Q & A: The IHC talks to Lerone Bennett, Jr., Executive Editor of Ebony Magazine
Lia Merriweather
Lerone Bennett, Jr.
"One of the things we have to deal with in this country, one of the things that we have to deal with in Illinois, is the truth about Abraham Lincoln, so that we can create openly for the millennium an America that terrified Lincoln: a black and white and brown and yellow and rainbow America." --Lerone Bennett, Jr.
In 1968, journalist and historian Lerone Bennett Jr. rocked the academic world with his article, "Was Abe Lincoln A White Supremacist?" In the article, Bennett contended that the widely held image of Abraham Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator" was a myth and that America needs to re-examine Lincoln's public policies on slavery and Lincoln's own ideas about race. Thirty years later, Bennett, executive editor of Ebony Magazine, again questions Lincoln's legacy and its effect on the nation today.
Exactly, why do you consider Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator" a myth, as you stated in your article, "Was Abe Lincoln A White Supremacist?" (Ebony, February 1968)?
Oh, there are so many reasons, I'm doing a book on this. First of all he was not an emancipator, great or otherwise. He did not emancipate black people in this country. And it is unfortunate for black people and white people that there's been so much misinformation disseminated on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, again, only a handful of Americans has read the Emancipation Proclamation. Few know what's in it or what it says. In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave in and of itself. Lincoln "freed" the slaves in the South, where he could not free them. Specifically, and this is the clincher, there were on January 1, 1863 three or four or five areas where Abraham Lincoln could have actually freed somebody. One of those was in New Orleans and half of Louisiana that was controlled by Confederate forces at that time. If you read the Emancipation Proclamation, you will find out that he specifically excluded the black people in New Orleans and Louisiana where he could have freed. There's an area in Virginia, in and around Norfolk, where he could have freed somebody on January 1st-- he specifically excluded those people from the Emancipation Proclamation. Black people in America were freed not by the Emancipation Proclamation, but by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
Do you think it was possible for him not to become a mythic figure considering the circumstances of his death?
I think the tragic assassination played a major role in it. Coming at a time at the end of the war, the assassination of Lincoln and everything associated with him became part of American legend and people have not examined the emancipation [or] Lincoln since then. I think that's a part of it, part of the myth. I also think there is this incredible reluctance on the part of white Americans, especially, to deal with the problem that Abraham Lincoln didn't want to deal with, the problem of race in America. And I think people everywhere, museums, intellectual and cultural organizations deliberately used Abraham Lincoln to hide themselves and to hide Americans from the race problem Abraham Lincoln tried to hide himself from. Abraham Lincoln was a racist, [he] believed black people were inferior, opposed citizenship for black people, wanted to deport black people, and never in his whole life had a rational idea about the race problem in America. If they dealt with it [Lincoln's stand on race], then they would have to deal with racism in America in the 19th century and the 20th century. Few institutions, apart from the DuSable Museum of African American History [Chicago] and of course Ebony, have examined Abraham Lincoln on this level and have focused attention on the black and white Illinoisans who, unlike Lincoln, believed in equality and human rights. That's incredible, it's been more than a hundred years, we have not had in Illinois a rational discourse on Abraham Lincoln in race at any major institution.
Why do you think there hasn't been a major discourse of Lincoln on this level?
I don't know. The point I'm making and let me make this very clear, there were white people in Illinois at Abraham Lincoln's time who believed more or less in the Declaration of Independence, who believed in equality, who operated the Underground Railroad, and who tried to help black slaves escape into Canada: Zebina Eastman, Dr. Richard Eells and Lyman Trumbull. These were white people who were involved in the struggle for equality. They're totally forgotten in America and Illinois today. Whereas everybody talks all the time about the Abraham Lincoln who supported the fugitive slave law, who opposed equal rights for black people and who wanted us deported. That's incredible! It's almost impossible to get white people in Illinois to focus on white people in Illinois who believed in equality in Lincoln's time, unlike Lincoln who did not believe in equality.
So these are the forgotten heroes?
They are forgotten of course, unsung heroes. Lyman Trumbull was a senator, who had other faults, but he was much more advanced on the question of race than Abraham Lincoln. He [Trumbull] was the author of the first confiscation act, played a major role in the second confiscation act and played a major role in the passage of the 13th Amendment. Nobody in Illinois knows his name today. Everybody knows Abraham Lincoln's name, who was opposed to equal rights and who urged people to go out into the street to hunt and capture and return fugitive slaves to the South.
