Pod Insights Throughline Your 15-Minute Guide to 250 Years | America in Pursuit About this episode The anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is just around the corner. Wanna get up to speed on the past 250 years? Check out our new miniseries, "America in Pursuit." Every Tuesday from now until July 4th, we'll feature a special moment from the last two centuries of U. S. history, from the American Revolution to the AI Revolution. First up, what does U. S. history really mean? To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.
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Transcript 2,579 words · 15 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.
0:18 Rund Abdelfatah? Hey Throughline listeners, it's Rand here.
0:21 Speaker 02 And Ramtin.
0:22 Rund Abdelfatah? So as many of you know, this year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
0:28 Speaker 02 On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration boldly announced to the world that 13 British colonies were shedding the weight of empire and separating from Great Britain under the banner of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
0:44 Rund Abdelfatah? A new nation called the United States of America was born, and it would be guided by a radical idea, that ordinary people could and should govern themselves, that the noisy chaos of democracy was worth it and possible.
0:59 Speaker 02 Like all milestone anniversaries, this year is a chance for us to stop and ask ourselves, what is the American story? What have we achieved in the past 250 years? Where have we stumbled? And where are we headed next?
1:14 Rund Abdelfatah? These are big questions, especially right now when the country is arguably more divided than ever on what the future should look like, or even what counts as American history.
1:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's no sugarcoating this. As we approach the 250th anniversary, there's going to be a lot of celebrations, and also a fair amount of people who just don't think there's much to celebrate.
1:38 Rund Abdelfatah? Where does this leave Throughline? Well, we knew as NPR's history show, we wanted to do something to mark this year. So we're launching a new weekly mini-series that's part of NPR's America in Pursuit project. Every Tuesday from now until July 4th, we'll feature a different moment from our archives that all together will take you on a journey through the last two centuries of US history, from the American Revolution to the AI Revolution.
2:06 Speaker 02 Think of it as a time capsule, your weekly 15-minute guide to 250 years. So first up, how do we even think about the 250th anniversary right now?
2:18 Rund Abdelfatah? To help us frame how we are thinking about this anniversary, we called up people across the country to get a sense of how they are thinking about it. Historians, museum curators, community organizers, teachers, including--
2:32 Speaker 03 My instinct is to say, is to call you Mr. Marshall, but I will say hi, John. It's very, it's very nice to see you after a long time.
2:41 Rund Abdelfatah? My own high school history teacher.
2:43 Speaker 04 I have to take care of the social obligations. I was talking to Ms. Jay.
2:48 Rund Abdelfatah? Ms. Jay led my high school decathlon team, along with Mr. Marshall. Yeah, I was kind of that kid. Anyways.
2:55 Speaker 04 Oh, make sure you tell her hello from me.
2:57 Rund Abdelfatah? Mr. Marshall, I mean, John, he's an educational consultant now, so he's not actually teaching anymore. But like usual, he dropped some knowledge about the founders I hadn't really thought about.
3:09 Speaker 04 If you look at the founding fathers, so-called the signers of the Declaration of Independence, they were a very unusual group to be revolutionaries. These were some of the wealthier men in America. They had much more to lose than to gain by the, by a notion of revolution. By signing their names to the Declaration, they were committing treason. And I think one of the things that unfortunately glossed over is these were not wild-eyed radicals.
3:39 Rund Abdelfatah? And John thinks that the anniversary should be focused on the untold stories of the Revolution and the sacrifices the so-called founding fathers made. Like how one signer lost all his wealth during the war and died penniless. Or how another refused to recant his position after signing the Declaration, even though it would have saved the lives of his sons, who had been captured by the British. Fascinating, important stories. But as we've explored a lot on the show, that's only one part of America's origin.
4:10 Speaker 02 The founders were all wealthy, white, land-owning men. Some were slave owners, too. And yes, the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, is the birthday of the US in one sense. But remember, just a few years ago, you were having this conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones about the 1619 Project.
4:30 Speaker 05 This is a project in The New York Times arguing that slavery is the foundational American institution, that our founders were, many of them, if not most, hypocrites who said they were founding a nation on the ideal of freedom while engaging in slavery.
