What Unites Us

by Dan Rather

  However, it would be a mistake to see only hypocrisy in the University of Virginia’s library. The building’s very structure reflects how the young United States fundamentally differed from Old Europe. Jefferson modeled his Rotunda after the Pantheon in Rome, but whereas the original was built as a temple to the gods, Jefferson created his as a place for scholarship. And although most universities in Jefferson’s time also viewed the teaching of religion as a core mission, with a church occupying a place of prominence on campus, Jefferson felt differently. Instead of a church, he built his library.

  The term “temple of learning” is often used today as a metaphor, but that is literally what Jefferson conceived of for his library. The grand cathedrals of Europe, with their soaring ceilings, stained glass, and evocative statuary, were designed to strike awe into the hearts of the common people, who spent most of their hard lives in squalor. Jefferson understood that a beautifully designed library could encourage reverence for the type of scholarship that he and so many other Founding Fathers believed was vital for building a republic.

  If you travel to Washington, D.C., you can see our country’s debt to the power of books in the very heart of our federal city. Next to the Supreme Court and facing the great dome of the Capitol is the Library of Congress. I find the symbolism inspiring: three institutions that write, judge, and archive the words and thoughts that allow our nation to function. The Library of Congress was founded in 1800 with a modest mission, a reference resource for Congress. But that changed after the British burned Washington during the War of 1812 and the original collection was lost. In response, Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his own library to the U.S. government. His collection of books was considered one of the finest in the New World, containing thousands of volumes on almost every topic imaginable—not just law, statecraft, and history, but also the sciences, philosophy, and the arts. To those who argued that such a disparate set of works was unnecessary for a Library of Congress, Jefferson responded, “There is in fact no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.”

  The library now had a bold new direction—a reservoir for capturing the world’s knowledge. This mission was enhanced greatly in 1870, when Congress stipulated that the library must receive two copies of every book, map, photograph, or other such work that was submitted for copyright in the United States. This caused the collection to expand exponentially, and the pace of growth continues at what is now the largest library in the world. The building on Capitol Hill—with a domed ceiling soaring 160 feet above its spectacular reading room—is itself a beautiful temple of learning. A guidebook from around the time the new building opened in 1897 celebrated Jefferson’s idea of an expansive collection and perfectly captures my feelings for this singular institution. “America is justly proud of this gorgeous and palatial monument to its National sympathy and appreciation of Literature, Science, and Art. It has been designed and executed entirely by American art and American labor [and is] a fitting tribute for the great thoughts of generations past, present, and to be.”

  Growing up in a working-class Houston, I had never heard of the Library of Congress or the grand Rotunda at the University of Virginia, but my local branch of the Houston Public Library showed me that books were not only important, they were also objects of beauty. The stone building had high ceilings, big windows, and a red tile roof; its Italian-style architecture made the library seem worlds away from my hardscrabble neighborhood. I was pleased that it later became a recognized historic landmark. Even as a high school student, I would often prolong my walk home from school to go by the library. It may sound sappy, but the building inspired me to dream of exploring a world greater than the one I knew.

  But while the library’s physical charm was impressive, it was what was inside that made it truly magical. I was a voracious reader and spent countless hours in what became a sort of second home. I was following, in my own small way, the path laid out by Jefferson, Carnegie, and all the others who believed in the power of books. And I had a wonderful guide, the librarian Jimmie May Hicks, who served at the Heights branch library from the year of my birth, 1931, until her death in 1964—more than three decades of quiet but consequential service to her community and nation. Like all the best librarians, Ms. Hicks would suggest, question, and prod my reading into new and unexpected directions. The library now has a memorial plaque in her honor that reads, in part, She dedicated her life to her profession and sought always to impart to others joy in acquiring knowledge and pleasure in the art of reading. She was a true patriot.

  The importance of curated knowledge was encouraged at home as well. During my last year of elementary school, our principal called in all the parents to prepare them for the challenges of junior high. She talked about not only the looming physical changes of adolescence but also the mental growth that would be required for us to thrive in a more rigorous and less protective academic environment. My mother was a good listener, and she came back determined that what the Rather household needed now more than anything was our own set of encyclopedias. This caused a bit of a disagreement with my father, who insisted this was a luxury we couldn’t afford. But my mother insisted that if we bought them on an installment plan, we could make it work. Ultimately, she prevailed with the winning argument that “just having them in the house will help Danny” (and my younger brother, Don, and sister, Patricia).

  When boxes packed with the many volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia arrived at our doorstep, it was a momentous day. If memory serves me correctly, we had the choice of ordering the set with either red or blue on the spines and my mother chose red because she felt it would stand out more on the shelves. The books were wonderfully bound and you could feel the weight of knowledge simply by opening them in your lap and flipping through the pages. My mother was right; just having those books on our shelves transformed our home. Whenever any of us had a question, there was the promise of an answer, and an excuse for more learning. My father’s initial reluctance dissipated and I can still see him rising from reading the newspaper, walking deliberately to the shelf, and pulling out the right alphabetical volume to look up a name, location, or concept. I kept that encyclopedia set well into my thirties.

