Transcript

6.25.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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Speaker 1: I will be reading from a Smithsonian Magazine special report
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Speaker 1: America at two fifty the Revolutionary Spark. As a reminder,
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Speaker 1: Radio I is a reading service intended for people who
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Speaker 1: are blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult
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Speaker 1: to read printed material. Please join me now for the
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Speaker 1: first article, titled Secretary Lonnie Bunch says the Smithsonian keeps
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Speaker 1: the Nation's memory. In an exclusive essay for America's two
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Speaker 1: hundred and fiftieth birthday, the acclaimed historian and head of
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Speaker 1: the institution argues that the Simequin Centennial presents the perfect
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Speaker 1: opportunity for Americans to consider their nation's past and future.
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Speaker 1: By Lonnie G. Bunch. The third. In the summer of
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, I visited the National Mall as a
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Speaker 1: graduate student to attend the Smithsonian's Bison to annual folk
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Speaker 1: Life Festival, then called the Festival of American Folk Life.
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Speaker 1: It was exhilarating to sample so many foods and drinks,
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Speaker 1: to observe so many styles of American music, dance, arts
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Speaker 1: and crafts, bluegrass and glass blowing, square dancing, and Alabama
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Speaker 1: folk painting. I witnessed the lacrosse stick making and intricate
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Speaker 1: basket weaving of indigenous tribes, and I marveled at so
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Speaker 1: many workers representing the country's prosperity and progress. In an
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Speaker 1: essay for the festival program, famed anthropologist Margaret Meade responded
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Speaker 1: to those who criticized celebrating in the aftermath of a recession,
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Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, and the resignation of a disgraced president.
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Speaker 1: It is quite true we are living through difficult times.
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Speaker 1: But life does not stop for difficult times, she wrote,
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Speaker 1: noting the parallels to a nineteenth century America still divided
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Speaker 1: by the Civil War and in the midst of a
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Speaker 1: world wide recession. Quote the celebration of our one hundredth
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Speaker 1: anniversary as a nation also took place in a time
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Speaker 1: of trouble, Meade wrote, but taking pride was a good thing.
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Speaker 1: We gained strength and looked to the future. The twenty
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Speaker 1: twenties have been difficult too, a pandemic, economic uncertainty, the
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Speaker 1: proliferation of international conflict, increasing political and social strife at home.
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Speaker 1: It is more urgent than ever for us to remember
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Speaker 1: that the nation was forged by resilience and shaped by
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Speaker 1: those who believed in its highest ideals. The two hundred
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Speaker 1: and fiftieth anniversary of American Independence is the perfect time
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Speaker 1: to explore and explain our country, to tell its stories,
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Speaker 1: and to help the nation grapple with its complicated history.
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Speaker 1: The Smithsonian is taking this moment not simply to reflect
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Speaker 1: on where the nation has been, but to consider who
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Speaker 1: we are as a people and where we want to
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Speaker 1: go to gather. As the Smithsonian marks this milestone anniversary,
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Speaker 1: we embrace our role as keepers of the nation's memory.
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Speaker 1: That means we must tell the unvarnished histories of the
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Speaker 1: extraordinary and the ordinary, the moments of glory and infamy alike.
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Speaker 1: America has always been a work in progress, embodied by
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Speaker 1: the notion in our Constitution's preamble that seeking a more
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Speaker 1: perfect union is an underlying need for our democratic republic.
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Speaker 1: An incomplete telling of our past, with rough edges smoothed,
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Speaker 1: inhibits the country's ability to forge a better shared future.
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Speaker 1: Since its inception, the Smithsonian has worked to capture and
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Speaker 1: even contribute to the nation's innovative spirit. We have not
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Speaker 1: only collected items like Thomas Edison's light bulb, Alexander Graham
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Speaker 1: Bell's early sound recordings and Grace Hopper's computer code. We
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Speaker 1: have helped support and inspire in a like the Wright
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Speaker 1: brothers as they sought to expand the limits of human achievement.
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Speaker 1: American creativity is not constrained to the scientific or technological, though.
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Speaker 1: It is also woven into the cultural, social, and constitutional
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Speaker 1: ideas that represent our willingness to take risks and challenge
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Speaker 1: social norms. Think of the ways artists like impressionist painter
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Speaker 1: Mary Cassette, writer James Baldwin, actor Paul Robeson, dancer Isidora Duncan,
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Speaker 1: and boxer Muhammad Ali helped people see the world anew.
