Here's Where It Gets Interesting - A Personal History of the 1960s with Doris Kearns Goodwin

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Imagine being a Pulitzer Prize winning presidential historian, knowing you had extraordinarily rare primary source material and Presidential memorabilia tucked away in the cellar of your own home… and not opening it for decades? Doris Kearns Goodwin joins us today to share her journey of exploring more than 300 boxes, alongside her husband of 42 years, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, that served as a time capsule of his service in the 1960s. In the relay race of democracy, you never know who will pick up the baton, and continue your work. Together, they have one last great adventure, a chance to reassess key historical figures, and a fresh perspective of the role young people play in the arc of history. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Gosh, I love this episode so much. It is with one of America's best-loved and most respected historians, Doris Kearns Goodwin. And this is more than just American history, although we definitely get into that. This is also about her own personal history and her husband's own personal history. You may not realize it, but Doris Kearns-Goodwin's husband was very, very close to Lyndon Baines Johnson, and her husband influenced U.S. history. So let's find out how, and let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I've been such a fan for so many years.

This is pretty exciting. Why this book and why now, Doris? Well, it really started when my husband turned 80 years old, and he came down the stairs, singing to the songs from, oh, what a beautiful morning. And he somehow was able to decide that it was now or never to open these 300 boxes that had slept around with us for 50 years, which contained really a time capsule of his service in the 1960s. He'd worked for John Kennedy, worked with Jackie Kennedy, with LBJ, with McCarthy in New Hampshire, and was with Bobby Kennedy when he died. So it really was an extraordinary thing that he was in defining moments

at every place along the way. And all those years, though, he saved the boxes but didn't want to open them because the 60s had ended so sadly with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the riots in the cities, the anti-war violence, the war in Vietnam. But then finally he realized when he was 80, if he didn't start doing it, it was not going to happen. If he had any wisdom to dispense, so we made a deal that every weekend we would go over the boxes and start from the beginning, not knowing how the ending of the decade came, but starting with John Kennedy and all the promise of the 60s and relive them together. So that's how this all began. It was the last great

adventure of our lives. Doris, how did you let those boxes go on open for so many years it had to be killing you as a historian to know you had all this primary source material? Like what, in your attic? Well, in the cellar, even worse. They were in the cellar in not great condition. And I had looked in them when he was working many years earlier on a memoir. We looked at some of them that he took out. So I knew that there was great stuff in there, but I just had to give in to his desire to wait until he was ready. And thank God he was ready so that we had those years together because it really meant that the last years of his life were in some ways for both of us an extraordinary experience. It gave him a sense of purpose to be going through this. I was helping him write a book.

And even as he got cancer in the last year, he just kept going and wanting to be able to tell the country what he was thinking. And it had a lot to do with really mobilizing young people because the six, was such a decade with all the sorrow that young people really were involved in every step along the way from the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement to the anti-war movement to the gay rights movement, the women's movement. It was a time of excitement for both of us. So we became young again as we went through those boxes and it was great for him. Tell everybody who Dick Goodwin was. If they don't already know about him, your book, it paints a wonderful portrait of him. But who was he that he had 300 boxes of memorabilia from presidential administrations and other high-level government positions in the 1960s?

Yeah, we used to tease that somehow he was like the zealig of the 1960s and the late 50s just happens to be where every moment happens. He's by the side of the person, right? And he had some instinct to save. I mean, I certainly didn't have it myself in the same way. I wish I had as an historian. It's crazy. But he had that desire to sort of record what he was going through, really starting in the late 50s when he went to Harvard, was first in his class, president of the law review, clerks for Justice Frankfurter in a really important time of Supreme Court history in the late 50s. And then investigated the rigged television quiz shows, the $64,000 question in 21. And a movie was made about that. And that was sort of a turning point in the 50s to looking at what was happening with an untruth to it. something obviously we're all talking about today, right? And then he goes to become a young speechwriter for John Kennedy. He's on the plane with him.

