Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

This week, Anthony talks with esteemed Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author Annette Gordon-Reed, about her recent book On Juneteenth. As a Texas native, Annette shares an incredibly personal story and profoundly truthful narrative of the long road to Juneteenth, its importance to American history, and how it has evolved since becoming a federal holiday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open book where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better.

You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. The National Holiday of Juneteenth, which commemorates African-American freedom in the United States. My guest today is Pulitzer Prize winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed. Annette's award-winning book on Juneteenth combines personal anecdotes and family history while detailing the long road to Juneteenth. The book is an essential account of American history, but also a stark remark. reminder that the Fifer equality is ongoing. It's an incredibly powerful read, and I hope you will

enjoy the conversation. Professor, thank you for joining us. You wrote a brilliant book on June Teenth. It is part history, but also part memoir. And obviously, Juneteenth falls on June 19th, which is now the last national holiday added to the United States by President Biden in 2021. Everybody knows the day, but I don't think everybody understands the significance of it. And by the I would also like to applaud you because I think without your work, it's not clear to me that this becomes a national holiday, which is a necessary national holiday. So I appreciate your work on this. But tell people that don't know a lot about Juneteenth, what Juneteenth actually is and what it represents. Well, as you say, it refers to June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger goes to Galveston,

and announces that slavery is over in Texas. And that's important because this was after the Confederate Army, the Army of the Trans-Mississippi, surrendered at the beginning of June. Many people think that the Civil War was over when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. But in the Southwest, they kept fighting. And it isn't until June 2nd, when they surrender. And that's when Granger goes in and says, you know, this is the end of slavery in Texas. And it's important because it came after the total defeat of the military effort to maintain the system of slavery, which so what the Confederacy was about. And so it met freedom for all of African Americans in Texas. And it started, began the process of later on, sort of bringing black, try to bring black people into citizenship. Correct me if I'm wrong. But when I

finished your book, I had several reactions, but one of the major reactions, but one of the major reactions, was there was the law that was promulgated, the Emancipation Proclamation, the eventual end of the Civil War, but there was not a lot of adherence to the law, frankly, until Juneteenth. Is that a fair thing to say? Well, there wasn't adherence to the Emancipation Proclamation, only in places where the Army was. When the United States Army was in the area, they could basically force the, you know, former enslavers to pay wages to the people who were working on their plantations and so forth. So you're right. It was a really spotty enforcement mainly because if the soldiers weren't there, the planters and other people just acted as if nothing had happened. So it was something that had to be

forced. And that was the sort of benefit of having the United States Army in these military districts for as long as they were there. And then, of course, when they pulled them out, Reconstruction is over and then we get Jim Crow and lynching and all the other things. But so long as the army was there, that's when it could be enforced. But I mean, so let me just say it differently. The culture was such that they were more or less still wanting to maintain some semblance of slavery and some semblance of subjugation of African Americans or. Oh, yeah, exactly. But for the enforcement of the army, these people were basically saying, hey, we're not really going to accept this change in the law. Yeah. Oh, exactly, because they had the guns and they had superior numbers, and so they wanted to try to

maintain slavery as long as they possibly could or something that was as much like slavery as they could. It was only the army that stopped them. Or African Americans left, many of them went to Mexico and other places, but as long as Southern planners were in control, they wanted to maintain the system of slavery. So alongside of this story about Juneteenth, you are a Texas native. You were born in Texas. You described Texas in the book. I highlighted the quote, the American story, this Juneteenth story, the American story told from the most American place.

So you unpack some Texas. What makes Texas so unique? Well, the size, I mean, until we got Alaska, it's the biggest state, it's the bigger and the lower 48. the history of diversity from the very beginning. Texas didn't become diverse. It started out that way with indigenous people, people of European descent, Anglos and Spanish people. I mean, obviously, it was a part of Spain and Mexico originally. And has since become one of the most diverse places in the country. I mean, Houston is called the most diverse city in the country, people from everywhere. And Texas started out that way. It's always been a place with lots of different.

