America 250 – Myths, Memories, and Meaning

Gen Z Historian Kahlil Greene joins Renaissance Man Daniel Berger-Jones to reflect on America 250 in Boston and how that story gets told.

https://www.meetboston.com/podcast/

Transcript

Welcome To Boston Found

Speaker 1 0:05

Founded four centuries ago, Boston has simply never settled. Conversations here determine the future, so let's discover what's next. Join us as we seek out the real Boston, past and present, through stories and perspectives that capture a city always in motion. I'm Martha Sheridan, CEO of Meet Boston, and this is Boston Found.

Speaker 4 0:33

Welcome to Boston Found. My name is David O'Donnell. I am the Vice President of Communications for Meet Boston. I'm again filling in for Boston Found host, CEO, Martha Sheridan. Today we're really excited to have two guests who are both riveting storytellers whose passion for storytelling often transcends the traditional notions of how this nation's story gets told. We're really excited to have with us today Kahlil Greene, Daniel Berger Jones. Thank you both for joining us today on Boston Found.

Speaker 2 0:58

Yeah, thank you for having me. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 1:00

Yeah, no, we're really thrilled. So we don't sit here and read your bio on Boston Found. We really want our guests to hear directly, our audience hear directly from you on what brought you to today. You know, some of the major moments, mentors, influences. We'll in a moment get into how you frame your method of storytelling. But share with us a little bit about just kind of um those influences in your life and your journey to today. So we'll start with you.

Kahlil Greene’s Path Into History

Speaker 2 1:26

Yeah, I think the earliest memory that I have that relates to the work that I do today is just watching Indiana Jones. Um, so Razor the Lost Ark was my favorite one, and it's one of my favorite movies to this day. And from that movie, I really gained the passion for history and for especially ancient history. But I think just understanding the world in the past and like how cool it could be and how cool someone studying it and researching it could be. Unfortunately, my life now is not like Indies, um, or maybe fortunately, because it's much less dangerous. But I think that was the first introduction to history that I really remember. And then after that, I skip maybe 20 years into the future when I'm in college and I became a history major at Yale University. Um, so one of the mentors that I had there, his name was David Blight. He's a researcher, Pulitzer Prize-winning professor who studied slavery in the United States and won the Pulitzer for a book, uh, a biography of Frederick Douglass. Um, and then another one of my influences there was Professor Beverly Gage, and her research specifically into the FBI was the impetus for my first ever video. Um, and just give a quick overview of what that was about. Yeah, it was on MLK Day in 2021. Okay. Um, it was right after the pandemic. I had taken the semester off of school to just be at home. Completely randomly, there was a viral Twitter post from the FBI's Twitter account where they had wished MLK a happy MLK Day with the quote, the time is always right to do what's right. Of course it went viral and it was funny because the FBI ironically tried to kill MLK multiple times. Multiple times, yes. Um, tried to frame him, reported it in the room. Bug his rooms, all the time. Bug his rooms, all the things that you could think of to try to destroy a person. The uh FBI did it. And one specific case was uncovered, or at least rediscovered, by my professor, Beverly Gage, where they had sent him a letter posing as if it was a disillusioned fan of his that found out about his adulterous acts and just called him all sorts of terrible names. They mailed this letter to him, and the point of the letter was to try to blackmail him to committing suicide. So, like the the letter said, There's only one way out, um, and you know what it is. So I wrote about MLK's the suicide letter. I wrote a script about it, then I recorded it and posted it. It was my first ever TikTok. I had no followers at that time. Um, but that blew up, and within a few hours it had over a million views, and that was my intro.

Speaker 4 3:47

Were you even on TikTok at the time?

Speaker 2 3:48

I was I was on it consuming videos. So I'd watch a lot of videos from TikTok, dance videos, yeah. The biggest one, and then kind of got into activism following George Floyd's murder. But there had been no real, I think, like history lessons in that way. So I like to myself think of myself as a pioneer in that. And that video went viral from there. I started making a lot more, which we'll get into. But I'd say those are the threads of history. And then like the last thread I just want to to put out there is just being a public figure. So the most sort of grand opportunity that I've had in life is uh I was elected the first black student body president at Yale University. It's remarkable. And that was yeah, thank you so much. That was back in 2019, after 318 years of the university existing and student government existing since at least 1883. And that was the first time that I realized that there is a world where something that I do can go beyond me, because that went viral in and of itself. And from that experience, I kind of had that platform to advocate. That was not on TikTok, that was like maybe on Instagram, and I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post. But I'd say having that experience and then having the TikTok, I realized that there's sort of the the Spider-Man quote with great power comes great responsibility. So I wanted to use social media in a responsible way and use my public figure, my my status as public figure to merge history and activism and all of that comes together in the world that I do right now.

Speaker 4 5:05

Very interesting. And it's it's so cool how s one's platform sometimes comes about without them even having like a path to it that's plotted out, but it just it just happens. So, same question to you, unless you want to touch upon first your favorite Indiana Jones, the original trilogy, I would say.

Speaker 3 5:21

Let's just stick to the original trilogy. I was gonna say I basically share his fear of snakes, and that's about that's about where I'm at with Indiana Jones.