He's in the Kennedy White House. He writes a speech on Latin America. Suddenly is running a billion-dollar program called the Alliance for Progress. Things were so much more small then in those days, more intimate, that you could do things like that. And then he dies, of course, and Dick is at the White House the night that the body is brought back in charge of the eternal flame. And then he ends up going to work for Lyndon Johnson in the heyday of the great

society. I mean, that was really, in some ways, the most fulfilling time of it all, coined the phrase the Great Society. More importantly, helped Johnson on the speeches that laid out his program for the Great Society in Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Education, NPR, PBS, incredible domestically, right? And then the civil rights speech and the voting rights speech after Selma and the Howard University speech on affirmative action. He left in the fall of 65, got involved in the anti-war movement, wrote his own speeches against the war, got very close to. Bobby Kennedy as he was turning against the war. When Bobby didn't run, he's up in New Hampshire with, when McCarthy in the great New Hampshire primary, when Bobby comes in he goes with Bobby

and is with him when he died. And then he's even at the Democratic Convention, the turbulent convention in Chicago in charge of the peace playing. So it's just like he happens to plant himself wherever something important is happening. I don't know whether it just happenstance or whatever, but there he was in incredible moments. That's incredible. Had you spent a lot of your years, again, as a presidential historian, did you spend a lot of your marriage talking about these issues? Or were you uncovering his experiences for the first time? Well, both things are true. I mean, we did spend time, of course, talking about JFK and LBJ, but I certainly didn't know the depth of the relationship he had with JFK, with Jackie, even with LBJ until we got into the boxes.

You know, when you see the memos and the drafts and the telephone conversations that we listed to on the tapes, I got a much more intimate understanding of his relationship. And that cast an understanding of my feelings about Johnson and Kennedy at the same time. So, as you know, as an historian, to have primary source materials and be able to look at them. And there's a guy across from me who is the person who's written them. You know, usually I talk to the people that I used to study, FBR and Lincoln. And I would constantly be in my study, you know, asking them questions, but they never answered me, of course. And now, I've got this character right across for me who not only answers me, but can argue with me and say,

no, that's not right what you're thinking. So that was a stunning part of this whole discovery process. One of the things that I took away is something you already mentioned, which is his uncanny proximity to so many important moments. And one of the things that, you know, just how impactful his career was, you mentioned towards the end of the book, how he was integral, in writing Al Gore's concession speech to George W. Bush. And that is a speech that I have watched many times that I think is extremely poignant today, an important speech to date, given the current political climate. And I wonder if you could share a little bit more about that because you were together at that time.

And so you really got to see the behind the scenes of that moment. Yeah. What happened is that we had known Al Gore and he called Dick. after the election took place and the lawsuits were taking place and things were going on in Florida. And he asked him if he would work on both a concession speech and a victory speech. And Dick knew that the victory speech would matter much less than the concession speech. And finally, Gore called him when Florida was about to decide and said, well, if I lose, send it down. And then Florida decided in his favor.

But then when the Supreme Court decided, he sent it down right away. and I being less aware of bureaucratic problems, I said to him when I first saw the draft of it, this is so important. It's the peaceful transition of power. It will really matter that he's willing to do this. Send it down now. And he said, I don't want to send it until he has to have it. He's not going to want to read this before the election is lost. So it was sent down almost like the day before and Gore added some things to it. But it was exactly the right tone. and what we needed so much in our country then and what we needed in this last election. I mean, every other president who's lost

has been willing to put out a graceful statement of why this is so important the cherished transition of power to move on in a peaceful transition. And people were so upset in 2000. And when he did that, it just sort of laid it to rest to be able to say, I wish him the best. This is not how it came out,

but the law has spoken, and we revere the law. So it really was an important moment. And I felt very much a part of that. I was very proud of both Gore and my husband for that night. Yeah, you quote a portion of the speech in the book where he says, over the library of one of our great law schools is inscribed the motto, not under man, but under God and law. That's the ruling principle of American freedom. And he goes on to say, now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken, let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree, I accept it. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our. democracy, I offer my concession. And just like you said, that moment is one that Americans needed. It wasn't the moment Al Gore needed. It was the moment Americans needed to hear.

I disagree, but I accept it. I wish George W. Bush the best. His success is our nation's success. Oh, how very true. That's when a candidate is really speaking as an ambition for the country that's greater than for himself at that moment. And that's what you want in a leader, that it comes a moment in time when they have to make that decision. And so many other people have spoken. I one time went through what they all said. I'm sure you probably have two as an historian. It's so interesting to see they're hurt. When a presidential candidate loses, it's not only the loss for himself, but it's for his family and all the people who are supporting him. And I remember Jimmy Carter saying, you know, I told you, I'd never tell you a lie. So I can't lie now. This is hard. This hurt.