people trying to learn how to live together, different cultures, races, and so forth. And it's part of the South, but it's also part of the West. It has both of those traditions mixed in together there. And so it's always been a place of conflict in lots of ways, but also a lot of good things come out of Texas. I'm not just don't want to make it sound negative. It's a place that has instills in its citizens a great amount of pride about the place. And it's a place that mystifies a lot of other people. One of the things I say in the book is that I wanted to try to explain Texas to people because people always ask me all the time, what's up with Texas, you know? And I try to talk to them about the history and how it came to be the kind of place it is. So you're born in Texas, Livingston, Texas. You moved to Conroe. Tell us about your mom and

dad and tell us about the decision, your public school decisions when you were a youngster. And why did you feel that you were on display as a youngster as an elementary school student? Well, my mother and father. My father was a small businessman. He had a store in town, and my mother was a school teacher, and she taught starting out in what would have been considered the black school in the town. This was during segregation. It's after, this is after Brown, but the school districts were still resisting Brown, and they came up with a plan called a Freedom of Choice plan where white parents were supposed to keep picking white schools for their kids, and black parents would pick the black school. My mother and father decided to do something different, and they sent me to a white school

in the town. And that was a big deal because I was the first black child in our town to do that. And I felt I was on display because I was on display. I mean, people would come to the door of our classroom and stand there administrators and other people to try to see what was, you know, to see this miraculous thing, this black child in a classroom with white school. students. And it's something that we take for granted now, but it was a big deal then. And I mean, I knew that it was a historic thing. I didn't quite understand why it was such a big deal. And I think that those days gave me an interest in history very early on because I had to think of why is it a big deal that a, you know, a black kid is going to school with, with white kids. What was this all about? And that's when

I had my first real occasion to think about history and, you know, how we got to. And, you know, how we got to the point where there was a fight about this and why, you know, it was a big deal that I went to this school. So it helped shape me and make me, I think, do the kinds of things that I've done since then is want to become a lawyer, number one, because I knew that law was involved in this, but also, as I said, to think about history and the past and how that influences us today. Well, the Supreme Court obviously struck down those freedom of choice plans saying they were unconstitutional, but we both know that the court is a political engine because we got Plessy versus Ferguson at the Supreme Court, and we get Brown versus Board of Education.

You know, we share a legal background at least. I'm only a lawyer when I play one on television, but I did go to law school. I took Con Law under Professor Tribe. I actually had Randall Kennedy. I did too. Yeah, Professor Tribe is a good friend of mine. I consider him a friend. And I enjoyed the course.

You bring up Texas versus White, and this is a fascinating case because another person I was very fond of, she's now deceased as Pauline Meyer. I don't know if you remember Pauline. Lane Meyer. Oh, yeah. Pauline was a great, great woman, a great historian. Constitutional historian. There's a very big debate about the secession. Was it possible for the southern states to secede from the union? Obviously, Jefferson Davis took the position that it was possible inside of the Constitution that was signed in 1789. Abraham Lincoln took a different position. But fascinatingly, the Supreme Court really did no pine upon this until 1869, of a very, very famous case that you write about in

the book called Texas versus White. So I got a lot of young people listening in, Professor Gordon-Reed. Tell us about Texas versus White, the seminal case that it represented and what it meant for the South and ultimately the reconstruction period of the United States and the rebuilding of the union. Well, this is another Texas v. White that I'm talking about in the book. I mean, there are numerous ones, but this is about a murder case where someone was accused of raping a white woman and ended up being shot by her husband in the courtroom, and people saw it and no charges were filed at all. As for Texas v. White, as for secession, I mean, the whole question was about what did the framers mean when they, you know, created a constitution, a union? Was it a compact? People just sort of, you know,

together as an association or was it something that created a union that could not be dissolved? And as you said, Lincoln thought that it was definitely a union that couldn't be dissolved and that and the Constitution gave him the right as the president to put down insurrections. And this is something that we're, we're, that word comes back today. And the determination that their, you know, secession would be against the constitution. How did you get interested in this, if I may ask you? Personally. Yeah.

Well, you know, I'm a little bit of a policy walk. People wouldn't know that about me. You know, I studied constitutional law, obviously, at Harvard. And I was gravitated to Pauline Myers' book. She wrote an amazing book about the Declaration of Independence in 1997, and then two subsequent books about the American Scripture. American Scripture. I don't know if you remember that book was a brilliant book.