Daniel’s Route From Theater To Tours

Speaker 3 5:27

But no, I I it was it was theater for me. So it's like uh honestly, George Shaw telling us about Appalachia Squatch, the eastern cousin of Sasquatch around a campfire when I was in um Cub School. Yeah, never you never heard of him because George Shaw made him up, but that was like Unlike the original. Yeah, which definitely not made up, yeah. Real. So uh yeah, just being around those fires and like hearing those stories, I was like, oh, I I want to get into this. And then I have this history teacher, 10th grade, I lived in Mexico in Guadalajara, I went to an American school, and Tim Merkel, who would just sit on the desk and off the top of his head just tell us a story of like what happened. And then this fellow classmate of mine, Joe Cadell, like outlined everything that happened at Gettysburg. And I was like, You're 16. How do you know this stuff? His father was a history professor at the University of North Carolina, where I grew up. And I was like, all right, so this storytelling thing, that's what I want to do. So I went to Boston University. I tried to major in theater because I figured that was the right uh genre and format of storytelling. It just wasn't. It felt inherently self-serving to me. And I was like, So what do you do to contribute? How do you use performative skills to make an actual contribution to the world? And uh and I had I had a regular where I would go like after work, working in Boston, I was teaching English at Fisher College, and I would go to the parish cafe and I would sit there and I made friends with this one bartender who was like, You know, people will pay you to tell stories. And I was like, nah, no, that's not a thing. And started working for the Freedom Trail Foundation and dressed as Paul Revere. Yeah, I was gonna say, which is where I met you like a hundred years ago. What years is 2008, maybe? 2009? So yeah. There was a guy named Bob Jolly. Yes. If you don't remember him, McKee. He's he unfortunately he passed from a brain tumor. He's only 60 years old. But I I heard him tell the stories and it was just so funny and so engaging and like, but poignant as well, right? There were there were moments where you were like, you you felt gut punched because you thought it was a clown show. And it's the same way that if you like watch Steve Martin's comedy special and then he whips out the banjo and you're like, oh, all right, you're pretending to be an idiot right now, but you're actually incredibly talented. And I liked that. I love that like pull the rug out from under you reveal of the poignancy of these stories that seem like a song and a dance or a comic book or whatever, and suddenly they land on you and they mean something. But nobody was better at that than Bob Jolly, except for maybe Matt Wilding. I hate to talk well about him because you know he doesn't need the inflation of his ego, God bless him. Who now works at the revolutionary spaces?

Speaker 4 7:50

He's a passionate fellow as well.

Speaker 3 7:52

He is, and he, I admit with some some begrudging, sorry, sorry, Matt, that he he had a huge influence on me in the way that I tell stories as well. Um, just because he was really, really conscientious about those stories that weren't part of the narrative that I had received in my education growing up in a public school in North Carolina, where they're calling it the War of Northern Aggression instead of the Civil War, right? So he and then uh Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States of America, reading that blew my mind open. And I was like, oh my God, what if you examine history from every perspective and not the one that you're fed? And that has that's made all the difference for me.

Speaker 4 8:28

That's so interesting. And with both of you, although stories are different, again, it's that your platform you you didn't know what it was at first. It kind of developed from you know authentic experiences. You had a you had a passion for something for storytelling, but it wasn't a linear path. You know, different different influences, love the image of both Bob and Matt. I mean, there's some of the great storytellers, but I I I find that, albeit different, interesting that you both had this kind of just it coalesced at some point, even though it wasn't originally maybe what you intended. So

How Hidden History Becomes A Method

Speaker 4 8:55

Khalil, you got into it a little bit, but this analysis of hidden histories and kind of unearthing or uncovering perspectives that were maybe marginalized, unknown. How did you develop this kind of methodology of hidden history? And can talk about your your your process and your passion for it.

Speaker 2 9:13

Yeah, well, I think it might have also this might also bleed into the first question that you asked about my influences, but when you grow up in a certain perhaps tradition of being a black American, the hidden history is what you get before the the sort of national myths that I think other Americans might get first. In this specific case, like I remember when I was a very young kid, my uncle teaching me about like slavery and like how they used to punish slaves. I think roots had come on or something, and he was just telling he was just narrating that they would amputate your legs if you like ran away and got caught. And I think in the same way that like every culture has myths. I know I have like some Latino friends and they were like told about the Chupacabra when they were a kid. Like, I'm sure there was some reason for that. But I think in our case, the myths were oftentimes like real history, whether it's the KKK or slavery, and just like it's not that those specific things were things that I would have to like deal with in my everyday life, but the modern versions were. So like the police. So like that story about the KKK and like Emmett Till, for example, um, and his lynching would then translate into the sort of passed down advice of like when you're around police, like you have to like act a certain way so you don't end up like this, or if you're around a bunch of like white people in the south, like you have to like live a certain way. And once again, some some ways time has changed, but in some ways it hasn't. So I was always really interested in those stories. And I think when I got to school, it's not I went to a pretty diverse, like progressive school, so I it wasn't the most propagandized version of American history, but I think that even though I didn't receive that, I think as I became older, I started to be aware that other people did, especially as I was looking at like political debates during the Trump 1.0 campaign, like hearing so many narratives about America, like from the other side, and like seeing them on social media and seeing debates about them that were just so false was really jarring for me. So to answer the question about what I do today, like I'm always much more interested in looking at these stories from marginalized communities that break through the national myth. And I think one thing that I do now, like there's some very obvious things that are perhaps untrue. Like, let's say Christopher Columbus discovered America and treated the natives very well, and they were all friends. Like that's that's easy to debunk. What I'm finding now is much more interesting for me is like finding the stories that poke at even progressives or poke at even moderates um about things that they might say. And I think a lot of that has to do with the founding fathers. And one thing that I'm really interested in right now, for example, like George Washington and like whether or not he was a quote unquote good person. And I recently went down to Mount Vernon and just like learned about how even he had books and research telling him that slavery was wrong, and he still did anyway. And that breaks this idea that it was they were all products of their time. Um, so for for me, I like to dig and look at what are we telling ourselves, even as progressives or even as moderates, about this country that still obscures some of the violence and some of the hardships of people that look like me or people that were native or whatever marginalized identity, because I think those stories deserve to be heard and we don't have to protect the legacies of these old American men in order for us to have pride about being American, or in order for us to like have peace in the country. I think the truth is what will set us free.

