to 1876, the centennial, with Frederick Douglass watching the promise of emancipation come undone. And he argues that what happened then is happening again now. It’s a book written in grief and rage – and underneath both, a stubborn kind of love of country. We spoke earlier this month in Seattle on stage at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, a daylong gathering of journalists and thinkers hosted by Seattle’s public media station. Here’s our conversation.
(APPLAUSE)
MOSLEY: I am so honored to be in conversation with you for so many reasons. I’ve had the pleasure of talking with you many times, our first time, though, in person with each other. And I think a great way to start is to actually have you read a passage from the book. Let’s start with the very first page.
EDDIE GLAUDE JR: Sure. But before I started reading, I want to just say how honored I am to be in conversation with you. To have an opportunity to talk about this book in this moment with you is so meaningful to me. So here it is.
(Reading) Bitterness at the bottom of the cup. I do not love America and never have, especially now. It seems to me misplaced or dangerous to love something so abstract and so morally dubious. Love is most often felt and experienced close to the ground, in the life lived in a particular place in time and in memories that take up resonance in the heart. I suspect love of country is shorthand for the heartfelt relationships and experiences that make us who we are, things that happen in the place we call home, no matter how complicated that place may be.
(Reading) James Baldwin was right. Whoever is part of whatever civilization helplessly loves some aspects of it and some of the people in it. And I suppose that is why, in part, we are willing to risk our lives in defense of this place and of what it might become. But in America, those feelings and experiences have always been stained by the ugliness of what white people believe about color, that somehow or in some inscrutable way, the color of one’s skin determines your value. You end up spending much of your life trying to prove to others and to yourself, not because you are obsessed with white people, but because you want to live, that you are not an N-word.
(Reading) Some Americans may believe that this view is a relic of a past that we have long left behind. After all, they might say, we elected a Black president and vice president. Look how far we’ve come. Stop complaining, I hear them say. You teach at Princeton University. You are not a victim. But I speak from the experience of a life lived in this country, and I trust what I know, what I’ve seen and what now sits in the pit of my stomach.
(APPLAUSE)
MOSLEY: When did that sentence – I do not love America – become true to you? When did you consciously realize that that was a truth for you?
GLAUDE: I had written some version of the introduction. And it didn’t land. But I was holding something back. And so, you know, writing is mostly about revision. And so I returned to that first paragraph, and suddenly this sentence just came on the page. And I got up and I started walking around my study. And I was afraid of what this would mean if I left it there, and then almost as if, you know, something inside of my head just simply said, but this is what you have to say. You have to begin here, and then you can explain it. So I left it there. And I decided, you know, in this time, you have to be courageous and vulnerable and daring. And I…
MOSLEY: And truthful.
GLAUDE: Yeah, exactly.
MOSLEY: One of the things that struck me from the very beginning of this book was that I realized I wasn’t reading from the same man who wrote “Begin Again,” because in “Begin Again, which is a previous book of yours, you use James Baldwin’s work to kind of beat back despair. And in this book in particular, I felt that optimism of a truth teller, of a freedom fighter, it was gone.
GLAUDE: Yeah. Yeah.
MOSLEY: Am I right in that feeling? In the same way that Langston Hughes, we felt in his later writings and in James Baldwin.
GLAUDE: Yeah. So in so many ways, I’m arguing with Jimmy. You know, in “Notes Of A Native Son,” Baldwin says, you know, I love my country more than anything. And because of that love, I reserve the right to criticize it relentlessly, to paraphrase him. I never begin there. I didn’t begin there. Maybe it’s because I’m from Mississippi, you know?
MOSLEY: Mm hmm.
GLAUDE: But I’m rageful. There are moments when I’m battling depression because the country has done this again. At the end of “Begin Again,” I said, well, you know, we can – we have to make a choice, right? Will we do this or that? And we have a choice to put this moment behind us, and look what we did. And now people have to raise their children in the midst of this. They’ve gutted the Voting Rights Act. They’re redrawing districts. We’re in the midst of what could very well be described as a Second Redemption, a Second Lost Cause. And, you know, the last sentence of the book speaks that emotion. And so what I was trying to do with this book was kind of write some security underneath my feet – right? – so that I could actually get this rage under control, to get my sadness, my melancholia under control.
MOSLEY: Why anniversaries as a way to look at this country’s relationship with race? You could have chosen court cases. You could have chosen lots of different ways. What is it about our nation’s anniversaries that allow us to see the problem so clearly?