Unfortunately, she's not alive for me to interview on this, but I loved her. I thought she was an exceptional intellect. And I think for Lincoln, when you read his writings, he, again, his personal writings, not biographers about Lincoln, but he was. But his personal writings, he was vexed with this because he knew that a deal had to have been struck with the southern states to get them to ratify the Constitution. And he was vexed by what that deal actually was because chances are, and again, this is Pauline Myers, position. Chances are, there's not a lot of concrete evidence to this, but chances are there was some things in there to allow them to potentially secede from the union so that they could protect

the economics associated with slavery. Otherwise, they wouldn't assign the damn thing. And so here's where I think Lincoln, listen, Washington, obviously is an amazing president. We can talk hours about him. But I think Lincoln ultimately settled the issue of the union. And he ultimately did things, including obviously the abolition temporarily of the writ of habeas corpus and other things to protect the union. But he was vexed by this. He wrote about this. He was troubled by it. And obviously, we're going to talk about the two Texas versus white cases, but the one that I was referring to, I wanted to get your reaction to because I think it's a seminal case. The Supreme Court basically said, hey, you can't leave the union. And it made it very clear. And I think some people would

contest that it wasn't super clear in the 1860s or 1858 when they were debating this issue. Well, that's what sent them out. I mean, the Southerners said, as you, as you describe it, we wouldn't have come into this union without that. The question is that the northerners, and Lincoln said this himself, about not wanting to have slavery expanded. Right. The Civil War is really about the expansion, the expansion of slavery. Yes, exactly. The Northerners thought, well, okay, we're not going to disturb slavery where you are, but you're not going to get to go west with it. We're not going to have a slave country. And that's what the real battle was about because Southerners weren't just content to have slaves just in the South where they existed. They wanted to go west to Texas. That's part of the story that I talk about. They wanted California. They wanted Cuba, actually. They wanted Mexico. It was expansionist. And the people of the North were like, no, no, no, no. That's not. You have slavery in Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia and those, you know, and those South Carolina, North Carolina, that's okay. But the problem is that with slave population growing, soil depletion, all those kinds of things,

plantation slavery is expansionist, and it couldn't stay just in one place. So when Lincoln says, you know, I will not disturb slavery where it is. If I could save the union by keeping slavery, I would do it. And if I could, you know, save the union by destroying it, I would do it. Southerners were hearing them say, you don't get to expand. And if they didn't get to expand, that means they would be stuck there with growing numbers of African-American people, depleted soil, and a disaster. So for people who think that Lincoln didn't care about slavery, when he said that, the South herd, you get to stay where you are and can't go any further. And that's what caused them to fight about it. I mean, a union, if you think about the idea of a union

and the right to secede, I mean, it's just there's too much integration. There's too much economic integration, there was a concern about foreign powers. What would happen if you had two nations on this continent? Great Britain, all those places that were powerful back then would have come back in making alliances with people. It was a national security nightmare to think of having different countries on this place. They would be making deals with people all over. And it's just, you know, it would not have been anything that Washington, Jefferson, or those people who wanted the union would have thought of doing because they understood what would happen. Europe would be all over this if there were two countries. I think, I think it's so well said. And obviously Lincoln made an

agreement with the Great Britain to keep them out of the Civil War conflict. He certainly didn't want a Lafayette incident for the South or something like that. But, but, you know, your Texas versus White that you reference is the reason why I have been against the death penalty from the age of 25. Because Really? Yes, because it's arbitrary and capricious. If you're, you know, and again, people are going to be mad at me. We're in such a sensitive society right now. You can never really have an open, honest conversation, but we do do this on our podcast. If you're white and rich, if I took a machine gun out and I took out my employees, God forbid, drop the machine gun and wire $25 million to my souped up brilliant criminal litigators, I'm going to probably go to jail for insanity. I don't see myself getting lynched or dying by injection. Okay, having said that, if I'm African-American in certain parts of this country, and let's say I don't have the wherewithal to protect myself the way I just described, you have a good chance of having yourself killed. And if you believe in justice and you believe in the protection of people, well, then you have to obviously protect minorities because we know minorities are the dominoes that fall. And we know that this is an arbitrary and capricious way that we administer this type of justice. And I've been dead set against it.

in that case, other cases, and of course, obviously people that have been accused of committing crimes that they didn't commit. And now with DNA technology, we can prove that they haven't committed those. But listen, you're a great writer. I mean, I read your Hemmings of Monticello book. When that came out, you got a lot of press on that. I said, okay, I've got to read this book. Obviously, your book on Juneteenth is a short book, so it was a quick read. But you're writing about very complex things, Professor. So let me ask you a very complex question if you don't want. Okay. Okay.