Speaker 4 12:29

That's very interesting, especially the point about even on sort of the the progressive side for lack of a better term, there's opportunity to reinterrogate stories and figures and kind of make sure that that's being being probed as well. So exactly. Thank you, thank you for that. And Daniel, you talked a bit about some of the the influences and why you wanted to start developing your own like storytelling techniques and tours and and and programs and and uh products. But when did you first start doing it yourself? Thinking, I want to create a tour, I want to create an experience, I want to bring the storytelling to life in front of an audience and welcome them. Like what did that process look like for you?

Speaker 3 13:05

Well, again, that it sort of evolved naturally as I was doing the Freedom Trail and telling the same story over and over again. I have probably told the Paul Revere Midnight Ride story 6,000 times without exaggeration, right? And I was so bored doing it. So about two years into my career with the Freedom Trail Foundation, I actually went to Mimi La Camera, who was running it at the time, and said, What about Cambridge? Like the American army was born over there. What if we we could extend the Freedom Trail over there? And she said, Not interested. And I said, Well, uh, can I? She said, Yeah, yeah, we'll we'll support you as long as you stay away from the Freedom Trail. So okay. So we so we started Cambridge Historical Tours, which has evolved into the Boston History Company now, um, wrote a tour of Harvard and you know, trying to attract tourists to it, just sort of doing the superficial stuff that again, it made me feel like I was I was writing, I was doing the same thing that I had drifted away from theater to do. And then somebody was like, Hey, how about write a tour of MIT and make it about science? And one of my first loves. Like, I didn't know if I was gonna go into theater or physics, and I applied to programs for all of those things. So when I wrote the MIT tour, I was like, Oh, right, you you can actually go to your own interests. And Boston is a very accommodating place that has so much critical thought for the last 400 years, and some of it's critical thought, like, you know, I've one of the things I love so much about Khalil's channel, if I can just, you know, throw throw some of you away, yeah, give him his flowers, is that it most of what his stuff does helps to explain the world around us right now. And I I've stumbled towards that a couple of times, but you've done it so purposefully and so well that like I I envy the way that you have that direction so early on in your creative.

Speaker 4 14:39

Because there's there's macro, micro history, but a lot of times, like if you can identify a certain person, perspective, persona, and story and tell that story well, the way that it sheds light on an entire era and moment or movement is is is very interesting in history in general. So I just wanted to also celebrate the idea that like you can you can take just a hidden history and reveal so much more. So But you need that perspective, right?

Speaker 3 15:01

If you don't have, if you have just the traditional narrative, then it's really easy to believe that. If you have just the Uber progressive narrative, it's really easy to believe that. If you have both of those, if you read Fox News at the same time that you're reading MSNBC, you're gonna be like, okay, so it's somewhere in between here, let's triangulate what we what we want. And then you've got to go and find the facts for yourself, and then you gotta figure out what the narrative is in your brain, because we're all telling ourselves stories, and that's what it is. And I think that's how human beings relate to each other. And more and more, that's sort of why I've um I've broadened the scale of what I'm trying to tell to everything. I've gotten into the classics lately as well, just because like during the pandemic, I was like, now what do I do? Herodotus and Plutarch, why not? I'd never read them before. I was like, what's in there? And that blew my mind wide open. And then I started going into the Museum of Fine Arts to be like, let me see some of this stuff. Yes, I know you love my art. And then the history of medicine over at MGH, and you have to like everything. I find the whole human story so fascinating. But the thing that I like the most about telling the stories is if you can hit somebody who has not heard that other perspective before, and you can tell it in a human and compassionate way. I get a lot of MAGA people on my tours. And if I ask them, like, hey, did you watch that video of Derek Chauvin, you know, kneeling on George Floyd's neck, a hundred percent of them are like, Yeah, that was real messed up. And I'm like, So why are you critiquing all the Black Lives Matter flags that are around town? They're like, well, because that's it, and I'm like, no, it's the same. You believe in it too. And then you have to explain to them the difference between all lives matter and black lives matter. It's like, yeah, well, you say that, but you it it statistically, it doesn't feel like you're including black lives in the all lives matter thing because look what the actual evidence says, and like giving them and chipping away. And I my hope among hopes, and I'm not gonna drive this home for anybody. I'm hoping that they come to it themselves, but my hope is enlightening every perspective will allow people to at least create a sense of empathy for the other side. Because I don't think there are sides. I think there are people who are informed and there are people who have less information at their access. And I hope to provide them with as much information as possible to make that critical thought happen for themselves.