But on the other hand, I've lost and I have to do this. And it's a mark of character that each one of them, time after time after time, has been willing to do that until this last election. What have you learned from studying presidents and from your work with your husband and his work with presidents? What have you learned about important characteristics of presidential leadership? What makes a president a successful leader? Oh, it's the most important question because I think we can even know

before the leader becomes president, what kind of character they had in their public life up until that point. And the elements of character really are, are you willing when you make a mistake to acknowledge it and learn from it? It's the only way you can grow, that kind of humility. Do you have empathy to be able to understand other people's points of view and listen to other people? Have you marked resilience that you've gotten through tough times before and you've learned somehow reflection and wisdom from them? will you be accessible? Have you been accessible before that? I mean, they don't come in as unknown characters. I mean, that's what I remember working with Tim Russert in the days before he died about the fact that when presidential campaigns are covered, we so often cover, you know,

what is said in the debates, who has raised the most money, what's happening at that moment. But they've all come from somewhere, and maybe, of course, there's long magazine articles or even books written about them, but our daily conversation should be, did they show humility in their life? did they have empathy, resilience? Have they been accessible to people? What kind of a staff did they create their staff? How do they communicate with people? And are they honest? Do they have compassion? Do they have an ambition that's larger than themselves that was for a team or an organization or for the Senate or the governorship, wherever they were? Because they're going to become that person. They may change a little bit. They may grow as president, but they're not going

to change fundamentally. So we've got to learn what kind of emotional qualities. They're really emotional intelligence, what we want in our leaders. We want character above all. Have you ever thought about going to therapy but felt overwhelmed trying to actually start? It can feel like a full-time job to find someone who takes your insurance, has availability, and really understands what you're going through. That's where Rula is different. Rula takes the stress out of finding mental health support. They connect you with licensed therapists and psychiatrists based on your preferences, and they only show you providers who are in network with your insurance. Most people pay just $15 per session. But Rula doesn't stop at making

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You deserve quality care from someone who cares. Every week on the Moth podcast, we hear from incredible people who have found their own voice. There's this little bit of wisdom people say all the time, you know, that you should live in the moment. Let me tell you something. there is nothing worse than being forced to live in the moment. The Moth podcast features real people telling their stories live on stage. To connect and learn from them, follow and listen to The Moth on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This topic has been one that is hotly debated right now about whether character matters more or policies matter more. Some people feel like, listen, the dude can be a different. jerk and I don't care. I just care about his policies. I want his policies to benefit me. I want his policies to, you know, make the country better in some way that I perceive that, you know, is an improvement. And then there's this other sort of camp that feels like, listen, policies can change. And policies will change. There's not one policy that has remained static over the course of United States history. Policies can change who you are changes far less. How do you view it? Do you think that policies are the most important or that character matters more?

Oh, I'm definitely in the character camp. I mean, even with Abraham Lincoln, one of the reasons he's so beloved in history and why historians always put him, I think, at the top, it's not simply what he did. And obviously what he did by saving the union and ending slavery and winning the war was extraordinary. But it's really who he was, I think, is so memorable about him that he was a man. who put ambition for the country above himself. He was willing in 1864 when he was told that there's no way he could win the election in November unless he compromised on emancipation. And he threw the Republican leaders out. And he said, I'm not sure he literally threw them out, but seemingly saying that I'm not going to do this. If I lose the election, I'll lose the election. You know, as it turned out then, Atlanta fell and the war was doing much better in the fall.

And he was able to win the election, but win it with the twin goals of emancipation. and unions still intact. And that's what you need in the character. There's going to be defining moments in the presidency, whether it's war or peace or a crisis that occurs or some moral issues that are there, and you need that person with character. And exactly like you say, policies change.

They change with time. They change with context. We go upward in certain areas. We go backward at certain times. But it's much more important that the person there is the person you can trust. And without that trust, it's what FDR had when he came into,

of the presidency, you know, when the country was in such a state of disarray, one out of four people out of work, and banks couldn't even fill the deposit slips that the people needed to get their money out and there was starving people wandering the streets. But somehow, from that first inaugural address, he made people feel like he was there and they could trust him. And that gave confidence to the country that helped to get us through the Depression. So I'm definitely in the character camp. Two presidents that both you and your husband were intimately familiar with, JFK, LBJ. Can you compare and contrast what you know about JFK's and LBJ's character? And what was it like knowing them and for you and your husband to have worked with some of them? It's really interesting.