We're all the same. Okay. Whether you're black, white, green, we're all the same. We have the same struggle in life. We have the same, generally same wants. Okay. And yet here we have this love story between Sally Halmings or if you want to call it a love story, maybe it's more complicated than that based on your book.

Perhaps it was. But these are people. And so I guess what I'm wondering is when do we break down all of this and get back to being people without. the tribal association and all of the group thing that comes with that. Like, how do we get to just seeing us ourselves in others? How do we go to seeing ourselves in others despite skin color, origin, sexual orientation, et cetera? How do we get there?

Well, it's, as you know, it's a tough question, but it's an important question. It's the most important question because it's the root of all kinds of problems, the fact that we don't do that. We don't see the humanity of other people. What I've, I try to do in that book in my other writing, and particularly in this book, I wanted to tell the stories of individual people. I wanted them to think, I wanted readers to think about Sally Hemings and James Hemings and her family as individual people. She was not just somebody who was connected to Jefferson. She was a mother. She was a sister. She was a daughter. She was a friend. And if you find out about individual people, you find out about their lives, you do realize that their struggles are familiar. Some of the things are, now, this is different

because they're enslaved people, but even within that system, she was all those things. As I said, mother, friend, aunt, all those kinds of things. And I wanted people to get to know them in a way that would make them say, you know, what would I do if I were in that situation? Or here's how I would feel about that. This would be why I would be hurt, for example. I mean, to see the points of connection And if you think that people are completely foreign, if they're not, you started out by saying we're the same. But if you're convinced that we're not the same and we don't have anything in common, I think it's easy to dismiss people. It's easy to demonize people and to demonize people if you do that. So what I try to do in my writing and the kind of what other historians who are right in this field do is to try to get people to see beyond the label, you know, enslaved person or black person or white person or Jefferson even. founding father, even. He was a person. And he had flaws and he had great points. And the idea is to

give a complete picture of it. So you get to know who this individual is. I think the only hope we have is if we pay attention to one another and we recognize, as you say, that we're the same. And we have points of commonality. And that commonality is the fact that we're human beings. And we're born and we're going to die. We have a set amount of time here, and what we do here really matters because we don't have forever. Right. And that's the story of every single person. And again, seeing yourself and other people, I think that's ultimately the transitional bridge that we all need. But you write about this stuff beautifully, and I appreciate you coming on. I've got more questions for if you don't mind. Slightly less difficult than that one, but more questions. Okay. I want to go to the events of June the 19th,

1865 and General Gordon Granger and the four sentences of General Order number three. I want you to take us there what you write, what it's about, and its relevance today. Well, the General Order, he comes and he makes an announcement. Some people say that he did it from the balcony of the villa where he was staying. He probably did that, but there were also soldiers went around and they tacked General Order number three up on the doors, one on an African and Methodist Episcopal church. He does that. The soldiers do that. And the general order basically says slavery is over. But he also says that the former slaves would be in a position of absolute equality with everybody else, which was, he didn't have to say, but was really something that probably ticked off a lot of

whites who were enslaving people because they lived in a society where the opposite was true. They were not equal. And so for him to say that, he sort of. of, I say in the book, referencing the Declaration of Independence, which says, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. And also, he anticipates the 14th Amendment, which incorporates notions of equality. So what I take that statement to be is his recognition that in the United States, equality is a value. It's an important thing. And so he puts this thing out that, as you mentioned before, he says these things, but he can't make it true, right? He can't make everybody treat former enslaved people this way, but it's an aspirational thing

that you could try to create a society where people got paid for the work that they did, whose families, their children were not sold from them, which is one of the things that very often happened. The family separation, separating husbands and wives, mothers and children and fathers and children was endemic to slavery. That was the most painful thing about the institution. And so, when he says slavery is over and you will be in the state of equality, it reminded them that at least that part of slavery was done, the family separation, and they would be able to be paid for the work, which it seems like to us, like a, you know, it's a simple thing, but the idea that you would make people work for nothing and have them as property, that was over.