GLAUDE: So at each of these moments, the country has to tell a story about itself. It has to tell a story about its founding. And so here we are in the 250th, and look at the kinds of – the contours of the story. Just don’t look at the UFC arena.
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: Or the Great American Fair, or the garden of statues of heroes. But they’re going to tell a story. It’s going to be a particular story. We’re the greatest nation in the history of the world. It’s going to be a story about the – you know, the saintliness of the founders, a story about the sacredness of this grand experiment. In each of these anniversaries, the nation has to tell a story about itself about its founding. And in each of these moments, Tonya, the country is struggling and grappling with its contradiction. In each of these moments, the divided soul of the nation is in full view. All right, Du Bois in 1903 wrote “The Souls Of Black Folk.” And in “The Souls Of Black Folk,” he says that Black folks see themselves through the eyes of those who despise them. This is what he called double consciousness.
But I believe that double consciousness is actually a consequence of the double consciousness of the nation, that America imagines itself at once as a beacon of freedom and as a White republic. And to hold those two things together with – you can’t, really, without contradiction. And it deposits a kind of madness at the heart of the country. And we see it evidenced every single milestone anniversary, 1876, 1926, 1976 and by God, 250 years later, 2026.
MOSLEY: If you’re just joining us, we’re listening to the conversation I had onstage with Eddie Glaude Jr. at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in Seattle. Glaude’s new book is “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows The Nation’s Anniversaries.” More of our conversation after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF CUONG VU AND PAT METHENY’S “SEEDS OF DOUBT”)
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my conversation with Eddie Glaude Jr., recorded at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in Seattle. Glaude is the James S McDonald, distinguished University professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. His new book is “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows The Nation’s Anniversaries.”
I want to talk with you in particular about two moments, 1926, 1976. But I’m very curious about the title, “America,” comma, “U.S.A.” Why both of those in the title?
GLAUDE: Yeah. You know, usually it’s not a comma. It’s a hyphen.
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: The Italian American, the Irish American, you know, the Black American, African American. The hyphen gives us a sense of the kind of the idea of America best represented by Ellis Island, yes? We need to remind the Trump administration about Ellis Island, right?
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: But the comma signals a break, not connection. And so, “America, U.S.A.” actually reflects the divided soul of the country. And so, part of what I’m doing is signifying on these attempts to tell the story of America and trying to capture in the title, by way of the comma, the divided soul, the double consciousness that haunts this place.
MOSLEY: And you’re talking about the anniversaries and all of the pomp and circumstance. As I’m reading your book, don’t laugh at this, but that song, “God Bless The USA” – proud to be an American because at least I know I’m free. And as I’m reading the words in your book, for the first time, those words, at least I know I’m free, kept coming back up for me. And I wonder, what’s your relationship to patriotism overall, and to that idea of us holding such reverence and such pride in this myth and this idea of freedom being something that could be bestowed upon us?
GLAUDE: Yeah. Patriotism. You know, the first sentence, what it’s trying to do is hold off idolatry, the idolatry of the state, right? Something so morally dubious and so abstract, right? And sometimes – and I’ll say this, and I wonder what you think about this, but sometimes patriotism to my ear sounds like a rebel yell.
MOSLEY: Say more.
GLAUDE: Those people who embrace the flag, who wrap themselves up in the piety of the country are often more than not folk who think I should be in my place, folk who are behind the assault on voting rights, folk who want to deny the specificity of the experience that shape how I see this place. So usually, when I hear a robust, visceral embrace of love of country, you know, my head goes on a swivel. Who’s saying it and for what ends and for what purposes, you see? We’ve always served as a kind of counter to the myth, to the illusion that this place is a beacon of freedom.
MOSLEY: Us meaning Black folks?
GLAUDE: Yes. Yes. John – just think about John Adams. This is an apocryphal story. But John Adams supposedly said to King George, we will not be your Negroes. At the very moment in which he’s giving voice to a notion of freedom, it’s based on an intimate understanding of unfreedom – us. In the early days of July Fourth, if we showed up to the July Fourth celebrations, like the July days of 1834 in New York, we would literally be physically attacked because our bodies represented the contradiction of what was being said.