I mean, I think what I came to feel when I went through the boxes more than I had before was the importance of the role of JFK as an inspiring figure, not just the inaugural address, but Dick was present with Sorensen when the birth of the Peace Corps happened in many ways at the University of Michigan. And somehow, JFK comes to Michigan. JFK comes in at 2 a.m. in the morning. He's just going to sleep at the Michigan Union and go on a whistlestop tour the next day. But there's 10,000 kids that are waiting there for him, and they've been waiting up for

hours. So he knew he had to speak to them. And he doesn't even give a major speech. He just asks them a series of questions, would you be willing to go to Ghana for two years? if you're a doctor in training or an engineer, would you be willing to go and help another poor African country? And the kids responded, not only at those few words, it was like a three minute speech, but they then put a pledge together, signing a thousand people signed a pledge that they'd be willing to go for two or three years to help out in these countries abroad.

That word of that pledge got to JFK and got to my husband and Sorensen, who changed a speech they were writing, and the Peace Corps was born. and then thousands of people sign up because they want to do something for their country. And so I began to understand even more the role of inspiration and also all the programs or many of the programs that Johnson got through were in the transit line because John Kennedy had put them before the Congress.

But then you have a Lyndon Johnson figure who understands the Congress who knows how to get things done and brilliantly knows how to put one program right after the other, the timing of which one should go when, how to get the congressman to feel that this thing, programs and not simply his, and that great society programs get passed one after the other. So I came to realize at the end, and I think both Dick and I did, that they were really together in a certain sense. Their legacy was larger because of one another, and that

either one wouldn't have been as big without the other, because their programs were intertwined and the inspiration and the guy who got things done came together and formed a larger hole than either one would have been before. So it was really an interesting process for us. to respect JFK more. And Dick remembered, of course, the great days with LBJ, which were the height of really his own career and what the country was able to achieve, even though the war had seemed to cut it into, that everything still was there, Medicare was still there, aid to education, NPR, PBS, immigration reform, civil rights, voting rights, most importantly. And those were the best moments for Dick. And just remembering it again, made him feel softer and more affectionate

toward old LBJ. And I was so glad for that. I want to talk about Bobby Kennedy for a few minutes. I know that you write extensively about Bobby Kennedy in this book. And I wonder if you could first of all share just a little bit more about him. I think many people know that like, oh, yeah, President Kennedy had a brother. They recognized his name. They certainly recognize his son now who is running for president. But he's still in many ways an enigmatic figure to today's Americans. I know quite a few people. who don't even realize that he was assassinated. They were like, what? So tell us a little bit more about Bobby Kennedy because his is an important legacy in American history. I think Dick really believed that had Bobby been able to win the presidency, he would have been a great president,

that he had qualities even greater than JFK, in part because he had loved JFK so much more than himself and was really desperately sad after JFK died. And having gone through that adversity, he had emerged as a different person than he was before. He started reading philosophy, he started thinking about history, was interested in science and astronomy.

He became reflective, and he became a more empathetic person, I think. He had been somewhat of a black and white guy before, you know, this is right and this is wrong. And there's that moment, for example, after Martin Luther King is killed, where he's in Indianapolis, and he speaks to a crowd who had not yet heard

that King has been killed and has to tell them the news. and he speaks with such strength and such compassion and talks for the first time openly about what it was when his own brother was killed that the calmness that descends on the crowd it's one of the few cities that doesn't break out in riots after King's death because Bobby was there

and Bobby was able in the primaries that he did win to bring the blue collar worker and the blacks together and that was something that was so needed at that period of time Dick loved him I mean, he respected John Kennedy, but Bobby became a really close friend. He went to South America with him. They traveled together places. He worked on his great Cape Town speech that Bobby delivered in South Africa on the anti-war speeches

and was part of the campaign with him. But he saw something in Bobby that I think the country would have seen and was beginning to see. Huge crowds were coming to him in those primaries. There was a real contagion that he was somehow eliciting, as John Kennedy had. But he was more empathetic with the crowds. He was terrific with young people. He'd go into the barrios. He cared about poverty in a deep, deep way.

And I think he would have been a great president. And I only know that more through my husband than through my own understanding. Can you tell us a little bit more about how your husband was impacted by the assassination of the Kennedy brothers? You mentioned he used to be this kind of person, this sunny outlook. You're encountering him in these boxes. Like, I wake up with a smile on my face, and you knew him to be a different kind of man. Was it the assassination of the Kennedys that did that to him? How did those events impact his life?

