Roger Wilkins, who spoke at the Library on Sept. 25, has led a remarkable life. He has participated at the highest levels of American government and society and was a prominent player in many of the major events of our time. He has been actively involved in the civil rights movement (he is the nephew of Roy Wilkins, former executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for his Watergate editorials, a former director of the Community Relations Service in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and a leader in the Free South Africa movement. Currently, he is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University and a member of the District of Columbia school board.
Roger Wilkins - Charlynn Spencer Pyne
His new book, Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism, presents an incisive and provocative analysis of the lives of four founding fathers: George Washington, George Mason, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
The book discusses their relations with blacks and their thoughts about slavery. The book also asks, "How should blacks view the founders and why should blacks admire them?"
In a noon lecture and book-signing event on Sept. 25, Mr. Wilkins commented on the book's inception and provided an overview of its contents to a capacity audience in the Madison Building's Mumford Room. The lecture was one in a series of programs sponsored by the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.
The book's title, Jefferson's Pillow, is based on a statement attributed to Jefferson that his first memory as a child was of being carried on a pillow by slaves on horseback. For Mr. Wilkins, it was a perfect metaphor for the position that African Americans played in the founders' lives. Mr. Wilkins contends that slaves served as cushions that puffed up the reputations and eased the lives of the slave-owning Virginia founders. Slaves provided the support that gave their owners the leisure to conceive and express democratic ideals. Without slaves, he states, the revered founders would not have been able to conceive, create and carry out the principles they put forth in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, which ultimately enabled blacks to rise above their circumstances.
Yet, the founding fathers lived according to the verities of their time and place, Mr. Wilkins declared. All four patriots were Virginians, and the Virginia economy was based on tobacco, a crop that required a ready supply of land and labor. At first, white indentured servants provided the labor during their tenure of seven years. But by 1546, poor whites had begun to resent the harsh, rugged life they lived and released their frustrations in Bacon's Rebellion. Soon after, the ruling classes formed an alliance with poor whites that rewarded them with the privileges of "whiteness." The society then relegated blacks to the permanent status of enslavement.
After 50 years of service in public affairs Mr. Wilkins felt it was not presumptuous of him to seek answers to questions that have confounded him throughout his life. Jefferson's Pillow answers some of his questions. His idea for the book was influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois, former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and his daughter Amy Wilkins.
Du Bois explains in The Souls of Black Folks the duality that African Americans often face, the feeling of "two-ness—as an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, the 'soul at war with the spirit.'" That description, Mr. Wilkins says, applies to him too. He often views life in an ambivalent way, seeing things as a black man and as others view him.
Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice, and a family friend and mentor, a "thoroughgoing patriot," always puzzled him in his admiration and reverence for the founders. How could Marshall show such affection for the founding fathers, knowing they held slaves?
In addition, a story lodged in his memory of a tour he took of George Washington's Mount Vernon with his wife and daughter in 1964 or 1965. Throughout the extensive tour, there was no mention of slaves or of how the slaves made the place work. Seeing the sign "The Quarters," Mr. Wilkins's 6-year-old daughter, Amy, wanted to know, "What was the 'quarters'? When Mr. Wilkins replied that the quarters was where the slaves lived, Amy, outraged, loudly roared: George Washington had slaves? Well, what's so great about him, then?"
Mr. Wilkins argues that the story of blacks has been so diminished that their roles in American history have been "expunged." What the founders did, he says, pervades the American culture and led to segregated restaurants, hotels and barber shops. And there is still a tendency by many white Americans to resist "elemental justice."
Mr. Wilkins signs a book for Adrienne Cannon, African American history and culture specialist in the Manuscript Division. - Charlynn Spencer Pyne
All of these things figured in Mr. Wilkins's attempts to discover what kind of people the founders really were: "Who were they before they became tall men? Why were they able to proclaim democracy while condoning slavery?"
George Mason was older than the other Virginians. He was a retired widower with a number of children to support at the time of the Revolution. Mason had railed against slavery, had drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights and had insisted that people's rights be included in the Constitution. And his thinking finally led to the Bill of Rights that is now in the Constitution. However, Mason left the Constitutional Convention without signing the document because it failed to address slavery. Yet, Mason willed his slaves to his children along with his cattle and furniture.
James Madison, the youngest of the group, is depicted as a "prodigious intellect," a hard-working legislator who pored through numerous national constitutions to find an appropriate one for the new nation. Madison was not a slave master like the others, Mr. Wilkins maintains. In contrast, when questioned about his decision to free his slave Billy, Madison replied: "How could I have denied him the rights we have been so eloquent about?" Yet Mr. Wilkins states, Madison never took steps to eliminate slavery.
Mr. Wilkins finds more difficulty in dealing with Thomas Jefferson. Although he praises Jefferson for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, he maintains that slaves enabled Jefferson to be the "poet of freedom." They allowed him the leisure to write, to reflect and to engage in lavish living. Despite his dependence upon them, Jefferson was not kind in his description of blacks. In his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson found blacks to be "uglier," "smellier" and "dumber" than others, Mr. Wilkins said. For all of Jefferson's piety, Mr. Wilkins noted, he was a harsh slave owner. Jefferson railed against miscegenation while evidence suggests he might have been participating in it. When questioned about the elimination of slavery, Jefferson could only reply: "What we need to do is get white replacements."
Mr. Wilkins says that when he was fortunate enough to be named coordinator of Nelson Mandela's 1990 trip to America, he realized the true character of George Washington. Mr. Mandela and Washington had similar traits. Each was able, liked by almost everyone, not a great speaker but able to lead his country to independence.
This was also when Mr. Wilkins realized that he himself was a true American patriot. He identified with the country. He identified with its people: B.B. King as well as Isaac Stern; Jackie Robinson and Cal Ripken. When he was young, people often told him: "Go back to Africa, or "Go back where you came from." However, Mr. Wilkins declared he is not an African. He could go back to Kansas City; he could go back to Michigan; he could go back to Harlem. Those are all of his places and they are all American.
From his research on the founders and their culture, Mr. Wilkins realized that the founders were people who had been "damaged" by their culture. What the founders did was truly remarkable. They created documents that provide "traction" in American life and make it possible for change to occur. He came to conclude that both Thomas Jefferson and Thurgood Marshall were responsible for the person he is today; that there is no perfect place or perfect people.
Mr. Wilkins said he lives his life according to a simple guideline: If one of his slave ancestors should ask him, "Boy, what did you do with your freedom?" he wants to be able to reply that Jefferson's Pillow is part of what he achieved.