We have a counter calendar, what I call a counter, alternative, commemorative calendar around freedom. While the nation is celebrating itself as the embodiment of freedom, we are celebrating January 1. Why? Because January 1, 1808, was the day that they ended the transatlantic slave trade. We’re celebrating in August, West Indian Emancipation Day. Why? Because it’s the end of slavery.
We celebrate the most important of all of those days in the early 19th century, is July 5. Douglass’ famous July 5, 1852, oration stands in the tradition. Why July 5? It’s the abolition of slavery in the state of New York. Juneteenth stands in that tradition, where we’re giving voice to a notion of freedom over and against a country that embraces the idea of freedom but doesn’t quite live it in practice.
MOSLEY: I want to spend some real time on two of the anniversaries that sit on top of each other. So 1876 and 1976. So 1876 is where you note that racial justice starts to get treated as philanthropy.
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: It’s a gift that white people can extend and also withdraw, rather than something that is owed. Can you talk more about that and why this reframe of understanding this is so important as we read through your book and your ideas?
GLAUDE: Yeah. Well, I’m trying to figure out this cycle. Why is it that we’re always returning to this? What’s going on? And one of the ways I’ve resolved it is that – or I haven’t resolved the cycle – of the way in which I describe it is, OK, if America imagines itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic and if you can’t hold those things without contradiction, how do you finesse it? Well, you finesse it by assuming that white people possess freedom to give and to take away. Oh, let me be clear now, before people get uncomfortable. When I say white people, I’m talking at a certain level of generality. This is my reading of James Baldwin. Baldwin will say, I happen to love – and I say this – I happen to love a lot of people who happen to be white, and then there are white people.
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: The point is is that we’re all – we all bear the burden of racialization. We’re all socialized in this way in which these categories matter to how we see ourselves and understand ourselves, right? So those people believe that they possess freedom to give and to take away. And so what we see is antislavery movement, right? Folk are fighting against slavery and they are arguing that this contradicts their commitment to principles of equality and liberty and democracy and the like. And then, once the Civil War amendments are passed, particularly the one that ends slavery – the 13th Amendment – what do we get? This debate about whether or not these folk can bear the burden and responsibility of citizenship. So you see folk who were once – right? – antislavery suddenly become – right? – folk who are arguing against extending citizenship to Black folk.
So 1876 is this moment. Douglass is – Frederick Douglass is…
MOSLEY: Frederick Douglass.
GLAUDE: …Grappling with this. He’s an example of these freedom snatchers – these people who believe that they can give freedom and to take away. He was born in slavery. He – you know, he escaped. He witnessed Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation, the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, and he lived long enough to see Jim Crow. He called these folk the apostles of forgetfulness, right? And then he would say – and he said in 1875 – I don’t want your alms, I want justice. He’s skeptical of people who want to do something for us as opposed to with us, huh?
And so 1876 is this extraordinary moment, Tonya, when the country engages, for the first time after the carnage of the Civil War, in a national remembrance of its founding and it engages in this horrific act, at scale, of disremembering.
Frederick Douglass was actually invited to be on the dais with President Grant. He’s trying to get in. This is in Philadelphia. Not in Philadelphia, Mississippi, but Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
(LAUGHTER)
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: He’s trying to get in. He shows the Philadelphia police officer his ticket, which puts him on the dais. The officer says, there’s no way an N-word should be on the dais with President Grant. He would not allow him in. If it wasn’t for a senator who sees him – Senator Conkling, I believe – who sees him and then escorts him in, Frederick Douglass would not have been able to even enter the exposition. Then they sit him on the stage – the most famous orator in the United States at the time. They sit him on the stage and he cannot say a word. He’s just there, silent. Silent.
So there’s this disremembering that’s happening as the country barrels towards the end of the 19th century with the violence of these coups that are taking place – political coups that are taking place in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia in the – against the backdrop of the horror that will leave over 53,000 Black people dead by the end of the 19th century. The country tells itself a story about the grandness of the American project. My, my, my.
MOSLEY: My guest is Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. To accompany his new book, Glaude worked with classical composer Joel Thompson to create music to capture what Glaude sees as the spirit of the nation. Here’s pianist Leah Claiborne performing the piece called “And Blue.”
