"America, U.S.A.": Eddie Glaude on the 250th Anniv., Race & "The Madness at the Heart of the Country"

“I do not love America, and never have, especially now.” Those are the opening words of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, a new book from Princeton historian Eddie Glaude. Released ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, the book is a critical look back at how the United States has celebrated previous milestone birthdays, including what narratives were left out of the official commemorations. This comes as President Donald Trump has made himself the center of many events and celebrations for the 250th anniversary, while promoting a “storybook version” of U.S. history that elides the injustice that was baked into the very founding of the country, Glaude tells Democracy Now! in a wide-ranging conversation about race, inequality and the legacy of slavery. “Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment,” says Glaude. “History is a battleground, because history, of course, holds them to account.” Transcript AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. This week, as the United States is getting ready to celebrate its 250th anniversary, we begin our series on reckoning with the dark legacies of this country’s history with a new book by the public intellectual, Princeton University African American studies professor Eddie Glaude Jr. The book is called America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, a blistering look at the stories we tell ourselves about our past and present, the book centered around the major celebrations of the United States’ milestone birthdays, from 1876, 1926, 1976, now the 250th in 2026, and in each time, an enduring refusal to face its true history. Eddie Glaude is professor of African American studies at Princeton University. His previous books include Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own and Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. Professor Glaude’s latest book, America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, opens with the words, “I do not love America, and never have, especially now.” Professor Glaude, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: It’s such a pleasure to be back and to see you. AMY GOODMAN: So, start with those words. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: Talk about why you opened your book in that way. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, you know, I was — it was an initial moment of fear and trepidation, and I had to say it. I wanted to announce that I have no interest in the idolatry of the state, that I’m more interested in loves closer to the ground, ordinary people. But I also had to foreground the wound, my own interior experience. You know, as a growing — my dad was the second African American hired at the post office in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and he moved his family in Moss Point from one side of town to the other. And I’m playing — I’ve told this story in Democracy in Black. I’m playing with my Tonka truck, and with my new friend, and his dad came out and said, “Stop playing with that N-word.” And at that moment, America told me what it thought about me. And then I took my truck and went inside, and my parents went to work to keep me from believing what the world said about me. AMY GOODMAN: How did they do that? EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Oh, they put a crown above my head, you know. They told me that, you know, I come out of a grand tradition, that my life was my own to create, that it’s something wrong with them, in a way. And that was affirmed when I went to Morehouse and the like. So, I’m always puzzled when people think I should love the country. They expect gratitude, when I’m more interested in loving the people who make the country what it is. AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk first about the title. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. Why America, U.S.A.? EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, you know, I’m a professor. I have all these folks coming — you know, I read all the time, and I’m — you know, you and I were talking about John Dos Passos. Is it Dos Passos or Dos Passos? And, you know, his trilogy, his classic trilogy, U.S.A., where he looks at the 42nd Parallel and 1919 and big money, is supposed to be this epic account of the country, and it fails when it comes to the issue of race during that period. But also I’m trying to think about the division, the divided soul of the country, the comma instead of the hyphen, this split, this idea that America imagines itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, and the comma represents that contradiction between these two different versions of the nation, and how it deposits, Amy, a kind of madness at the heart of the country that we experience in these cycles repeatedly, over and over again. AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to 1776. What does it mean to you? What do you teach in class? EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. Now, this is an extraordinary explosion of democratic energy, at a certain level, right? It’s this idea that explodes onto the scene, that everyday people don’t have to be subject to monarchical rule, that they can engage in self-governance. But it’s also deeply contradictory, because it’s wrapped in the horrors of slavery, right? And so, 1776 for me is this moment of profound complexity and contradiction, where you have this idea that everyday ordinary people can engage in self-governance, but it happens alongside of the horrific relationship between the trafficking of Black bodies and the introduction of the modern world. And these things are happening all at once. Colonial settlers, all this stuff is happening at once. So, we have to unpack that date for what it represents. AMY GOODMAN: So, you talk a lot about Philly. You’ve spent a lot of time there. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, yeah. AMY GOODMAN: You’re a Princeton University professor in New Jersey. And I was just in Philadelphia. A National Park Service exhibit about slavery has been the subject of monthslong court battle between the city of Philadelphia and the federal government. Following President Trump’s, quote, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, the National Park Service removed a display from a historic site known as the President’s House along Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Of course, the President’s House was the first White House — EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Right. AMY GOODMAN: — as it was for George Washington. The exhibit describes the lives of nine enslaved men and women who lived in one of the homes George Washington occupied as president. Philadelphia sued the federal government over the exhibit’s removal in February, and initially won. But earlier this month, an appeals court panel of three judges unanimously sided with the federal government, saying Philadelphia has no authority over a federally owned site. The Department of Interior has proposed a new exhibit that would contain fewer references to enslaved people and place less emphasis on George Washington’s history as an enslaver. Philadelphia Mayor Parker has vowed to continue pursuing legal avenues to reverse the decision. It’s unclear what might appear at the President’s House site on the July Fourth weekend, when the city is expecting a rush of tourists. Since the exhibit’s removal, however, volunteers in Philadelphia have been standing at the site and sharing the original text that was removed from the exhibit with visiting tourists. It’s like they’re reading the Emancipation Proclamation. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Exactly, exactly. AMY GOODMAN: So, they did this in the middle of the night. They came in with pickup trucks. They took down the written history of George Washington as an enslaver. This is very specific, but also emblematic of what’s happening right now. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Right. There is this insistence on a kind of storybook version of the country, that America’s perfection was founded in its — it was evident in its founding, that there’s no need to talk about a more perfect union. These people, Donald Trump and his minions, they don’t even agree with more perfect union talk, because it calls into question the very virtue of the nation itself. And so, you know, in the context of the aftermath of the Civil War, we talk about redemption, that moment in which the South reasserts itself to retain power, to reclaim power after the horrors of the Civil War. Well, that’s the violent part, the disenfranchisement of Blacks. But there’s also something that happens at the level of history. We call it the Lost Cause. There’s an assault on the very story we tell about Reconstruction, the very story we tell about the aftermath of the Civil War that produced the Civil War Amendments, 13th, 14th and 15th. And we’re in a second lost cause. It’s an epistemic assault. What do I mean by that? That’s an old professor phrase, right? Or word. An epistemic assault. It’s an assault on what we know and how we know, what we see and how we see, because at the end of the day, Amy, Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment. They want to be white without judgment. And if that’s true, if I’m right in that description, that means that history — right? — is a battleground, because history, of course, holds them to account. AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about Reconstruction. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Sure. AMY GOODMAN: And especially for young people — and we have a vast young people audience. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the effect of this erasure of history is that people don’t even know the terms, and it’s not their fault. I want to talk with you about W. E. B. Du Bois. I want to talk about John Dos Passos and others. But what about Reconstruction? What does that episode in American history — what lessons can be learned today? You talk about the Civil War. And then, what was that period? And then the Gilded Age and beyond. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Right, right. So, you know, you get the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson is a vice president from Tennessee who wants to just simply bring the rebellious South back into the fold with no accountability. Congress then asserts itself, and then we have Radical Reconstruction. Now, in the course of the Civil War, we get the emergence of the modern nation-state, an expansion of the notion of the federal government, notions of taxation. We get a notion of citizenship that comes out of the Civil War with the Civil War Amendments. The 14th Amendment is absolutely critical to understanding our modern versions of citizenship. AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the 14th Amendment is. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, it has everything to do with due process. It has everything to do with birthright citizenship and the like, right? So, we get all of this in this moment. And immediately, Amy, there is a backlash. There is an assault on the country that is being imagined in the context of Radical Reconstruction. I should also say this: Radical Reconstruction is important to these Black folk, these former slaves, because it’s something that’s happening that hasn’t been seen in the world. These enslaved people are actually being brought into the body politic, moved from slaves to citizens, given the burden and responsibility of citizenship. You have folk coming down into places like Tennessee, Fisk University, places like Atlanta, Morehouse, places like Washington, D.C., Howard University — all-out assault. 1876, in the centennial year, that rebellion continues. 