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Speaker 1: Musicians including jazz pioneer Ella Fitzgerald, rock and roll legend
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Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen, and folk icon Woody Guthrie have influenced the
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Speaker 1: world in their ways as much as any inventor. As
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Speaker 1: documentarian Ken Burns remarked, trumpeter Louis Armstrong is to twentieth
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Speaker 1: century music what Einstein is to physics. Speaking of Einstein,
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Speaker 1: how do would our nation's innovation look were it not
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Speaker 1: for the immigrants who often inspire new thinking. The list
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Speaker 1: of Americans not by birth but by choice who profoundly
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Speaker 1: changed the nation is as long as it is desperate,
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Speaker 1: with myriad backgrounds, ethnicities, religions, and ideologies. So many who
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Speaker 1: emigrated here, drawn by the promise of freedom and opportunity,
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Speaker 1: gave rise to modernity and progress in a way that
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Speaker 1: would otherwise be hard to imagine. So too did many
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Speaker 1: who arrived on these shores not of their own free will,
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Speaker 1: as well as their descendants, who saw in our young
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Speaker 1: nation the potential to eventually become the land of freedom.
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Speaker 1: Perhaps the most consequential innovation of the United States is
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Speaker 1: the philosophy at the heart of our democracy that all
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Speaker 1: of us stake an equal claim to life, liberty, and
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Speaker 1: the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, it is foundational to our
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Speaker 1: form of what is innovation, if not the combination, refinement,
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Speaker 1: and application of ideas to create something new. Some believed
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Speaker 1: that when American colonists met at the Albany Congress of
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Speaker 1: seventeen fifty four to pursue a treaty with Native Americans
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Speaker 1: and to discuss centralizing the colonial governments, Benjamin Franklin took
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Speaker 1: inspiration from the Six Nations of the hoden Noshone Iroquois Confederacy,
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Speaker 1: whose representatives attended their democratic structure, separation of powers, and
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Speaker 1: analog to a bicameral legislature. The codifying of rights and
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Speaker 1: responsibilities provided a model for our founding documents and our
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Speaker 1: system of governance, encouragement that the colonies would be stronger
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Speaker 1: together than a part. One of those documents, the Declaration
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Speaker 1: of Independence, was created to persuade, rather than govern. Like
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Speaker 1: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it is one
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Speaker 1: of the world's most influential and enduring road maps. When
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Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln drafted the Gettysburg Address, he echoed the Declaration,
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Speaker 1: noting that the nation had been conceived in liberty and
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Speaker 1: dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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Speaker 1: He once referred to the Declaration as an immortal emblem
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Speaker 1: of humanity. Those ideas matter. They are the echoes of
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Speaker 1: our ancestors, whispering to us, urging us to embrace the
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Speaker 1: better angels of our nature. We are a nation founded
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Speaker 1: by people who rejected rule by monarchs, improved over time
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Speaker 1: by those who believed in the ideals and potential of
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Speaker 1: this bold experiment of a democratic republic governed by its citizens.
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Speaker 1: The fact that we are such a disparate group of individuals,
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Speaker 1: each free not only to vote for our government representatives,
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Speaker 1: but also to criticize them. Lyn's wait to the notion
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Speaker 1: that America is an aspirational idea as much as it
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Speaker 1: is a place. A government of the people, by the people,
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Speaker 1: and for the people is as ingenious and transformative as
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Speaker 1: anything that can be patented or purchased. As Meed rightfully noted,
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Speaker 1: our national achievements are worth celebrating, but this milestone must
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Speaker 1: be about more. It should encourage us to honor those
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Speaker 1: who struggled and sacrificed along the way for liberty, equality,
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Speaker 1: and justice. It should provoke us to think about what
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Speaker 1: this country is and what it can become. It should
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Speaker 1: challenge us to live up to the principles enshrined in
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Speaker 1: our founding documents and embodied by all the people who
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Speaker 1: worked to make real the promise of the nation. This
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Speaker 1: moment is a chance for the Smithsonian to help a
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Speaker 1: nation find common ground, to reinvigorate our country's character, and
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Speaker 1: to fuel the fire for freedom and democracy. It is
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Speaker 1: why we are approaching the two hundred and fiftieth with
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Speaker 1: four aims. To celebrate, to contemplate, to commemorate, and to
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Speaker 1: commit to our civic responsibility. As Americans, and this year
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Speaker 1: for the first time, instead of bringing American culture to
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Speaker 1: the nation's capital, the Folk Life Festival will work with
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Speaker 1: dozens of other community festivals, venturing off the mall and
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Speaker 1: into parks, streets, and other public venues throughout the country.
