Presidential historian opens Town Hall South’s 50th season
For all of the Chicken Littles out there, Jon Meacham has an observation with regard to the seemingly falling sky of 2018.
“At every point in American history, if you go back and look at the press of the time,” he told his audience in the Upper St. Clair High School Theater, “you will find people saying, ‘Everything is about to end.'”
The historian, author of three presidential biographies and presenter of Barbara Bush’s eulogy opened the 50th season of the Town Hall South lecture series on Oct. 2 with a message of putting today’s events in perspective.
• Adam Steltzner, Nov. 6. For nearly a decade, Steltzner has led the team NASA that invented the “sky crane” system that landed the Mars rover Curiosity on the planet’s surface in 2012. He also leads NASA’s Mars 2020 Project to gather core samples for research.
• Francine Segan, Dec. 4. One of the nation’s foremost experts on Italian cuisine, Segan is a food historian and a James Beard-nominated author of six books, including “Dolci: Italy’s Sweets and Pasta Modern.” She hosts the weekly New York City TV series “Americans who Love Italy.”
• Lara Logan, Feb. 5. The “60 Minutes” correspondent’s assignments have taken her from the front lines of the Ebola crisis to the forests of central Africa, where she did a story on veterinarians treating endangered mountain gorillas in the wild.
• David Eagleman, March 5. In his PBS series “The Brain,” Eagleman provides viewers with a deeper understanding of themselves, the unseen world of decisions and of modern neuroscience. His books include the bestseller “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.”
“We have been in rough spots before, and we have gotten out of them. I’m confident we will do so again,” he said, following by quoting an example of Winston Churchill’s wit: “You can always count on the American people to do the right thing, once we’ve exhausted every other possibility.”
Meacham’s sense of humor – “We had paintball duels,” he quipped at one point about celebrating Andrew Jackson’s 250th birthday – served as a frequent source of amusement, even amid more serious pronouncements.
“We’re living in a stress test, in many ways, to the constitutional order. But the Constitution was written for moments like this,” he assured audience members. “It was predicated on the idea that we were going to screw up far more often than we got things right. And we have proved them very correct.”
He cited 1915 through about 1927 as a period that parallels the current situation nationally.
“We were in the midst of great economic transformation, from the agrarian world to the industrial world,” mirroring today’s transition to a digital society.
“Culture was changing rapidly,” Meacham continued. “Suddenly, you bought this box called a radio, and these people in a place called Hollywood and New York were programming things that came in over your screen, so to speak, and were affecting everything around you. The culture was being nationalized in a huge way.”
In the meantime, D.W. Griffith’s film “The Birth of a Nation” had help inspire the Ku Klux Klan to resurface after four decades, and the organization’s membership swelled to between 3 million and 5 million by the mid-1920s, including six state governors, 17 U.S. Senators and 75 House members.
“The governor of Georgia, a member of the Klan, gave a speech in 1923 saying that he wanted to build a wall of steel as high as Heaven to keep immigrants out of the United States,” Meacham said. “Everything old is new again.”
The Klan faded as a powerhouse, though, as the decade neared its close.
“The press did a good job,” Meacham explained. “They wrote important stories about the Klan and its tactics.”
The courts acted decisively, too, with decisions that struck down an Oregon law aimed at shuttering Catholic schools and, in New York, required the Ku Klux Klan to publish the names of members engaging in violent acts.
“The Klan counter-argued that they were really just like the Kiwanis Club. The court disagreed,” Meacham explained. “And suddenly, having a lot of sunlight and having your name in the paper, as the years went by, began to undercut.”
He also credited 1920s Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge with implementing policies that further eroded extremist activity.
“They believed that the country was better than this,” he said. “And in fact, we were.”
As for the continuation of such beliefs, Meacham expressed optimism.
“I think there are three things that, if we embodied them both as people and the hope that we have for them in presidents, we will get through this period the way we have gotten through the last ones,” he asserted, citing curiosity about events around the globe, learning from mistakes, and the attributes of empathy and understanding.
“If I want the best for myself in a republic, the smartest route to that is trying to fight for the best for everyone else, as well,” Meacham said. “We have to believe that, in fact, what Lincoln called ‘fighting for a fair chance’ is the American way, because we have all benefited from us. I’m not talking about equality of outcome, but equality of opportunity is pretty much part of the infrastructure of America.”