4:46 Speaker 02 The 1619 Project made the argument that the story of the US really begins with the docking of the first slave ships in 1619.
4:55 Rund Abdelfatah? It caused a lot of commotion. And a year after it was published, the 1776 Commission was founded under the first Trump administration with the stated goal of, quote, "promoting patriotic education and a true understanding of American history, countering narratives like the 1619 Project, and advising on the 250th anniversary of independence."
5:19 Speaker 06 We will teach our children the truth about America, that we are the most exceptional nation on the face of the earth and getting better every single day. We're not going to let it fail.
5:31 Speaker 04 I think I've said this in class a few times. Everything is a pendulum. They kind of swing one way to the other. Things get more progressive. Things may get more conservative, back and forth.
5:40 Rund Abdelfatah? It's not earth-shattering to say that history is political. It always has been. Where we choose to start the story, what narratives dominate, who we include.
5:50 Speaker 02 And for some, 1619 and 1776 miss an even bigger story.
5:56 Speaker 03 250 years is kind of a blip in Native North American history.
6:01 Rund Abdelfatah? That's coming up, after a quick break.
6:11 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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7:42 Speaker 03 To me, the 250th anniversary is a reminder that we live in a country that was founded on an ideal.
7:49 Speaker 02 This is Kathleen Duval. She's a professor of history at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She wrote the book, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. And while she has a much longer view of history, she still thinks this anniversary means something.
8:05 Speaker 03 Some people say it's the ideal that all men were created equal. I think more fundamentally than that, and more agreed upon at the time, 250 years ago, was the idea that the people can rule themselves.
8:17 Rund Abdelfatah? For Kathleen Duval, if there's any unifying thread or meta-narrative in the American story, it's a belief that all the debates and disagreements over the years over who is American and what America is have been crucial to our democracy.
8:33 Speaker 03 Democracy assumes disagreement. It's not a consensus democracy. And so it is not a surprise at all that people today have very strong and divergent opinions about our country's founding, because that's just always been true.
8:51 Speaker 02 And that's pretty much what Ron Seikowski told us, too.
8:55 Speaker 08 We were so disorganized. And people don't understand, we were not a unified group of colonies. We were at each other's throats, literally. And sometimes we were disputing boundaries between colonies. There's a multitude of disputes that we had. And it was through working together and focusing on what they had in common that brought the colonies together. And that's something we need to look at, learn from that, and imply it today.
9:27 Rund Abdelfatah? Ron is on the Board of Directors for the Heritage Museum in Montgomery County, Texas. He's helping plan his local 250 celebration.
9:35 Speaker 08 We planted a liberty tree, a neat species. It was a Mexican red oak. And it has flaming red leaves at certain times of the year. And it's planted on the grounds of the Heritage Museum.
9:49 Rund Abdelfatah? Ron is well aware that Texas is not one of the original 13 colonies, though he did point out that Texas beef helped feed the Revolutionary Army.
9:59 Speaker 08 Stahano ranchers provided beef and horses to the 13 colonies. The Spanish king would have loved to see England fall big time.
10:12 Rund Abdelfatah? All these places that joined the US as time went on became part of the American story. And for him, that's what this anniversary represents, too, the many, many perspectives that make up this country, north to south, east to west, and even beyond our borders.
10:29 Speaker 08 Well, history-- emanates from not only locally but nationally and internationally.
10:35 Rund Abdelfatah? And he says knowing that history isn't just important.
10:39 Speaker 08 If you don't preserve all of that history for futures generations to learn from, we're going to make the same mistakes over and over again.
10:48 Rund Abdelfatah? It's also fun.
10:50 Speaker 08 I kid my fellow historians that history is the only time you can gossip and get by with it.
10:56 Speaker 09 We have been diverse from the beginning and we've been divided from the beginning. But we are also held together by some key commitments that we still do share in common.
11:06 Speaker 02 This is Yuval Levin. He's overseeing the 250th anniversary project at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington DC. And he thinks this year is a clear moment to celebrate.
11:19 Speaker 09 Our country on the one hand is something to be celebrated and we'll have a birthday party for it when it turns 250. But on the other hand, our country has also always presented itself to Americans as a kind of sociopolitical experiment, a test of ideals. And that means that in those moments of civic commemoration, we also ask ourselves, are we living up to these ideals?