Why Boston Ignites Revolution

Speaker 4 17:09

And one thing that we hope and I believe about Boston, and you know, it's it's complicated and nuanced history, but that a lot of times when people come here to visit or go to school, you know, they often are seeking something, you know, trying to learn something more about the founding of the country or what it is that has made Boston kind of this bastion of progressivism and how that's worked. And, you know, in our role as destination marketers, we try to tap into that, right? Like if you're coming here, we wonder if you're often coming to learn or seek and explore. And usually usually it's all all of those things. So let's let's talk briefly about Boston itself and the revolution and you know, the kind of why Boston, right? We've been, you know, here we are recording this and we're on the eve of the 250th, where the the rest of the country is going to be celebrating. You know, we've really been using the word commemorate more than celebrate here in Boston for the past 10 years, but it really has been a decade of commemoration for us, you know, and all the events that led up to the revolution. So, Daniel, I'll get your thoughts clearly as well. But Daniel, like from your perspective, why was it Boston in in this moment, whether it was political, economics, that that led to this very radical movement happening?

Speaker 3 18:12

It's because of the way our colony was founded. It's right at the beginning of everything, right? You have these people who do not like the idea that Parliament is sort of bound to the whims of the king. And James had sort of been I'm not sure if he was quite as tyrannical as Charles, but Char Charles dissolves the Parliament eventually. Can you imagine Donald Trump going, no more Congress? It's me now, only me. I could imagine. I know, and unfortunately, I think we all can imagine that. But that's that's what they were going through. And so when they're allowed to come over here and create their own self-governed, it may seem now, in retrospect, like a crazy, crazy person's theocracy. But the the fact is, no, they were the ones trying to turn England into a republic. They eventually do, by the way, right? In 1649, first English Civil War, you get guys like our our former governor, Sir Henry Vane, who had come over here at the age of 23 and become governor and gone, yeah, tolerance for other people. And they immediately get rid of him. Um, but he he goes back to England and he is one of the primary orchestrators of the republic that lasts for about four years before Oliver Cromwell takes over and makes it a protectorate. But that those those are our guys. They're thinking about self-governance at the very beginning. We have a huge rebellion in the 1680s against Governor Edmund Andros and the glorious revolution in England. We're going, you cannot tell us what to do. And so it it feels inevitable almost that that would happen in Boston when the King in Parliament go, No, you do have to do what we tell you. We don't use it.

Speaker 4 19:38

Yeah. And we and we had Bob Allison on this podcast podcast as well. And he he kind of had a very similar take that they're already like instilled within them, you know, steeped within them is this notion of republicanism and is that they're free as Englishmen, and they're just kind of like turn turn that around.

Speaker 3 19:51

So we also have of let's not forget the first public school in British North America, which is called the Boston Latin School, because you're supposed to read everything that the Romans wrote, and most of the Romans are like, Yeah, the Republic, that was the good times, right? And before that, all the Greeks. And so a classical education, which is what our founding fathers receive at Boston Latin School, is pounding this idea of self-governance into you.

Speaker 4 20:12

Yeah. So for you, Cleo, what are some of the are there some hidden histories there, some perspectives of the era that you find particularly interesting, of the revolutionary era?

Speaker 2 20:20

I mean, I'm not from Boston, but in moving here, I feel like I learned so much about this city and like these micro stories that really illuminate sort of the answer to your question about like why Boston. I mean, for me, like um the way that Daniel started out by talking about like the founding of the colony by the Puritans who had a very different and revolutionary idea for how a society or how religion should be even run, it starts there. And I I I I was actually worked with National Geographic a few years ago on a docuseries about like hidden histories in Boston. And one thing that I found, even though like it comes from a weird place, when we were studying the Salem witch trials, I was doing a video about Tichuba, learning about the Mathers and just like the intellectualism that went into like you were mentioning the first public school, but like even like what has turned into Harvard and um all the universities that exist around here, like there was just a level of I think inquiry that comes from Boss. Another story that comes to mind, uh, and the reason I brought the Salem Witch Trials is just like how like they were interrogated and how the Mathers were, I think it was Cotton Mather, the son, when we were learning about Onisimus, who was an enslaved African man and the smallpox, um, and like how inoculation was innovated here. There's obviously the whole innovation trail that exists here. I think that that idea of like innovation and intellectual inquiry and education in almost an egalitarian way, um, I think is really perhaps unique to Boston, both back then and even now. And then in terms of like other things that have come about in the work that I've done that elucidate why a revolution happened, maybe not specifically in Boston, but in general, there's By um Professor Ned Blackhawk, and I made a video with him a few years ago. I'm gonna redo it this year, but he talks about how the story of Native Americans actually was really important in the founding of the revolution and specifically the wars against Native peoples. And the way that he reads the uh Declaration of Independence is that he sees the the final sort of indictment of uh the king about he pretty much let these merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is uh indiscriminate like killing of all peoples in in a paraphrase, and how we often very much underplay that for this narrative around like taxes and tea. And I think that's something that's really, really interesting for me because we know in the Boston area there was King Philip's war, which led to a number of massacres, and one can only theorize how these initial skirmishes that I think it started out somewhat peacefully, like the Thanksgiving myth, some parts of it are true in that there was like alliances made um that obviously deteriorated over time, but I can only imagine that the the conflicts in Boston against natives that then led to like something like that being an declaration of independence is an underexplored part of why the revolution had happened.