Do you think this myth of Abraham Lincoln drifts away from the other heroic aspects of his presidency during the Civil War?
I did this article in 1968 and it created kind of a furor in academic circles and newspapers all across the country. After that, there was and still is going on a re-evaluation of Lincoln; and many people believe that now, since this, it would be better that his fame were anchored on something other than this myth of him as the Great Emancipator.
Then there are some historians and scholars who say that you can't really examine Lincoln with a 1998 perspective, or a 1968 perspective. What do you feel about that argument that you should only examine him in the time frame in which it was common for black people to be called the "n-word," and be in a submissive place in society. What do you think about that?
I think that's absurd. I just said that in Illinois, in Abraham Lincoln's day, there were white men who were way in advance of him on the issue of race. I've named some of them. Again I say, in addition to that, one of the things that white Americans are running from on this whole Lincoln issue is the challenge of dealing with some white men who were more advanced in the 1860s than most white people are today: John Brown, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and others. It's absurd for anybody to say that all white people in the 19th century were bigots who say the n-word everywhere. I've criticized him, not just to be criticizing Abraham Lincoln, I've criticized him in that article and I've criticized him in the book I'm writing. I'm making the point that the tragedy of this whole thing is that museums in Chicago, and in Illinois and the United States of America and universities in all of the states in America have not dealt with the white men and women who really believed in equality in America. And it's ironic that the only white people in America in Lincoln's time who really believed in equality are forgotten. And Abraham Lincoln, who did not believe in it, is honored everywhere and people never stop talking about it. That's a great irony there.
And just to clarify, some people believe that Lincoln freed that slaves because he cared about the slaves' condition and the way they were being mistreated. There's another view that he freed the slaves so that he could get support from Great Britain, who had already outlawed slavery by the time of the Civil War. What do you think is the exact reason that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation?
I think he was driven to it, forced to do it, pressured to do it by members of the Republican Party, by Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens and other members of the Republican Party and by large segments of the American public--segments which demanded that he free the slaves and use all Union resources to defeat the Confederacy. So, he did it because it was absolutely necessary for him to do it, politically and militarily, and of course the international situation was a consideration. Among the people in Illinois, in Lincoln's time, who were more advanced on civil rights and equality than Abraham Lincoln were Joseph Medill and Dr. Charles Ray, publishers and editors of The Chicago Tribune. Medill was one of the most withering critics of Abraham Lincoln throughout the war. Medill was brilliant on this issue, gorgeous! He had his problems with race, but he demanded for almost two years that Lincoln free the slaves and use black soldiers. As long as he possibly could, Lincoln resisted Medill and Charles Ray and The Chicago Tribune and the New York Tribune and other people who demanded that he free the slaves and use black soldiers.
How do you think this affects Lincoln's place in history now? Do you think that his place in history is going to wither at all, or do you think there is still going to be this mythic vision of him?
Lincoln is reported to have said that "you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Up to this point, people have fooled all the people in America all of time, except one or two on this Lincoln issue. But there's a limit to how far people can go in institutionalizing myths and untruths. Nothing is sure as William Herndon said. Nothing is surer than the truth, and that the truth about Abraham Lincoln is going to come out and is going to become more and more known. Since the 1968 article, increasingly, little by little, people know more and more about how big that myth is. But the health and racial sanity of America and the challenge of race require Americans to deal with the truth of our past if we want to create a rational future. One of the things we have to deal with in this country, one of the things that we have to deal with in Illinois, is the truth about Abraham Lincoln, so that we can create openly for the millennium an America that terrified Lincoln: a black and white and brown and yellow and rainbow America. Lincoln wanted to create an all-white nation. Again, how ironic can you be. People everywhere in this age with Hispanics, Asians and blacks, they still say, "Oh if I find out what Abraham Lincoln believed I would know what to do today." What he believed is that he wanted to put all these people out of the country who are always going to the Lincoln Memorial marching. He wanted all of them out. He wanted to create his ideal, his dream was an all-white nation. We can't keep on worshipping that icon and create a rainbow nation. We've got to go back to our past and first of all deal with Lincoln. That's painful. It's painful for black people. It's painful for everyone in this country.
