While Americans take great pride in their Constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of expression, in reality civil liberties have cycled through tumultuous periods of expansion and contraction, and the country is currently seeing the latter. That was the view of Montgomery Fellow Annette Gordon-Reed '81, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who spoke as part of Dartmouth's Law and Democracy: The United States at 250 series on May 14.
The key is "to keep the ball rolling. It's a battle for human rights. And that's always a good thing," Gordon-Reed told an audience of 170 in Filene Auditorium.
The discussion, which was sponsored by the Montgomery Fellows Program in partnership with the Rockefeller Center and Dartmouth Dialogues, was moderated by Nicole Maskiell, associate professor of African and African American studies; Keidrick Roy, assistant professor of government; and Ajayda Griffith '27.
Steve Swayne, director of the Montgomery Fellows Program, which brings distinguished individuals from the arts, academia, science and technology to campus for residencies that can range from a week to months, introduced the event. Gordon-Reed is one of eight Montgomery Fellows to visit campus this academic year.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Gordon-Reed talked about her childhood in a small town in the still-segregated Texas, her deep love of reading and writing, her time at Dartmouth, how individuals can effect change, some of her greatest literary influences (James Baldwin, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ralph Ellison), and how AI might affect students' abilities to think critically and produce original research and scholarship.
Gordon-Reed, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard, won the Pulitzer for history in 2009—the first Black American historian to earn that distinction—for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, a groundbreaking study of generations of the Hemings family of Virginia. Gordon-Reed took on the complex, intertwined relationships between Thomas Jefferson and the people he enslaved, in particular Sally Hemings, who would give birth to their six children. While Gordon-Reed dismantled the long-held shibboleth by some historians that no such liaison ever happened, that was not her primary focus in writing the book, she said.
"It wasn't really about whether or not Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had kids together. Because, you know, and we've said this, that happened all the time in slavery. What it was, for me, was that people were not listening to the words of enslaved people," Gordon-Reed said.
Zealous defenders of Jefferson's legacy looked at only one side of the story. "All they cared about was what Jefferson's legal white family was saying about this. And even though they were saying things that didn't make any sense, or saying things that were demonstrably false, that didn't affect people's understanding of their credibility," Gordon-Reed said.
As a professional historian, though, she said she felt the obligation to send the manuscript of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family to critics who "had said that the story was not true, and were very hostile to it, because I wanted to hear from people where I was wrong. And I think that's really important for people to do: be willing to test your ideas, test your theories and so forth against and with people who have a different viewpoint."
Annette Gordon-Reed '81 shares a light moment with moderators Nicole Maskiell, associate professor of African and African American studies, and Keidrick Roy, assistant professor of government. (Photo By Kata Sasvari)
The reality is that history is always under siege, Gordon-Reed said. There is always a prolonged battle over who controls the historic narrative, particularly when scrutinizing how the history of Indigenous and Black Americans, and women, has been written, she added.
Black Americans have "been on something of a journey in the United States from the beginning with slavery and then outside of slavery, and then Jim Crow and then outside of Jim Crow, and there are moments of going forward and moments of retrenchment, going forward and going back. And we are in a moment now of retrenchment," Gordon-Reed said.
She pointed to Trump administration directives to the Smithsonian Institution on how American history should or should not be interpreted; and to the administration's order to remove any references to slavery in such federal historic sites as the President's House Site in Philadelphia, where George and Martha Washington lived with nine enslaved people during his presidency.
"If you tell a story about who America is and why we are, and how we got to the particular place where we are, it really matters what you leave in and what you emphasize and what you don't emphasize," Gordon-Reed said. The fact that the Washingtons enslaved Black Americans is not, she said, "a matter of interpretation."
Gordon-Reed's career, in some sense, goes back to her childhood predilection for reading whatever she could get her hands on, writing stories, her education in East Texas, and her time at Dartmouth, where she recalled some male students were still protesting against co-education.
She was able to go to Paris to study, loved doing school work in Sanborn Library or the Baker Library tower, and attended Dartmouth Film Society screenings. She even went to Dartmouth hockey games with a friend—and has not been to a hockey game since then, she said.
"It was the right school for me," she said.
(Gordon-Reed went on to serve on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees from 2010 to 2018 and was the 2021 Commencement speaker.)
Her advice to students was straightforward. In an age of digital media bombardment, it's essential to leave the noise behind from time to time.
"Reading, writing and being alone in your own thoughts: Don't be afraid to just sit and think about things and let your mind wander," she urged.
But there are times for silence and times for engagement.
In an era of pitched battles of opinion generating more heat than light, it is crucial to keep talking, Gordon-Reed said. "There are people who think that they're doing the best thing for America by not talking about these kinds of things. I disagree with them but that's a battle that has to be joined."
Art history professor Adedoyin Teriba asks a question during Annette Gordon-Reed's talk. (Photo By Kata Sasvari)
There is a silver lining of sorts, she said.
"I don't think most Americans want to be lied to about stuff. They want a real history. Many politicians think that they can score points by creating controversies about those kinds of things. But most people, most Americans, are realistic about this stuff. When I went down to talk about Jefferson and Hemings in Virginia, people came up to me and said, 'You know, this kind of thing happened in my family.'"
The effort by some to move history backward will not be ultimately successful, Gordon-Reed said. The opening up of the historical canon to voices who had been long excluded from the record has resulted in an "embarrassment of riches," she said.
"The people who want to tell their stories, who feel that their story is important, they're going to do that. And you've gotten used to it, and I don't think we're going back."
After the discussion and Q&A, Ryantony Exuma '26, a government major modified with philosophy, politics, and economics, said that Gordon-Reed had brought "a lot of insight" to the question of how Americans tell their history.
"How can we get a full picture from 1776 to today? To whom does that fall? It falls to all of us," he said.