So that's what General Order number three represents for people. And that's why people celebrated and were very often punished for doing so. It was an occasion for hope for lots of people. So I want you to describe your reaction to the signing that President Biden of making Juneteenth a national holiday. What was your reaction to that professor? You know, when I set out to write the book, it never occurred to me that that was going to happen. But I was here and I got an email and saying, you know, I guess there had been a senator.

It was Johnson, Johnson, who had objected to it. He was sort of holding things up. But then he acquiesced and said he wasn't going to hold it up anymore. So I knew it was going to be a holiday. But I got an email asking me if I wanted to come down to the signing of the bill. This is like at, you know, 8.30 in the morning. And so I hop and I said, yes. And I hop on the shuttle. And I went down to D.C. And there were, it was a happy day. I mean, they had some Republicans there. Republican senators from Texas were there, and Democrats were there as well. And it was just an amazing event. My book came out in May. It didn't occur to me that something like that would happen just a month later. But I was very happy. It was, I think the holiday is a chance for

people to talk about serious things. It's a family holiday. It's in the summertime. You can, you know, be outside. It's a family and community day. That's what it's always been. That's the way We celebrated it when I was a kid, and I hope that people continue to do that. Well, you know, listen, we sometimes, you know, and I have to explain this to my kids, right, when we celebrate a Labor Day, I can explain to what it is or we celebrated a Memorial Day. Yes, it's about hot dogs and hamburgers and having some fun, but we are honoring something about our nation's history or our country or, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s the holiday around his birthday and so forth. But I guess what I want to ask you is about our future because you're an optimistic writer, by the way.

I mean, you write about some devastating things, but you're an optimistic writer, and I feel this sense of optimism from you. And so tell us about our future, our path, getting closer and being more accepting of one another. Well, you know, I am generally an optimistic person. I don't think I have any choice in that. I mean, I have children and I teach students. And I see their hopes, the kinds of things they want to do for themselves and in their lives. And I can't say that just because there are bad things going on, that we're not going to go forward. We're in a tough time now.

I'm concerned about our democracy. I'm concerned about a push towards authoritarianism, something that's the opposite of what 17, the spirit of 1776 was about. That was about getting rid of a king, getting rid of a person that everybody fixated on. for government by people. I mean, people are very hostile to the government, but the people of the United States are supposed to be the government. And we are the people who, if we participate, can direct our future. So I am hopeful because I've seen for my students and my daughter and her friends and my son and his friends a renewed interest in participating in government, paying attention, voting, running for office. One of my daughter's friends ran for office. And one,

actually, someone that she knows. And I just see an uptick in young people wanting to participate in the system and wanted to defend the system, defend the system of democracy, I should say, in the country, and defend the republic. So that's what makes me optimistic. There are a lot of negative things going on now. I'm, you know, shocked by many of the things that have taken place. But I think people are rallying and saying that they want to keep the spirit of 76, what the country was founded on and the sort of progress that we've made over the years, they want to keep it going. So young people make me optimistic. You know, there's an interesting thing going on right now. I would like to get your reaction to it.

And I call it the tyranny of the minority. And let me see if I can explain this to you. We live in a republic. And so our states have uneven population, but they have the same number of senators. We have an electoral college that's, you know, based on the representation in those states. and a result of which you can, I don't want to say game the system, but you can work to architect the system so that even though you are in the minority in terms of your voter representation, you can in fact gain power. Now we see that happening in the Senate where we have less populous states like the Dakotas have four, I think they have a combined population of 1.7 million, slightly larger than the island of Manhattan, but they have four senators

and yet the most populous states, Texas, Florida, New York, California have only two senators. The Republicans have not won the popular vote just one time since 1988. That was the 2004-W. Bush-Carrie election. I'm wondering if the system needs a refresh. Since we both are a little wonky on the Constitution, there's been 27 amendments. If you divide that by 246, that's one amendment every nine or so years. Yeah, we haven't had a significant amendment since 1965. We had a procedural one in 93, but are we doing ourselves a disservice not restating and re-fortifying the Constitution to make sure that it stays sturdy in an environment like this? Well, obviously, the equal representation for the Senate, regardless of population, was in hindsight a mistake. I mean, it was a big, you know, a big fight during the Constitutional Convention about this. People were concerned about the power of big states. And the little states, exactly.