You've touched on before about how black people interpret Lincoln's role in freeing the slaves. What vision do you think blacks have of Abraham Lincoln today?
Oh, I think more and more black people are aware of the mythical proportions of the Lincoln story. I think many who do not know their facts just have an inherent cynicism about that kind of thing and take it with a grain of salt. More and more scholars, young black scholars in particular, are speaking to various aspects of the thing. I think more and more, the story's being known. Even in 1999, virtually every major academic institution, virtually every major cultural institution still holds to the traditional idea of Abraham Lincoln. Now all this has come out, still in media and in universities and museums, the old Lincoln idea is the Lincoln idea that you get everyday. I mean after all of this has come out, you've got the Internet and everything. I don't mean to be provocative, but it's painful. Lincoln in a way has become a kind of central core of the identity of white Americans. Most Americans, if they can help it, are not going to deal with the fact that he's a racist and that he believed in an all-white nation and that he was not the great emancipator of the slaves. But again I say that somehow, somewhere white Americans are going to have to deal, first of all, with the white Americans who really believed in what Abraham Lincoln didn't believe in. Secondly, they're going to have to deal with the black and white people in the 19th century who tried to make America what Martin Luther King and others tried to make it in the 20th century.
What is Frederick Douglass' interpretation of Abraham Lincoln's legacy? He said that Lincoln is a president for white Americans for the white people of America. How would you interpret that?
Since my article, people have created Lincoln defenders, created three or four defenses for Lincoln. One of them, they say and you mentioned it, "After all, he was a man of his time, what do you think?" I've spoken to that. Secondly, they say, "Well, yeah, he was racist, by 19th century standards," which doesn't deal with the fact that he was a racist by any standard. They say, "Well, yeah he was a racist, but he was growing." In fact he died arguing for a constitution in Louisiana that excluded half of the people in the state because of race. Another thing they do and I'm sort of amused by it, to answer what I've said to attack me, they say, "Well, Sojourner Truth said he was a good white man who didn't have a racist bone in his body." Or they say "Frederick Douglass said he was good white man." Now we know that defense. The Frederick Douglass part comes in here because everyone takes that posture now. Frederick Douglass said in a memorial tribute he wrote in 1876, that Lincoln was a good man and he treated him very well when he went to the White House. So everybody quotes that, and says, "What is Lerone Bennett talking about? Frederick Douglass saw the man and say he was a good man, a good white man!" Two or three things wrong with that. One, and I can talk about it all day, African Americans know--I know, I grew up in Mississippi, I grew up in the South and I've lived in Chicago for a long time-know that white people or racists can be nice, personally, to one or two blacks which has nothing at all to do with what their position is on race and what they do publicly in relation to racism. The second thing is that Douglass is one of the most passionate critics of Lincoln's policy during the war. In 1864, when Lincoln was running for re-election, Douglass refused to, at first, support him, wanted to support somebody else, said that he was a fraud and this his policies had been disastrous for black people. After the Democratic Convention nominated McClellan and on a policy that would have seemed to have favored the South and to have stopped the war and led to slavery, he changed his mind and supported Lincoln, but he never took back what he said about Lincoln's administration. Then finally, it's in my 1968 article. In 1876, Douglass made this formal speech dedicating a monument to Lincoln, it was there he said that truth is greater than politics:
"Abraham Lincoln was not in the fullest sense of the word, either a man or a mortal. In his interests and associations in his habits and thoughts and his prejudices, he was a white man, he was preeminently the white man's president."
Now this was a national speech, before the president and the Supreme Court. He spoke the truth and that is the considered word of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln-who admitted and said "He treated me decently when I to the White House." The problem was not whether an individual white man smiled or was nice to an individual Negro. The problem was what was his public policy. That's the issue then and that's the issue today.
And you think that continues to be Lincoln's legacy today-that people are afraid to deal with this other side of Lincoln?
Yes, I'm saying that Abraham Lincoln has been used to hide the race problem in the 19th century and in the 20th century. People have used him to keep from dealing with the racial problems that Lincoln tried not to deal with. People have used him to keep from seeing white people and black people in America who said in the 19th century, "We've got to deal with the race problem in this country." People have used Abraham Lincoln to keep from looking at themselves.
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