  We need to continue to teach our children how to read, not just to sound out words, but also to read deeply and thoroughly. This must start early with the understanding that books are important. I interviewed the music legend Dolly Parton a few years back, and her naturally effervescent personality really sparkled when we started talking about books. Parton had grown up in the poverty of Appalachia. She told me about her father, a smart man who had to drop out of school at a young age to work to support his family. He never learned to read properly. With him in mind, Parton founded a charity in 1995 to provide books to families in her home county of Sevier, Tennessee. The idea was simple: Families would receive age-appropriate books every month from when a child was born up until he or she turned five. The program has grown considerably, first to communities across the state, then the United States, and now to countries overseas. Today, more than one million children are enrolled and over eighty million books have been shipped. As Parton told me, “If you can read, you can educate yourself. That was my main point.” By teaching children to educate themselves, Parton and others like her are helping to renew the same democratic spirit that I had discovered at my local library.

  But I can think of no better summation of the importance of books to our democracy than the story of Frederick Douglass. In his masterful 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass opened many people’s eyes to the horrors of slavery. It wasn’t just the dramatic arc of his life; it was the beauty with which he wrote it, and it was also who was doing the writing. The book’s frontispiece proclaimed that the narrative was “written by himself.” How could a man write so insightfully and be held in bondage to another? Many reviewers at the time noted this fact. Margaret Fuller, writing in the New-York Daily Tr
ibune, stated, “Considered merely as a narrative, we have never read one more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling. It is an excellent piece of writing, and on that score to be prized as a specimen of the powers of the Black Race, which Prejudice persists in disputing. We prize highly all evidence of this kind, and it is becoming more abundant.”

  Books and literacy are central to Douglass’s Narrative, particularly the story of how he learned to read at the age of twelve while living in Baltimore. His master’s wife had taught him the alphabet, and Douglass became eager for much more. He started exchanging food for reading lessons from the poor white boys in the neighborhood. “This bread I used to bestow on the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me the more valuable bread of knowledge.” Douglass devoured the books he could get his hands on, but his self-education was a bittersweet exercise. “I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity.” Douglass would eventually escape to the North and help change the fate of millions of enslaved human beings through the power of his words.

  Today Douglass’s papers are in the Library of Congress, the collection started by the slaveholding Thomas Jefferson. It strikes me as an act of poetic justice and a symbol of how the breadth of ideas we consider vital for our national identity has expanded. We could not have made this journey without scholarship and thought, debate and self-reflection. To be sure, words are not enough on their own. For all of Douglass’s eloquence and moral certitude, for example, abolition required a civil war. And social justice movements have required acts of protest and demonstration. But what I learned as a young child, and it’s a lesson I have seen repeated countless times, is that a democracy requires open access to ideas. It requires a willingness to struggle and learn, to question our own suppositions and biases, to open ourselves as citizens, and a nation, to a world of books and thought. If we become a country of superficiality and easy answers based on assumptions and not one steeped in reason and critical learning, we will have lost the foundation of our founding and all that has allowed our nation to grow into our modern United States. Progress cannot be only intuited. It must be written, and read.

  We find ourselves in a singular moment in our nation’s history, where we have political leaders openly scornful of intellectualism and scholarship. Our civic norms are being trampled and academic independence is under threat. From our health care debate to our economic policy and questions about climate change, we see many in power denigrate expertise and freely make up their own “facts” to fit their theories. So much of our public policy seems to follow a mantra of “Go with your gut.” It doesn’t matter what the details are, as long as you are winning, and a perverse calculus has gripped Washington wherein reckless sloganeering and obstruction has replaced governing by consultation, debate, and consensus. This scorn of knowledge (especially when the conclusions are painful) in exchange for fact-free rhetoric is not entirely new in our history, but it has always been the language of demagoguery and it is a betrayal of our traditions.

  Our nation was born in a spirit of fierce debate. Our Founding Fathers had sharp political differences, but they were almost all deep readers, writers, and thinkers. When they set about to create a modern republic, they went into their libraries and pulled out the works of philosophers such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. They consulted the Greeks, the Romans, the philosophers of Europe, and the Bible. They revered the power of the written word and how it enabled a nation free from the whims of a king. As John Adams wrote, a republic “is a government of laws, and not of men.” A government of laws is a government of reason, and a government of books. That was true at our founding, and we must ensure that it remains a hallmark of our future.