(SOUNDBITE OF JOEL THOMPSON’S “AND BLUE”)
MOSLEY: That was Leah Claiborne performing “And Blue.” More of our conversation with scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. after a break. I’m Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE’S “UNTITLED ORIGINAL”)
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley. Let’s get back to my conversation with scholar Eddie Glaude Jr., professor at Princeton University and a familiar voice on the country’s hardest conversations about race and democracy. This latest book, “America, U.S.A.,” takes us through the country’s big birthdays from the centennial in 1876 to now, 2026, as we approach the 250th, revealing how the ritual is the same each time. The nation throws itself a party and quietly edits out the parts of the story it cannot bear to face. It’s a book written in grief and rage and, underneath both, a stubborn kind of love of country. Glaude is also the author of several other books, including “Begin Again” and “We Are The Leaders We’ve Been Looking For.” We spoke earlier this month in Seattle onstage at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, a daylong gathering of journalists and thinkers hosted by Seattle’s public media station.
I’m thinking about 2020, when we all seemed to be coming to this same realization in the same way that we found during Reconstruction, where, oh, we understand the ills. We want to right the wrongs. And the white allies are in our corner, and they believe us, and they’re speaking truth to power as well. And then something happens. Like, the idea of it being a philanthropic effort, this idea that you can put it on the shelf, and then you can take it off the shelf when it comes to racial equality.
GLAUDE: Yeah. Yeah. Sentimentality. At the heart of this idea that certain people think that they possess freedom to give and to take away is the cycle of sentimentality and rage. You cry your crocodile tears. I remember writing this passage, trying to figure it out just five years ago, six years ago. We were in the midst of a racial reckoning. I was crying on national television about George Floyd and the like. And in the blink of an eye, we’re here. In the blink of an eye. And the only thing I could conclude is that people were lying. You weren’t telling the truth. Or you didn’t have anywhere else to land. And you just returned back, returned to the status quo.
And so I was trying to describe it in a way, drawing on Baldwin’s notion of sentimentality – and Oscar Wilde and others, right? That sentimentality is really just, you know, about your own individual feelings. Baldwin says it’s the mask of cruelty, right? You cry your crocodile tears for us. Oh, we want to do this for you. We’re going to make sure. We’re going to resolve – we’re going to absolve ourselves of our sins by actually engaging in this effort. We’re going to tell the truth about what we’ve done.
And then when the people who bear the brunt of what we’ve done continue to ask for justice, then the question becomes, what else do you want? We’ve given you enough. Overreach. How much more are you going to ask? And as soon as you hear those questions, we’re on the cusp of the backlash, the rage. And here we are, because sentimentality carries with it rage. Uncle Tom – you know who’s the flip side of Uncle Tom? Nat Turner.
MOSLEY: Yes. Yes.
GLAUDE: Same side of the same coin in our imaginations.
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: This – I’m thinking we’re being too hard. Y’all all right?
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: You sure? I’m just checking on you.
MOSLEY: This is Seattle, OK?
GLAUDE: OK, I’m just checking on them.
MOSLEY: This is not – we can go there. We can go there with Seattleites.
(APPLAUSE)
GLAUDE: I’m just checking on them. Yeah.
MOSLEY: I want to go back to Frederick Douglass, though, 1876. It’s the centennial, as you said. It’s the nation’s hundredth birthday. He is turned away initially. And…
GLAUDE: Yeah. Yeah.
MOSLEY: …He is the most famous Black man in America at the time. He’s watching it all collapse around him. Take me, in particular, though, to July 5.
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: 1875. What was he contending with as he’s preparing to speak?
GLAUDE: Yeah. And, you know, usually we talk about July 5, 1852, when he delivers that famous July 5 address in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. But in 1875, the old man has to figure out what he’s going to say to the country, what he’s going to say to these people in Metropolitan Church.
And he knew exactly what was going to happen come 1876. They would tell the story of the grandness of the American project. And it so mirrors our day. But here’s that moment. Douglass says, and I always get choked up when I say it, we gained our freedom through the falling out of white men. Now we must brace ourselves – I’m paraphrasing – for what will happen now that they’ve reconciled. What – we must brace ourselves for what’s to come.
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: And it’s a powerful speech, so much so that I try to pull it forward by the time I get to 2025…
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: …And I’m trying to write to the 2026 celebration, yeah.
MOSLEY: Yes. I was surprised to know that you went to school in Philadelphia, but you had never really taken tours of all of the landmarks. But you decide to take a tour of Independence Hall, what was it, like 2024?
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: So not that long ago.