National Myths And Who They Serve

Speaker 4 23:13

Do you think the the notion the the reason of myth is important as as long as there are those that are you know looking to ask other questions to re-interrogate the myth, maybe even debunk it? I know sometimes you do both. It's like a it's like a reinterrogation you might debunk, but like is it important for nations? Let's say the development of of nations in the last 250 years, like where does that the role the national myth kind of like play? Like it like where is it important, where is it equally important that we kind of like take a hard look at it?

Speaker 2 23:47

I think it is very important, and I think it does work for the majority. Like, I don't think that the Thanksgiving myth has hurt the majority of Americans, specifically at least the white majority. If I'm not mistaken, it was Abraham Lincoln that yeah, you're nodding along. So feel free to jump in if there's any facts I get wrong, but I'm glad I'm right so far. But Abraham Lincoln, I think, era um where Thanksgiving becomes an actual a holiday. Um I'm not I don't think it was like to mesh over indigenous and and white relations. I'm sure there was other unifying national um purposes with that. And I think that that's the sort of issue with the United States often is that a lot of things work for the majority, um, specifically the white majority, but don't work for minority communities, even like democracy as it stands, like the tyranny of the majority. And luckily we've been able to combat that with like some civil rights protections and voting rights protections that are of course going away. But I think that for the United States, so much of the national myth has been made and worked for for white Americans or rich Americans, whatever sort of aspect of your identity is like the most benefits the most from them. But I think nowadays we're starting to see that like there's a lot of minority communities that have been harmed by these myths. So whereas Thanksgiving can unify and create a nice happy story for white Americans, for indigenous people, it might obscure the realities of what's happened to them and like the things they're still going through. So I think that's why we're seeing such a pushback because now with social media and now with political discourse, these minority communities can speak for themselves and like really interrogate these myths. And I think that they work for the nation and the purposes of a nation, but they don't work for everyone in them. So that's why I feel like it is a fight and it is like a a push to try to get these things recognized because they don't work for everyone.

Speaker 4 25:31

Yeah, absolutely. Thank

Museums And The Problem Of Audience

Speaker 4 25:33

you. And you know, one thing that some of the cultural institutions and museums here have been doing is trying to look at the role of indigenous folks, black folks in the revolution, right? Which their representation could have been on either side of that conflict. But you know, I know I know for for reasons that make a lot of sense, you know, the like the Museum of African-American History right now has a great exhibit called Black Voices of the Revolution and at American Ancestors, there's Black Patriots. And, you know, I just I'll I'll start with you, Daniel, but then I also want to ask about a project I know you guys collaborated on um in the Beacon Hill area. You've been to Museum of African American African-American history. How critical is it you think? And how do you think we're doing with kind of, you know, curating actual exhibits that kind of reveal those other perspectives and those critical roles that folks played?