I mean, for their cooperation, they got equal representation. But it's ludicrous. It's hard to imagine if you could bring them back today and see California and compare it to Wyoming and say both of them have the same number of senators. They would see that that's a problem. You know, unfortunately, that's something that has to be fixed by a constitutional convention. Equal representation of the Senate is something you can't, we're not going to be able to just vote that way. But the problem is when I ask my students and everybody about the idea of a constitutional convention, people are frightened as hell because who knows what could take place. So I don't know. It's definitely a flaw in the system. We could certainly enlarge the house, which is also out of whack, too, considering the population and so

forth. We really do need to, I think you're right. We really need to sit down and think seriously about the structure of the government that was put in place 1787, 1789, through that time. between, you know, the framers and the ratification at the end, in 88, because we're just in a completely different situation with the population. They couldn't have envisioned, you know, a state like California. That's why the amendments are there. Yeah. I mean, we, look, I mean, for me, the Plessy versus Ferguson, for me, in campaign finance is Citizens United. Ultimately, that decision equating your money to the First Amendment power and your ability to represent yourself, I think is a faulty proposition. It makes people very uneven. And so, you know, I'm wondering

if we'll have a Brown versus Board of Education moment where we reform those election finance laws, because he's desperate. We need that. Moreover, this whole gerrymandering situation now, I mean, if we're in a republic and we're in a Democratic representative sort of democracy, how is it that the people get to pick who votes for them? I mean, if we're in a real democracy, I mean, they're picking their own voters and they're screening out their enemy. So these are things that we have to change. We have to be bold enough and willing enough to be open about changing them, even though certain people in power don't want them change. It would be for the betterment of the country. All right, I'm going to let you go, but I have five words that I'm going to read to you. I do this with all

my authors, and I need to get your sort of immediate reaction. Okay. You ready? Okay. Thomas Jefferson. The most influential person at the beginning of the early American Republic. Okay. Well, just tell me why? Because he started a political party that had influenced from 1800 up through the 1830s. Jackson thought of himself as a Jeffersonian. There's never been, no one is equal to that in terms of political power for that length of time. All right. Well said, Sally Hemmings.

Mother of children sacrificed for her children and her family. You like Sally Hemmings? Yeah, for as much as I know about her. I mean, she made some choices I would have made, but yeah, just generally. All right. Andrew Johnson. Terrible president. Yeah, probably the worst, right? He set us back quite a bit.

Coming after Lincoln, it was a disaster. Yeah, really, really set the course. If you believe in the single man or woman theory of history, you can have the wrong person at the wrong time, too, to make a lot of damage. The state of Texas, professor, the state of Texas. What do I think about it? Yeah.

I love it. You love it. Yes, I love it because, and I say in the book, because my family was there. My family is still there. And it's a place that formed me. And it's flat. It's fairly flat. Well, some parts of it. There's, you know, in West, there's the hill country and there are a few mountains out there. But I mean flat in terms of you got your, you were able to launch your life and your career. Oh, yes, yes. Yes. You know, from a, I mean, flat from a, you know, an American dream perspective, you got opportunity there to, you know,

whatever the prejudices or biases were you were able to overcome them in the state of text. Exactly. Yeah, I'm getting that from your writing. That's fair enough. Hopefully I'm not overstating that. Okay, June 10th, what do we say about Juneteenth to the students that listen into this podcast? It's a family day. It's a day to commemorate an advance in human rights.

And you should, if you have an opportunity, talk to older people in your family and find out your family story. Great grandparents or whatever, record them. Find out what it was like for them as young people and they helped to make you who you are and you should pay attention to that. Well, I greatly enjoy your work. What's next? Are you able to tell us? I'm doing another biography of the Hemings family. I'm going to talk about them in the 19th century in the Civil War. Okay, great. Well, I look forward to that. Hopefully, I can convince you to come back on open book when you get that published. I appreciate your time today, Professor. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Annette's book is a quick read, but in some parts, a quite difficult read.