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Speaker 1: Let us embrace the moment together, let us revel in
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Speaker 1: our past and look toward the future. And accompanying this essay,
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Speaker 1: did you know founding fathers found inspiration from indigenous nations.
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Speaker 1: The Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy developed the Laws
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Speaker 1: of the Great Peace, a democratic constitution that predates the
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Speaker 1: United States from east to west. The members of the
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Speaker 1: alliance included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Yuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora.
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Speaker 1: The confederacy, properly called the Ho deno Shone Confederacy People
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Speaker 1: of the Long House, is considered the oldest participatory democracy
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Speaker 1: in the world. In nineteen eighty seven, the U. S
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Speaker 1: Senate recognized the influence of the hodnah Shone Constitution on
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Speaker 1: the Founding Fathers, who quote greatly admired the concepts, principles,
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Speaker 1: and governmental practices of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
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Speaker 1: Next when the fear of polio gripped the world. Jonas
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Speaker 1: Salk's determination led to a liberating medical breakthrough. The son
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Speaker 1: of the doctor himself, now a physician and researcher, recalls
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Speaker 1: his vaccination in the kitchen as painless. Now. He recounts
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Speaker 1: the impact of the work his father, led by Peter Salk,
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Speaker 1: as told to Jenny Rothenberg Gritz eighteen fifty two, around
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Speaker 1: fifty eight thousand American children contracted polio. More than twenty
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Speaker 1: one thousand were paralyzed, and three thousand died. The disease
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Speaker 1: would start like a cold, and then all of a sudden,
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Speaker 1: children couldn't breathe or couldn't move their arms and legs.
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Speaker 1: Because polio epidemics happened sporadically, parents never knew when the
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Speaker 1: next one would take place, Where would it happen, would
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Speaker 1: their own children be stricken? Parents lived with enormous fear.
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Speaker 1: My father, Jonas Sulk, shared that fear. One summer, my
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Speaker 1: parents refused to take us to an amusement park in
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Speaker 1: an effort to avoid exposure to polio. But my father
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Speaker 1: was different from other parents in one significant way. He
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Speaker 1: was working on a vaccine that could keep a polio
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Speaker 1: epidemic from ever happening again. My brothers and I received
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Speaker 1: our first injections of the experimental vaccine in nineteen fifty three,
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Speaker 1: when I was nine. My father and his team at
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Speaker 1: the University of Pittsburgh had successfully completed animal studies the
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Speaker 1: summer before, and they'd begun small preliminary studies with children
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Speaker 1: who had already had polio and were undergoing rehabilitation. Now
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Speaker 1: they were on the cusp of rolling out larger experiments
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Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh schools. I imagine my mother saying to my father, O, K, Jonas,
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Speaker 1: it's time to get our own kids immunized. My father
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Speaker 1: brought some vaccine home and sterilized the syringes and needles
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Speaker 1: by boiling them on the stove. Then he lined us up.
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Speaker 1: My brother Darrell was six, and my brother Jonathan was
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Speaker 1: just shy of three. Like any kids, we absolutely hated
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Speaker 1: getting injections. Remarkably, though, when my father inserted the needle
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Speaker 1: this time, I didn't feel it. I've never forgotten that moment,
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Speaker 1: standing in the kitchen, seeing the sunlight coming in through
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Speaker 1: the window and realizing that my fears had been unnecessary.
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Speaker 1: My father began praying early in life that he could
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Speaker 1: do something to help humanity. In nineteen thirty four, during
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Speaker 1: his first year at the City College of New York,
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Speaker 1: he decided to study medicine. He didn't want to be
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Speaker 1: a practicing physician, although he was very good with patients,
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Speaker 1: he wanted to conduct research that could have a large
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Speaker 1: scale effect. In his microbiology class at New York University
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Speaker 1: College of Medicine, my father's professor described vaccines that had
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Speaker 1: been developed in the nineteen twenties for two bacterial diseases,
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Speaker 1: diphtheria and tetanus. These bacteria secrete toxins that produce severe
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Speaker 1: damage in the body. However, the toxins can be chemically
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Speaker 1: modified so they are no longer dangerous, but will still
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Speaker 1: provide an immune response when injected. After vaccination with the
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Speaker 1: altered toxins, exposure to those bacteria would not cause disease.