Speaker 3 26:15

I don't envy them. Let me put it like that. I think it's really hard because the populations that are going to go and see an exhibit about African-American history tend to be African-American, black populations. And so you're sort of preaching into an echo chamber. So the question is, how do you get the people who don't already have that information? To your point earlier, Khalil, it's like if you grow up black in this country, the chances that you've heard those stories already is bet much better than if you grew up white, right? Like Thanksgiving is a great example of the fact that I had always heard, wasn't it nice of us to invite them to dinner after we had a huge abundance? And the fact is, no, no, no, that huge abundance was due to them going, we're not going to slaughter you, even though we do absolutely have the numbers right now. And it was T. Squantum that saved their butts and taught them how to grow corn when they were trying to grow barley and wheat, which doesn't grow in New England. And then when Massasoit walks in with 90 warriors in September, he eats all of their food to make sure that they understand that they are paying him tribute, that he's in charge right there. And it's a totally different narrative, if you put it like that. It's like, so so how do we get that narrative into people who who don't really want to hear that as the narrative? I I genuinely don't know. I mean, that's the job of the museum curators, and that's why I'm not jealous of them. They've got to figure that out. I do think we are doing a much better job than the majority of people, but I do still think, as you say earlier, there's there's a progressive narrative and then there's a conservative narrative. And somewhere in between is sort of like the the objective truth of what actually happens. How do you present an objective truth? I I don't know that you can. I think everybody is going to see the thing that they most want to see in that. I do think that the African Meeting House is doing a great job of that. I think revolutionary spaces has more and more in the last 10, 15 years gone. Look, we we can't just tell the Paul Revere story over and over again. What about all the other people who are involved? J.L. Bell, if you know him, John Bell has done a great job, I think, sort of exposing all sorts of little hidden narratives, like the Boston Massacre is a great example, right? Everybody's been sort of trying to talk about the fact that Crispus Addicts is the first man to die for the cause of revolution. First of all, that's not necessarily true either, but go back even before that. It's like, well, why does Crispus Addocks get killed? Because there was a huge ripe fight on the Ropewalks. Guess what? There was a black Jamaican drummer with the 29th Regiment named Thomas Walker who had actually participated in the fight in the rope walks the day before. Like, black people are part of every side of this narrative. Why would he be fighting with the British? Because they were actually much nicer to the black man in those days than the American side. Same thing with the indigenous peoples. Like the British had finally started to go, okay, we're the way that we've treated them is pretty god awful. Tell you what, we'll put a border right here and we won't genocide any of the rest of them. And then the Americans are going, you can't tell us where to put the border. And it's like men like George Washington. This was his big complaint. He's not in a port town. He didn't care about the taxes. He cares about the fact that he can't expand his 18,000 acres into uh indigenous territory. So I think we are starting to slowly incorporate all perspectives into the history, but it is it is the difficult task is getting the audience who doesn't want to hear it, to hear it in a way. And I think one of the things that we're not necessarily doing as well as we could be doing is not imposing the guilt of this upon somebody and going, look, I'm not trying to make you feel bad about what happened, but this is what happened. So let's acknowledge that and we can talk about the morality in a different place. But for a museum, for a tour guide, for whoever, let's talk about what happened first and we can try and expose both sides of the narrative. And then I'm not telling you which to believe, but you can again reach that critical thought yourself.

Speaker 4 29:54

Yeah, and I think all those institutions are doing a very good, very good job with that. As is the Museum of Fine Arts, by the way. They're reinstalling the art of the America's wing this Juneteenth. It's the first time it's been reinstalled since it was unveiled in 2010. And you know, and it's very intentionally art of the Americas. You know, Central America, South America, Indigenous art, island art, North American art. It's not America as the US. So it doesn't have to even be like a historical site or museum. It can even be some of our great galleries, like the MFA, can do this.

Beacon Hill Fugitive Stories And Today

Speaker 4 30:29

Khalil, I want you touch on a couple things or reflect on some of these things that Daniel's brought up. And you've done some great collaborative content creation with SME Boston. You know, we've got some great reels that you've helped with. You guys have done some collaborative working on it as well, including one on this idea of indigenous land and how it was taken, stolen. There's a really intriguing piece that you had that literally tracks how someone went to litigate it, actually went overseas, went to England to do it. But you guys did a great one on Lewis Hayden, which I'd love to get your thoughts on. I mean, we're we're we're pushing forward a little bit beyond the revolution now, but talk to me about like your experiences in the Beacon Hill area and what you discovered about Hayden, for example, and others.

Speaker 2 31:10

Yeah. Well, I have to credit that to Daniel. Um, I had never heard of Lewis Hayden before um meeting you. I heard of the crafts just because I met the author of it's like husband, slave, sister, something like that. So with the yes, yeah, it's the one about how they escape. Exactly. So I will always, when I'm making a video, try to think about what's happening in the world and what history lesson can I use that current moment to funnel like the history lesson into. And it just happened to be that at that time there was a lot of ice raids and a lot of federal mandated officers and and police and people taking people off the state. Oh, it's such an interesting parallel. Yeah. So that was, I think you probably had made the connection as a video idea. And with um help of Daniel, and of course doing like some back-end research after we like made up the script. I realized that there is a long-standing tradition in Boston of hiding fugitives, and specifically fugitives, not necessarily someone who like killed a family and is running away, but someone who like is just existing and doesn't deserve to be apprehended and and and and detained and an unjust law, am I not? Unjust law. I think that's the important thing. Um, so what we try to do is like if you think that I forget what the intro is, but it's like Boston has a long history of showing you what to do when people are getting snatched off the streets. Um, and then we went into the story, we talked about Lewis Hayden, we talked about the crafts. Um, I think we what was the last Anthony Burns? Anthony Burns. Yeah, it's the last person that we referenced. And these are all people who had in some ways been fugitives, really creative stories like the crafts, they had done Whiteface, I guess you can call it, at least Ellen did, and then um William posed as her servant, um, because she was like pretending to be ailed in some way. I thought those are just really interesting stories, and I think I just uncovered how to the point I was making about Boston's like intellectualism, I think there's also a very long-standing tradition of like fighting against unjust laws, especially as they not only in that sense, but like the Fugitive Slave Act, but also just in general with like the Civil War and I guess the some the revolution maybe a little bit more murky, but I think the general idea of fighting against monarchy is a good thing. So there's a really good history of activism here.

Speaker 4 33:29

Yeah. And Hayden was kind of like, you want to come in? How dare you?