  The Arts

  These days it is easier to occupy young minds with mobile phones and tablet computers, but I have a special respect for the mothers and fathers who continue to lug around the bags of crayons, markers, and paper. It brings a smile to my face when I see a child drawing. And while I know there are museum- and concertgoers who are irritated by sharing the spaces with sometimes unruly children, I am encouraged when I see generations of the future engaging with the arts. These pursuits are central to our American identity. Patriotism can burst to the surface through many geysers of expression.

  Perhaps one of the most inspiring visions for our nation can be found in a letter John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail. It was the spring of 1780, he was serving a diplomatic post in Paris, and the final outcome of the Revolutionary War was still in doubt. But Adams had his eyes firmly set on the future. “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy . . . in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, [and] Musick.” It’s an incredibly hopeful articulation of progress whereby the lasting worth of a nascent nation would depend on the arts being cultivated, encouraged, and appreciated. But there is another important current running through Adams’s letter, a notion that American art would have to await future generations. This sense of cultural inferiority would stretch well past the colonial era.

  My first introduction to what might be considered art (at the time narrowly defined as high culture) came in high school. But we weren’t taught to celebrate the power of free expression in a vibrant American democracy. Instead, art was described to us mainly as a product of Old World refinement and a necessary accoutrement for those of us intent on climbing the social ladder. We were brought to the symphony, the art museum, the ballet, and the theater, but the impact was largely lost on us. Eventually I came to enjoy all the art forms that hadn’t impressed me as a teenager, but it took time and exposure. I now realize that my early lack of interest was also born from fear. I believed that understanding art was beyond my capabilities. It was as if I had internalized the cultural insecurities of the United States.

  This way of thinking was common in mid-twentieth-century America. Although the United States had just rescued Europe from the conflagration of fascism, we still had a profound inferiority complex when it came to assessing our own cultural value. Every city wanted a museum of fine arts (collections of mostly European paintings and sculptures) and a symphony conducted by a European maestro. Even NBC had its own orchestra led by the acclaimed Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. In postwar Houston, pretension outstripped our modest reality. We wanted to imagine ourselves as a great American city, and the community leaders saw the arts as paramount to achieving status. Legend has it that the Houston Symphony approached the wealthy oilman Robert Everett Smith (everyone called him “Ree Bob”) to raise money to bring the famous conductor Leopold Stokowski to the city. According to the story, when Ree Bob was told they needed $1 million and had him down for half, he replied that he would give the entire amount if he didn’t have to actually go hear the orchestra in person. Whether true or a tall tale, this story nevertheless captured the mood of the times. For many Americans, especially the ones I knew growing up, art felt elitist and far removed from our daily blue-collar lives. Luckily for me, in more ways than one, that was about to change.

  When I met Jean, we were in our early twenties and she had an enthusiastic thirst for the arts. She loved to paint and go to art exhibits. I wanted to impress her, so on our second date I took her to the Alley Theatre, which has since become one of Houston’s most cherished institutions. The Alley was the brainchild of Nina Vance, who gained a national reputation for proving that a town like Houston could handle serious works for the stage. The play Jean and I saw that night was The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I was transfixed by the production onstage, and by my date sitting next to me. I knew I wanted to accompany Jean on a lifetime of performances, and over our six decades of marriage, we have done that.

  Through Jean, whose education began, literally, in a one
-room schoolhouse in rural Texas, I learned to appreciate art, symphonic music, and opera. When we relocated to the cultural mecca of New York, we witnessed the rise and fall of artistic fads and saw the first big shows of artists who went on to become household names. I also started to see art as an increasingly democratic enterprise. I came to realize that the masterful lyrics of Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” were much more than just a radio ballad; they were American poetry: “The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky.” Similarly, the best Broadway shows, like Oklahoma!, and Hollywood films, like Citizen Kane, were not simply entertainment but uniquely American art forms. And jazz like Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train” demanded the same seriousness as a Beethoven symphony. As I started to take all this in, I appreciated that art shouldn’t be about impressing others; whether you are an individual or a nation, art is about engaging in a candid dialogue with yourself.

  We now understand that the great American story is not confined to history books or political speeches. It is sung, and danced, and dramatized, and turned into verse. It is painted, and sculpted, and written, and filmed. Artists may not swear an oath to serve in government or the military, but they swear an oath to freedom of expression that is no less worthy of recognition, especially in a democracy such as ours. Theirs are not always comfortable voices to hear, or even comfortable people to be around. But they are the truth tellers whose works have challenged our national complacency, like Woody Guthrie’s songs; held up mirrors to the darker corners of our society, as do the photographs of Jacob Riis; and summoned the winds of justice, like the novels of Toni Morrison. American artists have also taken the grand artistic traditions of the rest of the world and unapologetically created something dynamic and new, such as my fellow Texan the choreographer Alvin Ailey. He married the forms of classical ballet with the deep spiritual and musical traditions of the African American community to worldwide acclaim.