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Speaker 1: In contrast, the professor told the students it wasn't possible
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Speaker 1: to protect the body against viral diseases such as influenza
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Speaker 1: or polio using an inactivated killed virus. He said that
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Speaker 1: viruses had to replicate in the body and cause an
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Speaker 1: actual infection to produce a protective immune response. That lecture
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Speaker 1: set my father on a course to challenge this long
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Speaker 1: standing dogma. While my father was still in medical school,
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Speaker 1: he started working with one of his professors, Thomas Francis Junior,
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Speaker 1: on methods to inactivate influenza viruses. He later continued this
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Speaker 1: work at francis new lab at the University of Michigan.
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Speaker 1: The team developed the first successful influenza vaccine using chemically
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Speaker 1: inactivated influenza viruses. It was introduced first to the military,
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Speaker 1: then to the general public in nineteen forty six. In
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Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, my father started his own lab at
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Speaker 1: the University of Pittsburgh, gathering a strong team to work
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Speaker 1: toward a polio vaccine. A pall had been cast over
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Speaker 1: such programs in the nineteen thirties when two attempts to
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Speaker 1: create a polio vaccine failed to produce immunity. One of
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Speaker 1: the experimental vaccines actually caused polio in a small number
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Speaker 1: of subjects. My father's team knew they had to take
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Speaker 1: a more systematic approach. They used a new method developed
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Speaker 1: by scientists at Harvard of growing polioviruses in the laboratory
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Speaker 1: and cultures of monkey cells bathed in a nutrient medium.
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Speaker 1: The team could then study these lab grown polioviruses and
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Speaker 1: determine the exact combinations of heat and formaldehyde solution required
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Speaker 1: to kill them reliably. It was important not to alter
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Speaker 1: the virus's structure so much that the immune response to
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Speaker 1: the vaccine would no longer match the original virus. If
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Speaker 1: that happened, the vaccine would fail to protect against the disease.
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Speaker 1: Two men members of the team, Elsie Ward and Julius Jungner,
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Speaker 1: came up with a clever way to quickly establish whether
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Speaker 1: live polioviruses were still present in test samples, using a
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Speaker 1: pH indicator dye. Animal cells growing in test tubes would
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Speaker 1: naturally turn the medium more acidic over time as they
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Speaker 1: released waste products. As the medium became more acidic, its
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Speaker 1: color would change from red to yellow. However, if live
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Speaker 1: poliovirus was present in the cultures, the virus would kill
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Speaker 1: the cells and the medium would remain red. This at
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Speaker 1: a glance method allowed the team to significantly speed up
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Speaker 1: vaccine production and testing. The first small scale human trials
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Speaker 1: at the D. T. Watson Home for Crippled Children showed
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Speaker 1: that the vaccine was safe and that it produced antibody
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Speaker 1: responses in the children's blood. Further studies in the Pittsburgh
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Speaker 1: area confirmed these findings. In April nineteen fifty four Voor,
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Speaker 1: shortly before the summer polio season, a massive field trial
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Speaker 1: began with one point eight million children across the United States.
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Speaker 1: One branch of the study was double blind. Half of
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Speaker 1: the children received the vaccine while the other half received
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Speaker 1: a placebo injection, and neither the doctors nor the families
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Speaker 1: knew which group the children were in. In another branch
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Speaker 1: of the study, second graders got the vaccine with parental approval,
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Speaker 1: while first and third graders at the same schools remained
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Speaker 1: unvaccinated and served as observed controls. Thomas Francis, my father's
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Speaker 1: earlier mentor, was responsible for evaluating the data. On April twelfth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, he announced the results. The new vaccine
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Speaker 1: was quote safe, effective, and potent end quote against all
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Speaker 1: three strains of polio. Doctors watched the press conference on
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Speaker 1: closed circuit TV. Church bells rang out, were places observed
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Speaker 1: moments of silence or celebration. It was an extraordinary event
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Speaker 1: in our nation's history. All the terror that had accumulated
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Speaker 1: for decades lifted in a single stroke. Within seven years,
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Speaker 1: enough children were inoculated that the incidents of polio in
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Speaker 1: the US dropped by ninety seven percent. That evening, Edward R.
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Speaker 1: Mureaw interviewed my father on his television program See It
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Speaker 1: Now and asked who owned the patent for the vaccine.
