Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

I organized a series of White House lectures and performances in the East Room in which scholars, historians, scientists and artists explored issues from the cultural roots of American jazz to genetics to women’s history. The brilliant scientist Stephen Hawking explored the latest breakthroughs in cosmology. Dr. Vinton Cerf and Dr. Eric Lander discussed the Human Genome Project, which is unlocking the secrets of our genetic makeup. Already we know that all human beings are 98.9 Percent genetically the same, which has important implications for our peaceful coexistence in an all-too violent world. The great trumpeter Wynton Marsalis illustrated why jazz is the music of democracy.

Our poets laureate joined with teenagers to recite their own works. These forums became the first cybercasts from the White House, allowing people all over the world to enjoy them and participate in the question-and-answer sessions afterwards.

As part of our two-year commemoration, I initiated Save America’s Treasures, a program to restore and recognize cultural and historic landmarks and artifacts around our country. In every community, there is something―a monument, a building, a work of art―that tells a story about who we Americans are. Yet we too often neglect that history and fail to learn from it. The Star-Spangled Banner, which inspired our national anthem, hung in tatters in the National Museum of American History. Its painstaking repair would cost millions; its loss would be incalculable.

At a kickoff for Save America’s Treasures, Bill and I announced a donation of $ro million from Ralph Lauren and the Polo Company for the restoration of the flag that inspired our national anthem. Over the next two years, Save America’s Treasures matched $60 million from the federal government with $50 million in private donations and used the funds to restore old films, renovate pueblos, refurbish theaters and save many other examples of America’s heritage.

In July, I embarked on a four-day bus trip from Washington to Seneca Falls, New York, stopping along the way at places of significance: Baltimore’s Fort McHenry; Thomas Edison’s factory in New Jersey; George Washington’s military headquarters in Newburgh, New York; a park in Victor, New York, dedicated to Iroquois culture and Harriet Tubman’s house in Auburn, New York.

Harriet Tubman is one of my heroines. A former slave, she escaped to freedom on the Underground Railroad and then courageously returned to the South time and again to lead other slaves to freedom. While not formally educated, this extraordinary woman was a nurse and scout in the United States Army during the Civil War and became a grassroots activist who raised money to school, clothe and house newly freed black children during Reconstruction. She was a force unto herself and an inspiration to Americans of all races. “If you are tired, keep going,” she said to the slaves she led on treacherous paths from slavery to freedom. “If you are scared, keep going. If you are hungry, keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.”

The emotional capstone of the tour was an event at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, attended by sixteen thousand people. This marked the 150th anniversary of the campaign for women’s suffrage led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Inspired by the history that this small town represented for women and for America, I opened my remarks with the story of Charlotte Woodward, a nineteen-year-old glove maker living in nearby Waterloo 150 years ago. I asked the audience to imagine her life, working for low wages, knowing that if she married, her pay, her children and even the clothes on her body would belong to her husband. Imagine Charlotte’s curiosity and growing excitement on July 19, 1848, when she traveled by horse-drawn carriage to Seneca Falls to attend the first Women’s Rights Convention in America. She saw the roads filled with others like herself, forming one long procession on the path to equality.

I spoke of Frederick Douglass, the black abolitionist, who came to Seneca Falls to continue his lifelong struggle for freedom. I wondered what the brave men and women who signed this declaration “would say if they learned how many women fail to vote in elections? They would be amazed and outraged… One hundred and fifty years ago, the women at Seneca Falls were silenced by someone else. Today, women―we silence ourselves.

We have a choice. We have a voice.”

Finally, I urged women to be guided into the future by the vision and wisdom of those who had gathered in Seneca Falls.

“The future, like the past and present, will not and cannot be perfect. Our daughters and granddaughters will face new challenges, which we today cannot even imagine. But each of us can help prepare for that future by doing what we can to speak out for justice and equality, for women’s rights and human rights, to be on the right side of history, no matter the risk or cost.”

It was fitting that my spring and summer of discovery should end on this historic ground. I had witnessed the fragile bloom of democracy taking root in China, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The drive for freedom in those countries was the same drive that made America. The link between Harriet Tubman and Nelson Mandela was a part of the same human journey, and I was looking for the best way to honor it. Because so much blood has been shed for the right to vote, here and all over the world, I have come to think of it as a secular sacrament. Choosing to run for elected office is a tribute to those who sacrificed for our equal right to vote for our leaders. I returned home with a renewed reverence for our flawed but vigorous system of government and new ideas about how to put it to work for all citizens. And when I thought about the obstacles Bill and I still faced in Washington, I dipped deep into the well of inspiration that Harriet Tubman had handed