11:44 Speaker 02 Yuval actually thinks the Declaration of Independence is the perfect example of consensus.
11:49 Speaker 09 Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. You might say the foremost progressive and conservative voices in that generation of Americans. And that they both shared in that joint project, that they both authored that one document. I do think is a nice symbol of how the American political tradition encompasses the left right differences, allows both to be expressed, allows us to get some of the best of both, even if we also suffer some of the worst of both.
12:19 Rund Abdelfatah? This is not to be naive or make light of the real differences in how people are thinking and talking about history right now. Or the fact that people feel conflicted about whether we should even be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when the very democracy it heralded feels shaky.
12:37 Speaker 10 That's a great question, and that's one that people have been debating for the past couple of years. You know, is this commemoration? Is it celebration? What is the tone and tenor of what it is that we are doing?
12:46 Rund Abdelfatah? This is Adrienne Whaley. She's the Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
12:55 Speaker 10 I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and so I've always had the history of the American Revolution right in my own backyard.
13:02 Rund Abdelfatah? She understands why people might have reservations about this year's anniversary.
13:07 Speaker 10 I think what gives me comfort, and I can probably speak for a lot of my peers as well, or at least if not comfort, then a sense of groundedness, is that we have never had one clear understanding of what America was or is as a nation.
13:22 Rund Abdelfatah? So for Adrienne, the thing worth celebrating is the fact that we, as a country, are still striving to figure it out, despite the divisions, obstacles, and setbacks over the years.
13:34 Speaker 10 We at the Museum of the American Revolution, our entire mission is about uncovering and sharing these compelling stories about diverse people and complex events that sparked this ongoing experiment in liberty, equality, and self-government.
13:47 Rund Abdelfatah? In the lead-up to the 250th anniversary, the museum has a special exhibit called "The Declaration's Journey." And the part that Adrienne likes the most is right when you walk in.
13:58 Speaker 10 The coolest thing, like, the thing that you were greeted by when you walk into the exhibition is this, this display that's got two things on it. One of them is a Windsor chair.
14:09 Rund Abdelfatah? It's the chair they believe Thomas Jefferson used when he was authoring the Declaration of Independence. And right next to it-
14:16 Speaker 10 is this bench. That is, it is turning colors, it is rusting, the paint is falling off of it, it's flaking, and you can tell that it's got like a long and difficult history. And that's because it is the bench from the jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter from Birmingham Jail.
14:37 Rund Abdelfatah? The letter in which MLK famously references the Declaration of Independence in connection to the Black youth that were conducting peaceful sit-ins at white-only establishments.
14:48 Rund Abdelfatah? He wrote that they were bringing back, quote, "those great wells of democracy."
14:54 Speaker 02 I love this idea of taking two radically distinct objects and finding the connections and layering them together to kind of help us understand this history in a new context. It's kind of like a history remix.
15:08 Rund Abdelfatah? Right, a history remix, which is exactly what we'll be doing with this limited run series, America in Pursuit. Each week, we'll bring you stories from Throughline's archives, only they'll be shorter and, like any good remix, framed in a different context to help you understand the arc of American history since the Declaration was signed and the many ways people have pursued life, liberty, and happiness.
15:35 Speaker 11 It must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.
15:45 Speaker 02 We'll be digging up moments that shaped the course of history.
15:47 Speaker 12 No country in the 20th century has ever been as economically dominant as the United States was coming out of World War II.
15:56 Rund Abdelfatah? Reframing ones you might think you already know.
15:59 Speaker 13 Every single denomination in the United States split based on the question of slavery. Can you own slaves and be a Christian?
16:08 Speaker 02 And sometimes, we'll get a little weird in true Throughline style.
16:14 Speaker 14 So in a way, Dionne Ophelia's mosquito, the founding mother of the United States, and she deserves to have her nice proboscis face tucked in between Washington and Jefferson on Mount Rushmore.
16:27 Rund Abdelfatah? Join us every Tuesday for America in Pursuit, your weekly guide to 250 years of American history.
16:39 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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