I think, you know, in a certain sense, the assassination of John Kennedy shifted things for him because he would have had John Kennedy lived. He was going to be announced that very day, November 22nd, to be a special consultant on the arts, which was something he deeply cared about. He really always wanted to be a writer. His friends were in the art world. His relationship with Jackie was through the things they did together on the arts projects.

And that was a pretty exciting thing for him. He was the man in the news that day in the New York Times. And he was staying home to write his statement because it had leaked to the press. And he was told in Texas to make sure you get the statement out today that you're going to be this position. And he hadn't even heard about the assassination. He calls in to dictate the statement in the afternoon, and the secretary said, oh, Mr. Goodwin, haven't you heard the president's been shot? So that changed his trajectory, but in a weird way, he ends up working for Lyndon Johnson and is involved in even greater things that have to do with the country, the great speech after the Selma demonstrations and the joint session of Congress calling for a voting rights, the Howard University speech.

But then the war seems to come in the middle of all that. And that really took a toll on him because he believed the great society was moving in a direction progressively that that might have really changed a fundamental sense of the country. And then, of course, he gets close to Bobby and he feels like Bobby's going to be able to do it and he'll be right by his side. And after Bobby died, there really was a sense the war was still there. Bobby was dead. He wasn't sure where the country was going. And he retreated from public life. He went to Maine, became a writer.

He did a lot of wonderful things in his life after that. He brought a play about Galileo and Pope Urban I, that was put on in England and Boston. He wrote books, memoir, everything that really meant a lot. But nothing like that feeling of being in the country in the 60s with these leaders who he thought were making the country a better place. And he had a mission with them to bring us closer to our ideals. The most wonderful thing that happened in those last couple of years of his life

was he began to realize again that all the things that he had worked on, that JFK and LBJ had worked on were still there, that they had changed the country in fundamental ways and that his life had been worthwhile. I think everybody wants to have a sense of purpose in life and a belief that maybe you've been able to make a difference in people's lives. And so much of it had to do with young people. It was young people who were in the civil rights movement, young people in the anti-war movement, young people in the Peace Corps.

and he began to feel in those last years that it was going to be a cycle again and young people would come forward. So I think he was feeling like it's now the time for that next generation to take over. And I'd love to have, if this book ever has a hope of mobilizing young people to remember that you can live in a decade where you can make a difference, that each time you stand up for an ideal, as Bobby Kennedy said in the Cape Town speech, you send forth a ripple of hope. and then together those ripples come together to form a mighty stream that will break down the mightiest walls of oppression. So I'm just hopeful that spirit of the 60s, which really can be recreated, that if this has a little way of helping that, that would be Dick's dream.

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You say in the book, too, that after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, and you say that following Robert Kennedy's assassination, the debacle at the Democratic Convention, and the improbable resurrection of Richard Nixon, Dick had retreated to the remote hill country of Western Maine. It was a defiant, not a defeated soul, however, who had moved to the mountainous lake district. And I love this part where you say his belief in the necessity for fundamental change was greater than ever. But the time of waiting for the advent of heroes, the great man or woman who would set things right was over. Real change, he felt, would only come when an aroused public sentiment made it happen.

And I just love the idea that, first of all, we don't have the luxury of waiting around for somebody on a white horse to ride in and fix it. Secondly, almost every time in history that somebody has tried to be a person on a white horse, that person ends up becoming a dictator. Like the only I can fix it, that person is not the person you want to follow. Anyone who says only I can fix it, run away. That's been my experience reading history. But thirdly, the idea that we are the ones we've been waiting for,

that we're not waiting for somebody to show up. And Dick really seemed to get that. Oh, you're so right. I mean, one of the last things he wrote was to just remind people that, All the fundamental change that has taken place in the country has always come from the ground up. When Lincoln was called an emancipator, he said, don't call me that. It was the abolitionists and the union soldiers that did it all. The progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century that helped Teddy Roosevelt do the legislation that he wanted to

to get the worst exploits of the Industrial Revolution softened was out there before Teddy Roosevelt. It was in the settlement house. It was in the social gospel and the religion. obviously the union movement made a difference for FDR and the civil rights movement made all the difference in the world, not only for the civil rights legislation, but really for the great society in many ways. And then you have the women's movement and the gay rights movement. So the last thing he said, America's not as fragile as we think because it can depend upon these people coming forth. But that's the key right now. I mean, we can't wait for some hero to rescue us from