Speaker 3 33:33

So I didn't think he was like, I gotta barrel a gun powder under my door, I'll blow us off sky high before I let you take the crafts. But I mean, talk about whiteface. Lewis Hayden and Harriet got away by literally putting flour on their faces as a guy named Calvin Fairbank drove them on a carriage out of Kentucky into Ohio. I mean, like, some of these stories are just bananas, but the the the brass ones on those two to do an escape like that and then to come to Boston and be so open about like Lewis Hayden was like, come at me. Right. There's a there's a great moment where uh where Harriet Beecher Stowe had just written Uncle Tom's Cabin. She's writing a compendium, like a how to understand, a key to understanding Uncle Tom's Cabin. And she was like, I've never actually met um escaped fugitives before. Could I meet some? And they were like, Yeah, you need to go to Lewis Hayden's house. And he introduces her to 13 people who are there. These are the people that we don't talk about, right? The the big names are Shadrach Minkins, probably never heard of him, but there he is, right? Thomas Sims, the crafts, right? These are the Anthony Burns, these are the folks that got famous because their stories are so crazy. But there are countless other ones, and Harriet Tubman is using his house as a stop. And she's like, Hey, can you help me fundraise for John Brown? And we have all these stories, again, of massive defiance. But at the same time, there's also mobs of people in Boston who, when Frederick Douglass tries to give a speech at Tremont Temple in 1860, storm the place, you know, shout him down, and then attempt to beat the snot out of him, and they have to move the meeting up to the African meeting house. So there's a dichotomy here, I think, that we we like to tell ourselves that we're this progressive town full of abolitionists. And it's like, well, 51% of us were at the time, and that's why they they won. But this this is American history, is every time there's 51%, you gotta think about the other 49% as well. And we do have that as well in Boston. So trying to remember all the loyalists that were in town during the American Revolution. I like to tell people all the time, I I unfortunately probably would have been a loyalist because I don't like it when mobs win and riots are the way to enact political change. I'm like, no, can we use our intellects please and have a civilized conversation? And the fact is, no, not always.

Speaker 4 35:32

That must be an interesting part of your tour, you know, for you to say, I, you know, I might have been on this side, but for this reason, not for the actual issues.

Speaker 3 35:39

Well, but John Adams kind of was, right? He defends the shooters at the Boston Massacre. Why would you have done that? He was like, Because you don't want mob rule to because it's yeah, you don't want to look bad by saying, Yeah, we we like to let the mob win over here. But the other side of him, he's writing back like the crown does not understand what they have just done. You have dead bodies in the streets. You'll never win that population back again. You did the damage, right? Once there is violence committed on the other side, it's almost impossible to sew that back together. It takes a generation to sew it back together. Yeah. I think that's one of the interesting debates.

Speaker 2 36:13

I would say speaking of loyalists, I will say I probably also would have been a loyalist. This is the video that I did at the Old North Church, but it was just discussing how most black people at the time of the revolution who did fight were fighting for the British. There's the reason down in Virginia with the proclamation that said if you fought for the side of the British, I think it was Lord Dunmore's proclamation, then you would be freed. Um and I think there was, I'm not sure if there was a similar proclamation up here, but just in general, a lot of the loyalists who like had enslaved people, they either the enslaved people were like kind of forced and conscripted to like be on their side. And I know one of the stories that we talked about was the one with Cato, who was an enslaved man. I think he was the last person to be baptized at Old North Church, and he was the enslaved by a loyalist, and he went up to Nova Scotia, just like a lot of the enslaved people who fought down south went up there. And I think those sorts of numbers and and insights that most black people fought for the side of the British is something I hadn't heard until coming here, which is really interesting.

Speaker 4 37:09

Yeah, it is it is so fascinating. And you know, to find in Boston um, you know, those nuances, that dichotomy, it's messy, as you said, and it's very representative of the nation as a whole, which is fitting since in many ways Boston is the foundational setting.

Speaker 3 37:25

I don't think it's native to this city or this country. I think that, you know, the George Washington, was he a good guy or a bad guy? Well he did some terrible stuff. I think we should acknowledge that. He he also surrendered the power of the Condell army would have made him king. Yeah. And he could have taken that, and he didn't. So he does this one amazing thing. It might have been one of the greatest things ever done by an American. He also enslaved over 300 people and uh to your point, knew that it was wrong and wrote that it was wrong, and in his will attempted to make some recompense for that, but also, you know, this is like, oh, George Washington freed all of his enslaved servants in his will. Yeah, he said if Martha agrees to it and she didn't. Right?

Speaker 4 38:08

So it's like uh where do we Martha getting thrown under the bus by hey, oh that's the story, that's the story.