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: And you’re on this tour. And you’re hearing this tour guide tell a story. And what’s interesting about that time period is there was a lot of effort that went into making it diverse to kind of show a more perfect union. And you’re noticing something very specific as you’re going through this tour. What did you find?
GLAUDE: Well, it’s the storybook version of America, right?
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: And he’s talking, he’s taking us through the Congress Hall, right? And I’ve never been a tourist. I could go – I go overseas, and I stay in my hotel and read books. My wife hates it.
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: So I’m in Philly. I never go to the Liberty Bell or any of that stuff. But here, I wanted to return to it. And he’s telling a story. And he looks like he’s cosplaying a kind of drill sergeant. He has his, you know, force outfit on.
MOSLEY: Yeah.
GLAUDE: And he’s walking us through the House and then the Senate. And he’s telling us these stories. And finally, he talks about the conflict between, that they weren’t divided according to party but, you know, region and whatnot. He said, the biggest conflict is that they came from the South and the North. And I was like, OK, here we go.
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: We’re going to start talking about slavery.
MOSLEY: Lots to get into. Yes.
GLAUDE: Got it. And then he says, they didn’t know how to shake hands. That was an example of the conflict…
MOSLEY: That was the conflict
GLAUDE: …Between the congresspersons, that they didn’t – one would bow and one would – and I was like, that’s it? We’re not going to – and so – and then I just saw ghosts. I saw ghosts all around Congress Hall. You know, pursed-lip ghosts, right? But it was an example for me – a startling example – of the storybook version of the country because in that very building, Congress decided by – only one person voted – decided to maintain the fugitive slave law.
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: And Moses Gordon’s story is located right in that moment.
MOSLEY: Talk a little bit about Moses Gordon.
GLAUDE: Moses Gordon was – you see how good she is?
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: Moses Gordon was enslaved and manumitted in 1776, just three months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in North Carolina. His slavemaster was Caleb Trueblood, a Quaker. And for two years, Moses Gordon lived as a free man. But the colony or the – you know, South – North Carolina had passed a statute saying that you could not manumit your slaves unless – for meritorious service unless they fought in the Revolutionary War. So Moses Gordon was captured two years later and sold back into slavery and he freedom dreamed. And then he escaped, and he escaped to Philadelphia, and for 10 years he lived as a free man.
But because of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, Moses Gordon was a thief because he stole himself. He belonged to the man to whom he was sold – Brigadier General William Skinner. And 10 years later, he was captured, put in shackles and was to be sent back to North Carolina. In the papers of John Parrish, a Quaker abolitionist in – at Haverford College, reside – are the manumission papers of Moses Gordon, and on the back, John Parrish wrote, instead of returning to slavery, Moses Gordon committed suicide. And that becomes a story of freedom snatching. He was freed, enslaved, escaped, captured, death. And it becomes a through line.
MOSLEY: We’re listening to the conversation I had on stage with Eddie Glaude Jr. at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. Glaude’s new book is “America, U.S.A.” More of our conversation after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE QUARTET’S “OUT OF THIS WORLD”)
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my conversation with Eddie Glaude Jr. recorded at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell distinguished university professor of African American studies at Princeton University. His new book is “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows The Nation’s Anniversaries.”
I want to take us now to 1976 ’cause this is a time period where you and I are alive, we’re coming of age. How old were you in 1976?
GLAUDE: Eight.
MOSLEY: You were 8 years old. Yeah. It’s the bicentennial. And the question has shifted by then. This is the apex of white flight, the thick of desegregation fights.
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: And it’s the first time, as you write in your book, that the nation is forced to kind of acknowledge Black history. But the question isn’t whether Black freedom should be retracted. It’s whether we should participate at all in the bicentennial.
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: Can you talk briefly about that?
GLAUDE: Sure. You know, it’s just – I remember as – well, I have a photo. I have a vague memory of me being in red, white and blue pants…
(LAUGHTER)
MOSLEY: Yeah.
GLAUDE: …How kitschy…
MOSLEY: Yeah.
GLAUDE: …The ’76 bicentennial celebration was – you know, from red, white and blue whoopee cushions to a range of things. But this is a celebration really of white ethnics in 1976. Remember, 1926, there is this real intense debate around immigration.
MOSLEY: And this is such an interesting point in history because this is where immigrants have the ability to become white.
GLAUDE: Yes.
MOSLEY: They have a choice to make.
GLAUDE: Yes.