the situation we're in with democracy being so fragile right now. It's up to us. We've seen we saw the Parkland kids when they marched on gun safety. We've seen people marching for women's rights. We've seen people coming to the ballot for the right to choose. I mean, it's a matter of standing up. I mean, right now it's not a time when people can be silent. The government is us. You know, it's not some foreign body out there. We are it. And we just have to take hold of knowing that our voices will be heard. This is what Lincoln said time and time again, that public sentiment was everything. With it, anything was possible. Without it, nothing was possible. He believed that public sentiment, and not, that doesn't mean public opinion, it means sort of a settled

feeling that comes in that something is right or wrong, that you need to have some sort of legislation to protect certain things. And when that settled feeling is there, as it finally was that emancipation needed to be done, then he could move toward it. And once you have that, he said it's more important in laws, Supreme Court decisions, and that's where public sentiment has to be moved today to protect where we are with a democracy and what kind of leaders do we want to bring us through this difficulty. And it's got to be us. The next thing that I would really love to hear you talk about is something that people say to me all the time, which is how frustrating they find it, that change takes so long,

that we see an injustice and we want to correct it immediately. And it's extremely frustrating, especially in today's day and age where we can literally Amazon prime something to come this afternoon, it's extremely frustrating that change is so slow in coming. And I wonder, as somebody who has studied the arc of American history for most of your adult life, if you can give us some thoughts on what it takes to actually create lasting meaningful change. Oh, this is something you and me as historians really will understand that I think that's where history really can give people solace and perspective. You just look back at how long a period of time it took to get various things that we wanted to. LBJ went to Truman's house in Independence, Missouri

to be able to sign Medicare because Truman was the first person who had really put its own presidency behind the idea of some sort of national health care. So you think about that. We're talking about the 1940s and now you're talking about the 1960s and yet it finally did happen. And you think about how long it took for the abolitionists and the anti-slavery people in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, it took a war, a civil war, and finally emancipation gets secured. So I think when people are fighting for something right now, they just need to see themselves as part of a line of progress. It's a relay race, and you go forward, and sometimes you go backwards, and then you've got to move forward again. But the people who went before moved us part of the way, and then our

responsibilities to move the next part. But that's, I think, where that's one of the reasons I love history so much. I think looking back on it, you know, I often thought about the fact that people living at the time don't know how whatever they're working on is going to end. All they know is just like you say that it's not happening right away. And when we look back at history, we know that World War II ended with the Allies winning. The people living in 1940 and 1941, if they had ever gotten frustrated and said, oh, well, England's going to lose so we can't send what we have, our limited weapons to them, England's not going to withstand the attack by the Nazis and they're going to fall. We better keep our weapons here. Isolationists were really

a majority in sometimes in the country. But the people who believed in intervention were there. They kept fighting. We helped England. England's withstood the Nazis bombing. And eventually we get in at Pearl Harbor, but without England having stood there in that period of time, who knows what would have happened. So you make progress little by little, and you just got to keep moving forward. And you've got to believe that the arc of history moves toward justice, as Martin Luther King would say. And also that it is not the job of one single person to fix it all. We feel like, well, I need to fix everything. I have to fix it all and fix all the injustice, all the things that are happening wrong in the world. And that is too overwhelming

a task, and so we do nothing. We become paralyzed by the enormity of the problems. And can you enlighten us with how much effort it requires and has required throughout history for people, let's say women who wanted the right to vote or African Americans who fought for equal rights. What kind of concerted effort did it take to move the needle doris? Yeah, I mean, I think that's why really have to go back to what Bobby Kennedy was talking about in that Ripples of Hope speech, each time a person stands up for an ideal, sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And then somehow, from all sorts of centers of energy, they come together. And that's when some real change can take place. And I think about the fact that just recently President Biden had a monument devoted

to Emmett Till's mother for having opened that casket so that people could see what had happened to our son. And then a hundred days later, Rosa Parks is on the bus and she's going to plan presumably to stay in her seat and not be told that she had to leave and then she's tired and she's thinking well maybe I'll just move to the back

or I'll get out but then she remembers Emmett Till's mother and what Emmett Till's mother had done and she stays there she stays there she gets arrested and then a few days later Martin Luther King the young pastor gives a speech to 5,000 people becomes the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott

that boycott eventually ends after almost a year, and there's a court decision that it was discriminatory, then that leads to the sit-ins. This is now talking the 50s. We're still in the 50s, the sit-ins, the freedom riders, and then you get the marches against segregation in the South, and you have Birmingham and the terrible things that happen when Bull Connor sends the dogs against the peaceful demonstrators, the young people, but that somehow fires the conscience of the American people.

