Jim Grossman, Executive Director, American Historical Association:
The problem here is an inclination among many people to see things as black and white, to see things as just, it’s either this or it’s that.
And people talk about teaching the glory and the glory, for example, of American history. Senator Scott says they should be celebrated and not canceled. They shouldn’t be understood. And that doesn’t mean celebrated. It doesn’t mean canceled. Their ideas were brilliant. There is no question that the founding documents were, in fact, revolutionary.
They contained insights into liberty, into freedom. But these men also — they were men. There weren’t any women present. These men also were mostly men who owned, bought and sold other human beings. And they lived and had grown up in a world where it was OK to own, buy, and sell other human beings.
And to understand what they wrote and to understand them, we have to understand that. This is not a theory. This is a fact.