Discussion: Three Rushmore Presidents Through Three Little-Known—But Crucial—Conversations

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Discussion for article #233293

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“We can’t carve additional faces on Mount Rushmore”

Says who? Plus we could blow up a couple of those and start over with more modern ones. Who remembers those guys anyway I know George Washingten is the one with the muppet nose but the two on the right look like Haggar and Guile to me lol

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Wow! What an insight! Presidents have important conversations - sometimes with unlikely people. Who knew? In typical fashion, the author forces that fact into the artificial argument that those conversations are more significant than presidential actions. Of course, conversations often are themselves actions. When TR hosted Booker T. Washington for dinner, it was a hugely controversial action.
By the way, Professor Railton, you can add Julian Bond to the long list of people who believe “Selma” was wrong to distort history as it related to MLK and LBJ.

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Interesting that the author leaves Jefferson out. If we’re going to talk about how great the Presidents up on Mt. Rushmore were, while trying to address the issue of race, why not address how one of those Presidents in particular worked actively against those ideas. Leaving him out of this article, without mentioning his obvious hypocrisy, is an omission that keeps finding its way past the official record, or allowed to be footnoted in history books through articles like this…(even that wasn’t done by this author here.)

Here’s an interesting piece I read the other day by Denise Oliver Velez at DailyKos who’s more than done her research in this area. She talks about Jefferson’s desire to cling to slavery even as he pronounced “All Men are Equal” in our Declaration of Independence. If we want to look back in history at these men, let us look without dewy eyes and sentimentality to the true nature of their beings. Our Founding Fathers were no saints and we’d all be better off as a country not to put them too high up on that pedestal. This article should have never left out Jefferson if it wanted to talk about race…or Mt. Rushmore for that matter. That’s just a little too convenient for some.

Here’s the link to the article I read: (interesting stuff)

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By the way…we don’t get our mail today, do we? Fucking Presidents Day! Now go out and buy those mattresses people.

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He left out Jefferson. He certainly had a series of discussions with Sally Hemings. That is black relationships in a very personal level.

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Thanks for the comments, all. I would actually respond to multiple threads here in the same way–that a significant part of my point is that we don’t remember these conversations nearly as much as other actions (and these were actions as well, I agree, just more overtly communal ones), and similarly that we now know Jefferson/Hemings (about which I’ve written a few different blog posts over the years) far more than we know these other conversations and moments.

None of which is to say that we shouldn’t remember Hemings, nor other presidential actions or moments. It’s not a zero-sum game. But I would reiterate the value of remembering conversational and inspiring moments such as these, that get us at broader (and often painful) histories and also help model communal rather than individual American stories.

Thanks,
Ben

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PS. And while I know that the readers/commenters here might well be informed about such histories, there’s no question in my mind that they’re not taught in school–I see as much from my students, as well as my boys’ experiences. The presidents, yes; moments like these, and the many others I try to emphasize? No. So there’s a significant need for this emphasis and argument, to my mind.

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