John Kennedy finally then introduces the civil rights bill. It lays dormant in the Congress until LBJ gets in there. It finally passes in 64, and suddenly 75 years of Jim Crow legislation is undone, and blacks can enter, as they should have in the first place, to restaurants, public places, movie theaters, et cetera. But then voting is still a problem, and people have been fighting for voting rights and all the different tests that are put about black Americans do not be able to vote if they can't say what the 13th Amendment or the 14th Amendment, they can't. register, how many bubbles in a bar of soap, how many seeds in a watermelon, ridiculous things are made to ask. And then finally, again, you get that march in Salma, the peaceful marches coming over the bridge. And again, the Alabama state troopers go on them with whips and bully clubs and porces that fall over the bodies. A week later, Johnson gives that speech to the joint

session of Congress, and four or five months later, voting rights acts pass. So it takes a long time, But each stage is some progress along the way. And that's when young people have to feel, or people in general right now. If we move something in our own state or in our own city or a ballot decision on our town, all of those things matter. And they add up to public sentiment and eventually large changes take place. But you have to have confidence in that. If you don't believe that it's going to make a change, then nothing's going to happen.

And I think the people that are silent in times of moral crisis are the ones that you can really blame the most. I mean, Dante said that the hottest places in hell were those who stood still at times of moral crisis and stayed silent. Why is your book called an unfinished love story? Well, because I was helping Dick to write a book about the boxes. It would have been his book. And then during the time when he got cancer in the last year, he realized that he wasn't sure that he'd be able to finish it, even though it gave him a great sense of purpose to keep going. but then he asked me if I would finish it. And I wasn't sure, to be honest, after the year or so after he died,

because it meant a real change. I had to become the narrator of it. I had to be an historian. It wasn't simply the opening of the boxes. And I knew, given my slowness in doing research, that it was going to take years of my life to do it. It took another five years. And I wasn't sure if I could do it without him or even by myself.

So that was the unfinished love story of the book that he would have written. And then it became my book. in a certain set, it has finished even though he's not there. He's there in person to understand it, hopefully. And I'm so glad that I was able to finish that project we had started together. What is it that you hope the reader takes away when they close an unfinished love story, tucks into their pocket and carries with them? What is your hope?

I think the most important thing I hope the reader will say and feel is that this was a time in the 1960s for all of the difficulty and the way the decade ended with riots, and anti-war violence and the assassinations. It was a decade when people believed they could make a difference. And it meant that the air was filled with that desire to do something larger than yourself. I mean, for me, the most important moment came with the March on Washington. I was 20 years old, being in that March on Washington and feeling like I was doing something that was for the country.

I was carrying a sign, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews unite for civil rights. and I felt this joyous sense of being part of something larger. And I like people in remembering what that was like in the 60s, whether it was the Peace Corps or the Civil Rights Movement or the Voting Rights Movement or the Women's Movement or the Gay Rights Movement, that all of those movements together were part of a collective feeling that we can change the country and make it better. If we could do it then, we can certainly do it now.

It's just a matter of believing in it. And if the belief that we had shared in the 60s can be felt by people after reading the book again. It won't be the same as the 60s. Our problems are different, different, maybe more complicated, maybe simpler. But that would be terrific if it sparks people to believe I can go out there and make a difference in my own way and they start doing that even more and more. That would be great.

Dick would be very proud of that and so would I. Doris, you are a national treasure. I hope you know that. Oh, yeah. Wake up every morning, look in the mirror and say to yourself, Doris, you are a national treasure. That would not make you insufferable at all. I said it would, but I don't.

But it's okay if you hear it once in a while for people like me, you're a national treasure. I admire your work so much. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. This really mattered to me. It's my pleasure. You can buy Doris Kerns Goodwin's book, an unfinished love story, wherever you get your books. And if you want to support independent bookstores, you can go to bookshop.org.

I'll see you again soon. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. If you enjoyed today's episode, would you consider sharing or subscribing to this show that helps podcasters out so much? I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks, and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. We'll see you soon.