MOSLEY: And as Black people, we sit very squarely in that because we’re representative of what?
GLAUDE: The journey of the country itself, right?
MOSLEY: Yes.
GLAUDE: But, you know, 1926, you know, if you’re from Italy, you’re from Ireland, you’re Jewish, you’re from the S-hole (ph) countries of Europe – right? – the Klan can’t stand them. They are as much against Irish Catholics – Catholicism in particular – as they are against Black people in the 1920s. But by 1976, their children are claiming the revolution as their own. Black folk are still arguing. We’re in this moment of deep dissensus, Tonya – Watergate, Vietnam, Black Power, the Black student – SDS. There’s all of this deep suspicion and skepticism about the country. And so the bicentennial is supposed to be this ritual that’s going to bring us together over and against all of this conflict and discord that’s defined the decade of the ’60s and the early part of the ’70s.
And is this the first year? ‘Cause in – 1926 is the first time Negro History Week is celebrated – in 1926. 1976, Negro History Week becomes Black History Month. President Ford recognizes and acknowledges Negro History Week and then Black History Month. But there’s this debate – ’cause Black folk are still struggling – ought we to celebrate this? Because what’s happening is that instead of disappearing Black history, Black history is being absorbed into the story of America to affirm America’s inherent goodness.
MOSLEY: So you write about the Reagan years.
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: This is the time period where we start talking about, like, color blindness.
GLAUDE: Yeah.
MOSLEY: It’s assorting. It parts Black history to fit into this fairy tale, but it – but we’re still kind of off to the side. It’s not integrated into the full story.
GLAUDE: What so – makes this moment so crazy is that they don’t even accept the redacted version of our story. So Reagan signs MLK holiday into law. Barack Obama becomes the kind of culmination of that, right? Even so much so you can tell the story of the March on Washington in such a way that, you know, affirms the possibility of American life. We lost our way with Black power. But no, no, no, no, this is what we’re doing. The MAGA folk don’t even want that to be a part of the story. But what we see in this moment is this absorption of Black history as an affirmation of the inherent goodness of the country. So our story is blunted. It doesn’t provide a critique, right? Instead – right? – the country can tell our story and pat itself on the back. Look at you. Look at me.
MOSLEY: Exceptionalism.
GLAUDE: Look how far we’ve come.
MOSLEY: Yep.
GLAUDE: Look how decent we are, right? And then, in the blink of an eye, we find ourselves here.
MOSLEY: You call this book an elegy. It’s pitched in the note of the blues. But I want to know, very quickly, why the blues is the right form of the story of America at this 250th anniversary? And I’m going to double this question as well to ask you what you will be doing on July Fourth or July 5?
GLAUDE: Why the blues and what am I going to be doing? America has to grow up. It can’t – it can no longer hide in its adolescence. You know, when grown folk act like kids, they’re monstrous, more often than not. And so it keeps telling itself this story that affirms its innocence. And what the blues does, the blues – right? – takes you to the heart of the problem. B.B. King’s nobody loves you but my mother, and she can be jiving, too.
(LAUGHTER)
GLAUDE: It offers a tragic sense of the world, right? We don’t have to be all angels, right? The devil and the angel is in us, so all we need to do is to look in the mirror. So we need to grow up, because if you don’t grow up, you can bomb Iran and then tell somebody else to fix it. If you don’t grow up, you can do all of this evil in these detention centers, in these black sites and not hold anybody responsible, right? You can become complicit with evil because you are by definition innocent. So the country has to sing the blues. And you know what? We’ve deposited it there since we got here.
MOSLEY: That’s the thing you talk about, too, is, like, we aren’t just a part of American history. We are interwoven into the very meaning of what this country is.
GLAUDE: It’s on our tongue. It’s in our food. We have made – your country? No, no. We, in the fullness of our diversity, make this place swing. So on July Fourth and July 5, we need to show the full diversity of America and claim the country as our own.
MOSLEY: Eddie Glaude, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for this conversation. When you say, I do not love this country, actually, this book is a love letter to America.
GLAUDE: Oh, you’ve got me.
MOSLEY: Yes. Thank you.
GLAUDE: Absolutely.
(APPLAUSE)
MOSLEY: Eddie Glaude Jr., author of “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows The Nation’s Anniversaries.” After a short break, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews some spring releases on her summer reading list. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BILL EVANS TRIO’S “MILESTONES”)