However, it's important. It's incredibly important for all of us to understand as we honor Juneteenth, the cause for equality and the cause for freedom, while things have improved marginally, we have so much more that we can do. We have so much more that we can do to make things better. As we touched on, Annette has written many fantastic books, particularly one on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. We're in a period now of a true awakening. The word woke comes from that notion that we are awakening ourselves to the institutional biases, the institutional racism, prejudices that are out there that have been baked into the system for several hundred years. Juneteenth is a reminder of that. Juneteenth shows us what we were actually like. Now, listen,

whether we like it or not, our ancestry has been laced with slavery. Slavery is not a dilemma just for African Americans over the 300 years here in North America, but it's really a four or even five thousand year struggle around the world. The U.S., one of the most beautiful things about this country is we are trying to make things right and we are pushing forward. We have two federal holidays now that recognize the struggle for African Americans here in the United States, the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday in January and now June 10th in the month of June. I really want to give a shout out to Professor Annette Gordon-Reed. It meant a lot to me for her to come on the program, having worked for Donald Trump and knowing that Donald Trump has incited some levels of racial tension in the country,

which obviously I've already apologized for. My being an accomplice to that, I admire the fact that Professor Gordon Reed came on anyway. And it was a really diligent intellectual conversation and something I'm proud of. I hope you'll share it with your friends. Hello? All right, Ma, you ready to come back on the show?

Yeah, go ahead. All right, so now let's go to Juneteenth, Ma. This is the new federal holiday. This is the day where the African American community was set free. Yeah, I know. I know what it is. Okay. And I had a Harvard professor, her name was Annette Gordon-Reed-on, and she wrote an amazing book about this.

But, you know, something I learned from you, okay, but also probably from Uncle Sal as well, you know, you treat people equally. So why do you do that, ma'am? Why do you treat people equally and give everybody the benefit of the doubt? Well, first of all, I lived in the South of 1957, and I thought that the black community was treated horrific. And because of that, I had a soft spot for the people because they were so mistreated. You saw very heavy racial discrimination, very heavy segregation and mistreatment. In Louisiana. I lived in Louisiana. And the innocent blacks who were frightened of the whites, honestly, had to go through the swamp in Lake Charles. And there were my poison and stinks in Louisiana.

And they were in those swamps. And I thought it was terrible. And it was a southern woman that I didn't realize that was from the deep south that had total discrimination. And she wanted to shoot DeVena and I and Catherine because we were from New York and we were trying to defend them. Right. Okay. She went to start. She really did.

I mean, that's a real story. Right there in 10 minutes summarizes a lot of the racial tension that's going on and how there are, you know, people on both sides. that want to treat each other fairly as human beings and equally. So, all right, but I learned that from you. Okay, so I love you for that, Ma. I appreciate that. Thank you. What's your favorite period of history, Ma?

Favorite period of history. There's a lot of them. I think John Kennedy, the president, right? Was trying to show the people that the people were more equal, and he was trying to give everyone a chance. Yeah, and you were disappointed when he was assassinated, right? Right. And also with Truman who fought our country and fought it well.

Right. I thought President Truman was very good, too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Pop, your father liked President Truman a lot. Yes. You know, I remember listening to.

And he would follow him and read about him constant. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, he had no. And my two brothers were in World War II. And because of that, he, he, well, they helped save us, my two brothers. Mm-hmm. No, I, listen, I mean, they're both decorated war. But I guess the question I have for you, you like that period of time for what reason?

Because America was on the right side of things doing the right thing, right? Absolutely. Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I thought the worst part of it was Hitler and Putin. And I think Putin is a real nut. I really do.

But there's a way that people like that get caught up and they don't have a good life. Mm-hmm. And I'm a little religious and I don't think they'll ever seek God. Mm-hmm. And God can give to people, but I don't think they'll be ever forgiven. All right. Well, that sums up Marie Scaramucci. Okay.

You made me feel that guilt by all life, too. I will say that, that Catholic guilt. I love you, Ma. All right, talk to you later. I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast.

While you're there, please leave us a rating. review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at plus 1, 917, 909-29-996. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.