1874, the violence of Colfax, Louisiana, white former Confederates trying to seize power. Vicksburg, Black folks celebrating the Fourth of July and the fall of Vicksburg, extraordinary violence. Hamburg, South Carolina, extraordinary political coup taking place. Centennial, this massive ritual of disremembering, to use Toni Morrison’s language. The country doesn’t tell a story about the horrors of the Civil War. Instead, it tells a story about its technological innovation, its material wealth. It tells a story that sets the stage for these oligarchs who have seized power, the beginning, the dawning of the Gilded Age, that Mark Twain skewered. AMY GOODMAN: I was just in Newport and Providence, Rhode Island, this week, and I took a Black history tour yesterday in Newport and also learned about the newspaper that would, you know, make some of its money by ads for runaway slaves. You focus on that story of people ultimately who were freed, who were then taken back. I mean, just interestingly, Rhode Island is not just the Confederacy of the North, but it was one of the most significant states when it came to slaveholding. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You know, Malcolm X used to say that as long as you’re south of the Canadian border, you’re in the South. So we can’t exceptionalize that region, right? But I tell the story of Moses Gordon. Moses Gordon was enslaved in California by — I mean, in North Carolina by a Quaker slaveholder, Caleb Trueblood. He was manumitted three months after the Declaration of Independence. AMY GOODMAN: What does “manumitted” mean? EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: He was freed. He was freed. Caleb Trueblood, consistent with his Quaker commitments, also with the principles of the Revolution, freed, manumitted. But this colony of North Carolina passed a statute saying that you cannot manumit your slaves without them having served in the Revolutionary War, meritorious service. So, for two years, Moses Gordon lived as a free man. Two years later, he was captured, sold back into slavery — sold, ironically, to the Brigadier General William Skinner, who actually fought for North Carolina in the Revolutionary War. And so, he spent, Moses Gordon, freed for two years, is enslaved. He freedom dreamed, to use Robin Kelley’s wonderful phrase. He escaped. He escaped to Philadelphia. And for 10 years, he lived as a free man. But because of the Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution, because of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1793, he had to live a life with this looking over his shoulder. He got married. He had four kids. But he was captured, shackled and was to be extradited back to North Carolina to William Skinner, because William Skinner believed Moses Gordon was a thief, Amy. Why? Because he stole himself. Right? And so, this is a story of freedom snatching, right? Because in this country, because of that divided soul we talked about, white Americans finessed the division between America as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, by believing that they are the owners, the possessors of freedom to give and to take away. And so, Moses Gordon’s story, for me, in the book, kind of telescopes that contradiction, that he experienced freedom, it’s taken away, and then, on the back of his manumission papers in the Haverford — in the archive at Haverford College of John Parrish, a Quaker abolitionist, Parrish wrote on the back of Moses Gordon’s manumission papers, “He committed suicide rather than to return to slavery.” AMY GOODMAN: Freedom snatching — EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: — versus freedom seeking. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Exactly. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Frederick Douglass. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, sure. AMY GOODMAN: Every July Fourth holiday at Democracy Now!, we play the late great James Earl Jones reading Frederick Douglass’s speech. But you go much further, and I learned so much, the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, he becomes a key leader of the abolitionist movement. Interestingly, we were just in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and there was yet another statue to Frederick Douglass, who was in Ireland speaking. Well, on July 5th, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches. In fact, one of the names of your chapters is “What to the Slave Is Your Fourth of July.” He was addressing the Rochester’s Anti-Slavery — and I was just in Rochester. I always say Rochester Anti-Slavery Society, Women’s. They said it’s the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Oh. AMY GOODMAN: The legendary late actor, yes, James Earl Jones, I want to play just a little part of that as a precursor to what you’re going to hear on Friday. And this was during a performance of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, based on the late great Howard Zinn’s iconic book. This is an excerpt. FREDERICK DOUGLASS: [read by James Earl Jones] What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. AMY GOODMAN: “What to the Slave Is Your Fourth of July?” That was James Earl Jones reading Frederick Douglass. To hear the whole speech, which is remarkable, you’ll hear it on Friday at Democracy Now! Go to democracynow.org. Now, what I learned from you, Eddie, Professor Eddie Glaude, was the date. I just thought it was a July Fourth weekend. It’s when he went to — Frederick Douglass went to Rochester, July 5th, 1852. But you said, no, that date is key. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. So, July 5th, even though, you know, the reasons for the July 5th, 1852, address may have to do with the Sabbath and the like, but July 5th fits within the context of the history of Black commemorations of freedom. So, because there’s this rumor that John Adams told King George at the moment of the founding, “We will not be your Negroes,” at the moment in which he’s giving voice to an idea of freedom, it’s based on this intimate understanding of unfreedom. So, as the nation imagines itself as a beacon of freedom, as it imagines itself as the city on the hill, you have these Black folk countering, offering a counterstory. So, we used to celebrate January 1st, 1808. Why? The abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, a different story of freedom. Another date, August 1st, 1834. Why? West Indian Emancipation Day. That’s it. July 5th, why is July 5th so important? It’s New York Abolition Day. It’s the date that New York ended slavery. And so, that used to be the most expansive of the commemorations. Then Juneteenth came, you know, June 19th, right? And so, this is this — this tradition of Black gatherings used to be preaching sermons, picnics, prayers, to give a counterstory to freedom, over and against a nation that supposedly imagines itself as the harbinger of freedom for the world. AMY GOODMAN: Some people feared President Trump could cancel Juneteenth, or maybe make Juneteenth June 14th, his birthday, rather than June 19th. And for people who aren’t familiar with the history, explain the significance of June 19th. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: So, June 19th, 1865, is delayed freedom. Here, Texas — here in Galveston, Texas, under a tree — right? — a general from the Union Army tells these slaves that they have been manumitted from 1863 with Lincoln’s signature on the Emancipation Proclamation. AMY GOODMAN: Two years later. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Two years later. It’s an example of delayed freedom. And so, it’s also a moment — people seem to suggest, and I think this is true, that it’s a moment in which the country can imagine itself untethered from the institution of slavery. That’s why it’s so significant for the nation. But I want to be clear: Even if Donald Trump had decided to cancel Juneteenth, it wouldn’t have mattered. The state’s recognition of the holiday, it wasn’t the point. The celebration of Juneteenth by the United States as an example of its virtue isn’t the point. The point is that these particular folk, this tradition signified on the hypocrisy of the country. And I think this is really important. We don’t need Donald Trump or JD Vance or Trumpists — right? — to celebrate the extraordinary history of our journey in this place, because oftentimes the nation invokes it just simply to feel good about itself, even though it’s doing terrible things and horrible things in practice. AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about W. E. B. Du Bois — EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Sure. AMY GOODMAN: — The Souls of Black Folk. And also, it allows us to talk about the music — EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: — that you commissioned for this book. And so, it’s a great reason to listen to the book, because you get to hear the music. And I like to just hear your voice. Not everyone, by the way, reads their own books, but you do. And you hear the power and the meaning of it in the way you express yourself. But talk about The Souls of Black Folk. Talk about double consciousness and more. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. You know, it’s one of the conceits of the book. I’m in conversation with Du Bois. He’s haunting me. I’m thinking with him, along with James Baldwin. These two figures are in my head. AMY GOODMAN: But tell us who W.E.B. Du Bois is. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: W. E. B. Du Bois is the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. But he’s also, in so many ways, one of the most important intellectuals, Black intellectuals, in Black letters, in American letters. He is, in so many ways, Amy, the founder of American sociology, with his first book, The Philadelphia Negro. He engages in this mixed methodology of assessing and thinking about the Black community in Philadelphia, introducing methods that would define the field of sociology. He had trained in Germany and Harvard, one of the most educated Americans of his time. He wrote an important book in 1903 entitled The Souls of Black Folk. And it’s mixed genre. It has sociology. It has history. It has fiction. It includes music. Each chapter is prefaced by bars of music of the sorrow songs, the slave spirituals. He’s trying to suggest methodologically in that moment that in order to understand Black life, in order to understand the complex relation of race and democracy, we’re going to have to draw on a wide range of material. And in that text, Du Bois introduces the concept of double consciousness. This veil that separates the white world and Black world results in Black folks seeing themselves through the eyes of those who despise us. That veil, that double consciousness — right? — then orients us to the country in a particular sort of way. It gives us a particular understanding of its contradictions. I’m saying, in America, U.S.A., that the double consciousness that Du Bois attributes to Black folk is really a consequence of the double consciousness of the nation, that America experiences a kind of — its divided soul, precisely, as I said earlier, because it imagines itself at once as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, and you can’t hold those two things together without contradiction, without depositing a kind of madness at the heart of the country, which sends us spiraling through these cycles every generation, where we kind of think of ourselves, at once, as a place of freedom and, in another instance, as a white republic. AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the music you commissioned. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, you know, I woke up at 3:00 in the morning, haunted, that witching hour, wanting music. I said, “I need music in the text.” But I don’t want to just simply copy Du Bois, right? I want something that’s — that doesn’t show the music and then Western prose, but shows the complexity of who we are. So, I had worked with the classical composer Joel Thompson before at the Colorado Music Festival. He had me reading Baldwin’s words with a full symphony behind me. It was one of the most sublime experiences I’ve ever had. And so I texted him in this god-awful hour. He responded. And I said, “I want you” — AMY GOODMAN: That’s when I wake up every day. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: I said, “I want you to respond to the — I want your music in my book.” He said, “Sure, we can look at some” — I said, “No, no, no, no. I want you to respond to the thesis of the book in music.” And he gave me “… and Blue.” And it’s extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary argument. AMY GOODMAN: And describe it in words. We’re going to play it again. We’re playing it in both our music breaks. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, so, it opens — it opens with a blues sonority, this ambivalence, where you count sadness and possibility there. And then you hear kind of America’s songbook, right? But then it’s kind of, you know, “Feel Like a Motherless Child” is in there, and then the upper registers and lower registers of the piano are going at each other. And whenever I hear it these days, I’m thinking about all of the bodies, all the dead, the consequence of America’s craziness, of its madness. And then, the last movement, it sounds hopeful, has this spiritual feeling, but then it ends with a blues sonority again, ambivalence at the crossroads. It’s the thesis of the book. The opening epigraph to the book is from T. S. Eliot’s East Coker: “In my end is my beginning.” And Joel found it with the blues sorority in the beginning and in the end. AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Eddie Glaude, author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. In fact, it is one — the ending third book of a trilogy. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. I began — I don’t know if you recall, but I came on this show to talk about Democracy in Black. And that’s when I introduced the blank-out campaign. I was on — I think I was on with Michael Eric Dyson, and we were going back and forth. And Democracy in Black inaugurates my thinking. I introduced the value gap there. With my talk of Baldwin in Begin Again, I introduced the lie there. Here, I’m trying to say that the value gap, this belief that some people, because of the color of their skin, ought to be valued more than others, and the lies we tell in order to justify that value gap, all emanate from the divided soul of the country, America, U.S.A. And here we are in the 250th year, and we have to grapple with this madness still. AMY GOODMAN: As we speak, the birthright citizenship Supreme Court decision has yet to be handed down. It might happen today. But I want to talk about what happened last week. The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the Trump administration can strip away protected status from 350,000 Haitians and over 6,000 Syrians who have been living and working lawfully in the United States under TPS, temporary protected status. In her dissent, Justice Kagan wrote, quote, “The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print. … The majority briefly replies that those remarks are not 'overtly racial,' but it is hard to know what that means. Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.) The references — of filth, disease and primitiveness — are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes. It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community. … The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country,” end-quote. And now I want to play a clip from White House homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, who spoke to reporters right after the Supreme Court ruling. He’s responding to a reporter’s question on whether Haiti is a safe country for Haitians to return to. STEPHEN MILLER: For Haitians? Absolutely. REPORTER: For Haitians. STEPHEN MILLER: Yes. REPORTER: Despite the [inaudible] travel bans? Despite the — STEPHEN MILLER: Yes. So, for — I mean, Haitians live in Haiti. It’s not our position that Haitians should leave Haiti. I mean, it would be — it’d be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn’t live in Haiti. It’s their country. Of course Haitians should live in Haiti. AMY GOODMAN: So, the State Department has issued a warning for people not to go to Haiti. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Of course. AMY GOODMAN: And here, they are sending, perhaps, if they get their way, hundreds of thousands of Haitians, many who have lived here for decades. You extensively talk about this issue, whether we’re talking about birthright citizenship, TPS or stopping people from seeking political asylum on the U.S.-Mexico border. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, we have to name the devil that has us by the throat. Stephen Miller is a racist. He’s a white nationalist. White nationalists have seized the federal government. Great replacement theory — right? — motivates this immigration policy. It is, in fact, part of the justificatory language of the so-called legal decision or opinion that Justice Alito laid out. We need to call them for what they are. And in some way, in so many ways, this is an echo of the 1920s. Oftentimes the United States, in order to secure its virtue, will say the monster is over in Germany, not understanding that the German monster was looking to the U.S. in the 1920s. AMY GOODMAN: Explain. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: So, what I mean is that here is the moment. The Klan is reborn in 1915. Its basic motivation is rooted in a kind of nativism, a kind of true 100% Americanism, right? They want Nordic immigration, not those folk from the swarthy S-hole countries of Europe, the Italians, the suspicious Irish papists and the like. They are really, in so many ways — right? — thinking of the country as a white republic. The seminal piece of legislation of the Klan, the one that they claimed most — they were most proud of, was the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of — Nationality Act of 1924, which laid clear the quotas, keeping the country white. Right? So much so, 1926, the 150th anniversary of the nation, the Klan was approved to have its annual convocation, its annual convention, Klanvocation, on the grounds of the Philadelphia Exposition. They were going to celebrate the American flag in its 150th anniversary and burn a cross at the same time. These people are the inheritors of that legacy. They believe the country should be white. And what we see with TPS, what we see with the immigration policies is an all-out assault, a twinned assault, Amy, on two fundamental pieces of legislation that changed the trajectory of the country. One, of course, was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It’s been gutted. The other, of course, is the Hart-Celler Act, Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which overturned the quotas of the 1924 Immigration Act. This is a white nationalist agenda. And Stephen Miller and all of these folk are just simply rabid racists, and we need to call them for who they are. AMY GOODMAN: And yet, often Latinos are pitted against African Americans when it comes to immigration. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Right, and it has something to do with the proximity to whiteness. Baldwin writes about this in “In Search of a Majority.” You know, how can I put this? I say this in the book, that — and I’m using Derrick Bell’s language, Amy. Oftentimes Black folk are at the bottom of the well. We function like gold to money. What do I mean by that? Because we’re at the bottom, we now know what whiteness means. We now know what white racial hierarchy means. And so, it’s one’s proximity to the bottom that everyone is trying to say, “We’re not them.” And so, there’s a sense in which the way in which the racial hierarchy in the United States works. You have some folk who believe that some kind of being adjacent to whiteness will somehow, shall we say, protect one from its more ugly implications. AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, Professor Glaude — EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Sure. AMY GOODMAN: — what do you want people to think about this week as we move into the 250th anniversary? EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, you know, first of all, let me just thank you for giving me so much time. I really appreciate it. And I’m so honored, because I’ve been watching you for so long, and you just do such amazing work. What do I — what do I want? It’s not complex. Oftentimes we think of these issues as complex. It’s just like, you know, you don’t — it’s basic. You don’t kill babies. You don’t bomb innocent babies. That’s not a complex political issue, right? This isn’t complex. You’ve got to make a choice. Either you’re going to be a beacon of freedom — and we can debate what that means — or you’re going to be a white republic. Can’t be both. So just make a choice. AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you have been researching this book for years. What surprised you most? Or you can talk about a few surprises. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Not just the repetition, the haunting. You know, Moses Gordon surprised me. The Klan. There’s a piece in the North American Review published by the grand wizard of the KKK in 1926. Scholars are responding to the grand wizard of the KKK — Princeton professor in politics, rabbis from Jewish synagogue, W. E. B. Du Bois. And what you see are the parallels. The KKK grand wizard is saying, “We can’t teach our kids what we want. These folks are diluting America.” Sounds exactly like what we’re hearing today. And Du Bois writes a response entitled “The Shape of Fear.” And in “The Shape of Fear,” he says the power of the KKK resides in its lies. And he argues the lies are choking the life out of democracy. And here we are in 2026, in the 250th year, drowning in lies. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you are a university professor. Do you think universities can recover, for example, when we’re talking about issues of DEI? And explain what that is and what has been taken away. EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, diversity, equity and inclusion, the idea that universities should reflect the vast diversity of the population of the United States, that we should give people, no matter their class, race or gender or ability, the possibility to acquire a kind of capital to make their dreams a reality. There’s been an all-out assault on that. A lot of these universities, Amy, are using Trumpism as a cover to roll back things that they wanted to roll back. They’re capitulating. You know, they’re the great — I call it, in the book, the great capitulation. It’s an echo of what Frederick Douglass saw when he saw the American Missionary Association suddenly finding itself in cahoots with those who were former slaveholders. He called them “the apostles of forgetfulness.” And here we are in this moment. So, unless they find courage, unless they make a choice — right? — we will have to bear the brunt or the burden of their decisions. AMY GOODMAN: Professor Eddie Glaude, African American studies historian at Princeton University. His book is just out, America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, required reading for this weekend. Coming up, a new StoryCorps/NPR oral history project. It’s called Connect250. We’ll speak with StoryCorps founder Dave Isay. But first, a little more of the music commissioned by Professor Glaude for America, U.S.A. [break] AMY GOODMAN: “And Blue,” composed by Joel Thompson, performed by UDC professor Leah Claiborne, the song commissioned for the book America, U.S.A., commissioned by Eddie Glaude Jr., audio courtesy of Crown. Media Options