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Speaker 1: My father responded, well, the people, I would say, there
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Speaker 1: is no patent. Could you patent the sun? The American
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Speaker 1: people could take great pride in the vaccine because the
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Speaker 1: research and testing program had been supported by the March
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Speaker 1: of Dimes, the fund raising arm of the National Foundation
18:48
Speaker 1: for Infantile Paralysis, an organization founded in nineteen thirty eight
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Speaker 1: by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who himself had contracted polio.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty one, a hundred million Americans across the
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Speaker 1: country had contributed to the effort. The achievement belonged to everyone,
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Speaker 1: and with this article, did you know what happened next?
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Speaker 1: The one point eight million children who took part in
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Speaker 1: the nationwide field trial received certificates and special pins for
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Speaker 1: being polio pioneers. Sulk spent the rest of his career
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Speaker 1: pursuing big picture questions about the future of humanity while
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Speaker 1: working on vaccines for other viruses like HIV next. One
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Speaker 1: of the quietest leaders in the civil rights movement, Ella
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Speaker 1: Baker led by encouraging everyone to get involved. Baker's work
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Speaker 1: was instrumental in the success of the NAACP and other organizations,
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Speaker 1: but she did it in a way that didn't put
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Speaker 1: herself in the spotlight. That was by design by Victor Luckerson.
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Speaker 1: Ella Baker built in the background. Though her work as
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Speaker 1: a grassroots organizer helped strengthen the National Association for the
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Speaker 1: Advancement of Colored People in double ACP, birth the civil
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Speaker 1: Rights movement, and sparked the explosion of youth activism in
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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties America, she had no interest in being thrust
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Speaker 1: into a pantheon of great black leaders. Strong people, she
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Speaker 1: once said, don't need strong leaders. Born in nineteen o
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Speaker 1: three in Norfolk, Virginia, Baker grew up understanding that community
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Speaker 1: came first. When she was a child, her family moved
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Speaker 1: to her grandparents farm in North Carolina, where Baker picked
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Speaker 1: vegetables to give to her neighbors. In her twenties, she
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Speaker 1: ventured to New York at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance,
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Speaker 1: working as a journalist and helping launch a black co
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Speaker 1: op during the Great Depression. Quote. The day of sharply
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Speaker 1: defined individualism is rapidly giving place to that of mutual
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Speaker 1: interdependence end quote, she said in a speech at the time.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen forty one, Baker became a field officer for
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Speaker 1: the NAACP, spending nearly half of that year and the
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Speaker 1: following one traveling the South and helping branches of the
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Speaker 1: organization develop programs to address local discrimination and unemployment. Although
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Speaker 1: the NAACP had a top down power structure and often
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Speaker 1: served middle class interests, Baker encouraged local chapters to represent
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Speaker 1: people from every walk of life. She had no problem
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Speaker 1: venturing into bars and pool halls to recruit new members,
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Speaker 1: and she insisted that defending the town drunk from unlawful
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Speaker 1: arrest was as important as any other case the NAACP
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Speaker 1: might take up. Her grassroots style led to clashes with
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Speaker 1: the organization's leadership, but it worked. She oversaw a membership
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Speaker 1: drive that doubled the NAACP's rolls to more than four
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Speaker 1: hundred thousand people in nineteen forty four. Baker's biggest contributions
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Speaker 1: were to come when the Montgomery bus boycott began in
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. It was exactly the sort of mass
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Speaker 1: action she'd long envisioned. With her activist friends Baynard Ruston
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Speaker 1: and Stanley Levison, she conceived a Southern counterpart to the NAACP,
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Speaker 1: focused on direct action. Ruston persuaded Martin Luther King Junior,
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Speaker 1: who had become the face of Montgomery's boycott, to lead
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Speaker 1: the new organization, dubbed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference sc LC.
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Speaker 1: Baker served as the s c else's first full time
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Speaker 1: staff member and eventually as its executive director, doing unglamorous
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Speaker 1: but essential work. She found the s c ELSE its
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Speaker 1: first office near downtown Atlanta and wrote many of its
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Speaker 1: public statements, some under King's name. She launched its first
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Speaker 1: voter registration drives and helped disenfranchised black Southerners file voting
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Speaker 1: discrimination complaints with the Federal Commission on Civil Rights. Still,
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Speaker 1: King and Baker butted heads. Baker was committed to a
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Speaker 1: mass movement that would cultivate local leaders, empowering every day
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Speaker 1: people to do grass roots organizing. The s c l C,
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Speaker 1: by contrast, focused on building King into a national hero
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Speaker 1: who could lead the masses in protests and marches. Creating
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Speaker 1: political momentum, but not necessarily expanding local organizing. The s
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Speaker 1: c LC was also a boy's club. Only one woman,
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Speaker 1: a Montgomery bus boycott organizer named Erna Dungee, sat on
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Speaker 1: the thirty three member board, and Baker felt that the
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Speaker 1: s c LC often ignored her because of her gender.