Speaker 3 38:14

I don't mean to be rude, but yeah, Martha Washington. That's truth. Again, did she do some good stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 38:20

I wouldn't have wanted to be black near her. Yeah. I was just gonna add

Stolen Land Facts And Better Acknowledgements

Speaker 2 38:24

one thing. I think the nice thing about the museums and institutions, at least how I've interacted with them with in Boston. I'll start with giving a quick story that I went to Spain and I went to the specific archive in Spain, in the southern part of Spain, that's a very conservative part of Spain. And when I was there, we were doing research in order to learn more about Christopher Columbus, um, because it's where his tomb had been held. And in this specific archive, they, in lesser words, told us that we couldn't work on this project because of like the implications, political implications of it getting out, like just the negativity around like colonization and what the cost of it was. I do not and have not, and I don't think I can imagine feeling that way in Boston. I will say I lean on the uber progressive side, the woke side of the story when talking about like even in the moral argument, talking about George Washington, like for me, the enslaving of the people is like always gonna be more than even if it's more consequential, the giving up the power. And I feel like I've been empowered to, when I'm telling stories, the institution itself doesn't have to endorse my viewpoint, but it is very permissive of people using that history to make the point that they want to. Um, the example that I have is I actually made the video about stolen land. It was shortly after Billy Eilish, who's a famous singer, had made his comment saying, like, no one is illegal on stolen land. And it was just like a viral conversation. I'm sure there was people on the left, people on the right. And I didn't comment on that specific like quote, but what I did say is people pretend like saying America has stolen land is like a woke, progressive talking point. And the the I think it was old South meeting house that they had the the exhibition where they had the deeds that were given to native tribes, specifically the Mashpee, uh Wampanoag. And in those deeds, it was like this is their land, and then we know that land was stolen. So, like the facts being there and like the permission that the knowledge that there's no sort of encroaching on your freedom of speech, that you can use these facts to make whatever argument you want, um, not necessarily endorsed by the institution, but at least like supported the research, I think it's very empowering. I love that.

Speaker 4 40:22

Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2 40:23

Well, go ahead.

Speaker 3 40:24

No, I was just gonna say you your land acknowledgement thing is uh I was I was at a show and they did a land acknowledgement and they said, we want to acknowledge that we're on the stolen lands of the Massachusetts, the Wampanoag, the Pawtucket, and the Nipmuck. And I was like, nope, nope, nope. And it's like uh it's it's a wonderful idea to give those land acknowledgements. But the fact is, you just listed four separate nations here, and only two of them actually fought over this particular land, and the Nipmuck were way out in western Massachusetts, and it's like and I was like, So just saying it out loud is it feels a little bit like virtue signaling, right? Because you said you say these four tribes, it makes you sound really, really smart. It's like, yeah, but two but the Wampanoag were south of here, and the Nipmuck were west of here, and the Pawtucket were north of the Charles River, and south of the Charles River was traditionally Chick-Ataubbit and the Massachusetts. And it's like, but who's who's gonna do all that research, right? So it just sort of yeah, I hopefully us. So but but but again, give give the proper credit to the tribe rather than just virtue signaling outwards and saying, look how many native words we can speak. It's like but but unfortunately what you just did was we're hugely disrespectful for the Massachusetts and the pottucket where where we were, right? Because this is their land, and then you throw in the Nipmuck and the Wampanoag and suddenly you're you're just saying a bunch of names.

Speaker 4 41:42

Yeah. I would say that first of all, thank thank you both because it's the work that you guys are doing that allow people or institutions that want to do the right thing to actually have the resources to do it, you know, and not stumble into something that's actually more disrespectful than they intended. So I just want to give you guys both a shout out because the the work you do not only resonates through through content channels, but it it really is gonna help a lot of people who want to be able to be holistic and how they tell a story and understand the nuance to at least pursue doing it

Where To Follow Them And Closing

Speaker 4 42:14

the right way. So I want our audience to know how they can find more about you both. So let's start with you, Kahlil. Where where can people find you, learn more about you, your work, follow you on social? What do they need to know?

Speaker 2 42:24

If you want to see more of my work, I think the best way that you can follow along with the stories that I'm telling and the research that I'm doing is by subscribing to my uh Substack account, which is a free subscription. All my newsletters are free. You can do that by going to History Can't Hide. That's H I S T O R Y C A N T H I D E dot S U B S T A C K dot C O M. So History Can't Hide dot Substack.com. Um and just sign up for that newsletter to get a notification of all my new videos, um, long form and short form, and then you'll get a newsletter in your inbox almost every day.

Speaker 4 43:02

Thank you so much. Daniel, what about you? Where can people find you and follow you?

Speaker 3 43:05

Boston History Company, right there on all the social media platforms at Boston History Company. We try and put out a 60 to 90 second video about specifically Boston history almost every day. The best thing that you can do is come and take an actual tour with our tour company because when you're walking through the streets of Boston and you experience the stories where they actually happen, something about the power and the magic of going that happened right stinking here. It's magic, right? And we have a staff of 20 guides who we've taught all the same stories and and they give their perspectives as well. And I'll admit some of them are much more progressive than I am, some of them are a little bit more conservative than I am. Um there's there's nothing quite like having a human being in front of you with no filter of a machine in between you. And I highly, highly recommend that everybody do that.

Speaker 4 43:53

We totally agree. I meet Boston. Well, Daniel Berger Jones, Kahlil Greene, thanks so much for joining us today on Boston Fountain. And thank you for tuning.

Speaker 1 44:00

Looking to find more Boston stories? Go to meetboston.com and don't forget to share and subscribe to the Boston Found podcast.