land of lincoln

My dad and I just toured the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. The multimedia shows are impressive. Lincoln's ghost, gangly yet regal, appears in three dimensions on a stage set with library shelves and presidential artifacts. The floor shakes during civil war battles and John Wilkes Booth's deadly shot. But, thankfully, the special effects aren't a crude attempt to remake history as blockbuster entertainment.

If any man deserves hagiography, it is probably Lincoln. Yet, one of the two productions takes special care to give voice to his critics, and not only the pro-slavery ones. We hear the indomitable Frederick Douglass call Lincoln out for being less than an abolitionist (the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in Confederate territory). We hear, too, those who questioned whether unity was worth the human toll (by the end of the Civil War, more than 600,000 soldiers had died). The side-by-side photo comparison of Lincoln in 1861 vs. 1865 is striking. Apparently, a sculptor who saw a cast of Lincoln's late-war face insisted that it must have been done postmortem.

As we were driving toward downtown Springfield, my 82-year-old uncle grumbled in Chinese, "There are so many blacks around now." My mom glanced at me to see if I was going to pick a fight. I stared out the window. I considered 'What Would Lincoln Do?': "When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a 'drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.'" I love my uncle dearly but he does not have a sweet tooth to speak of. My mom stepped up and teased, "We have a black president and you're still saying things like that?"

I imagine that every person at the museum today reflected on our current president while walking through the exhibit on slavery and emancipation. In 1860, there were 4 million slaves in America: 1 out of every 7 people. For me, the photograph of the whip-scarred back and the replica of the slave auction block were not the hardest to see. I had more difficulty looking at various documents declaring ownership - reward posters and receipts of sale. Yet, here we are, 150 years later.

Obama invoked the Land of Lincoln in his recent speech at the NAACP convention.

And because ordinary people did such extraordinary things, because they made the civil rights movement their own, even though there may not be a plaque or their names might not be in the history books -- because of their efforts I made a little trip to Springfield, Illinois, a couple years ago -- where Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged -- and began the journey that has led me to be here tonight as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Because of them I stand here tonight, on the shoulders of giants.