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Speaker 1: In a group of ministers who were accustomed to having
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Speaker 1: women largely as supporters, there was no place for me,
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Speaker 1: she later said. In April nineteen sixty, she organized an
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Speaker 1: s c l C sponsored retreat in Raleigh, North Carolina
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Speaker 1: for more than one hundred and twenty five student activists
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Speaker 1: from around the country. The Greensboro lunch counter sit ins
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Speaker 1: had begun just a few months before, sparking a new
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Speaker 1: wave of protests by young people willing to get confrontational.
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Speaker 1: Baker wanted to channel that spontaneous, youthful defiance into a
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Speaker 1: coherent mass movement. While King and some of the older
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Speaker 1: ministers argued that the students should form a youth arm
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Speaker 1: of the SCLC, Baker encouraged them to launch their own organization.
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Speaker 1: By the conference's close, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC
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Speaker 1: was born. The SNCC drove mass mobilization in the civil
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Speaker 1: rights movement, sit ins voter registration drives the freedom rides.
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Speaker 1: Generational leaders such as John Lewis, Diane Nash, Julian Bond,
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Speaker 1: and Stokely Carmichael got their start in the SNCC, where
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Speaker 1: Baker served as an advice quote. What was nice about
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Speaker 1: miss Baker is you never felt that she had a
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Speaker 1: personal agenda. S NCC worker Judy Richardson later said, quote,
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Speaker 1: it was always about what is good for the organization,
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Speaker 1: for black people, for whatever the larger issue was. End quote.
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Speaker 1: Baker advocated for racial justice until her death in New
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Speaker 1: York in nineteen eighty six at eighty three. She rarely
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Speaker 1: sought the spotlight, as she was too busy helping others
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Speaker 1: find their purpose in the moment. Quote, the group comes
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Speaker 1: first in my mind, she once said. Her commitment to
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Speaker 1: grassroots organizing now feels prescient. She intuited that the will
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Speaker 1: to change the world could not be decreed from on high.
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Speaker 1: It had to be nurtured in the heart of every citizen. Quote.
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Speaker 1: My basic sense of it, she said, has always been
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Speaker 1: to get people to understand that in the long run,
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Speaker 1: they themselves are the only protection they have against violence
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Speaker 1: or injustice. And with this article did you Know What's
26:08
Speaker 1: in a Name? In nineteen seventy eight, at Baker's seventy
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Speaker 1: fifth birthday party, one for Proteges, Bob Moses nicknamed the
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Speaker 1: civil rights icon Fundi, a Swahili word meaning master Craft's
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Speaker 1: person and indicating the person in a community who learns
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Speaker 1: a vital skill and then teaches it to the next generation.
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Speaker 1: The affectionate moniker was often used within movement circles, honoring
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Speaker 1: Baker's singularly selfless approach to civil rights. And finally from
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Speaker 1: Smithsonian dot com smart News, A letter signed by George
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Speaker 1: Washington that helped pave the way for American independence goes
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Speaker 1: on display in London by Sarah Kuta. As American gears
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Speaker 1: up to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
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Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence, a pivotal letter signed by George
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Speaker 1: Washington accepting Britain's surrender at Yorktown is being displayed for
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Speaker 1: the first time in London. The handwritten note is going
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Speaker 1: on view as part of a new exhibition at the
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Speaker 1: National Archives in London. Washington dictated and signed the letter
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Speaker 1: in October seventeen eighty one to accept the British surrender
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Speaker 1: at Yorktown, Virginia, writing of his quote ardent desire to
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Speaker 1: spare the further effusion of blood. The correspondence brought an
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Speaker 1: end to major fighting during the Revolutionary War, ultimately paving
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Speaker 1: the way for American independence. The note was given to
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Speaker 1: Charles Cornwallis, the lieutenant general who helped lead Britain's Southern
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Speaker 1: campaign during the Revolutionary War. Cornwallis brought the letter home
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Speaker 1: with him to England, and it remained in his family
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Speaker 1: until eighteen eighty, when it was donated to the Public
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Speaker 1: Record Office, which later became the National Archives. This concludes
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Speaker 1: readings from the Smithsonian magazine for today. Your reader has
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Speaker 1: been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a
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Speaker 1: great day.