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<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="11599609" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="annette-gordon-reed">Annette Gordon-Reed</keyword> wrote "On <keyword id="9375010" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="juneteenth">Juneteenth</keyword>," a book that reflects on <keyword id="15710" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="texas">Texas</keyword> history and her own story.</li><li>Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas.</li><li>Gordon-Reed marveled at 94-year-old activist <keyword id="11466177" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="opal-lee">Opal Lee</keyword>, who pushed for a holiday for years.</li></ul>Last month, <keyword id="1533678" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="President-Joe-Biden">President Joe Biden</keyword> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/juneteenth-federal-holiday-biden-signs-bill-employees-get-friday-off-2021-6">signed into law</a> a bill that established Juneteenth as a federal holiday, the culmination of a decadeslong effort for national recognition of one of the most consequential days in US history.Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, two months after the end of the Civil War and two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.While June 19 did not erase the plight of <keyword id="1706586" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Black-Americans">Black Americans</keyword>, it gave the formerly enslaved renewed affirmation and hope.In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Juneteenth-Annette-Gordon-Reed/dp/1631498835">"On Juneteenth,"</a> the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Harvard Law School Professor Annette Gordon-Reed, a Texas native, uses historical context and her personal background to explore how the celebration has influenced her life story.Part of her journey was shedding the notion of Juneteenth being a wholly Texan affair, which was rooted in the strong sense of pride among natives."When I went away to college and found out that there were people celebrating [Juneteenth] in other places, I did feel a little possessive about it," she said. "I changed when I realized that it's something that's worth celebrating for everybody."Gordon-Reed recently spoke with Insider about what it meant to see the bill signed at the White House, how Juneteenth can be taught in schools, and how the ideals of the celebration can be maintained going forward. Below are edited excerpts from that interview.Q: In the book, you discuss how you grew up treasuring the specialness of Texas, which initially made you protective of Juneteenth. You soon came to embrace the larger role that Texans played in pushing Juneteenth to become a national holiday. How did it make you feel to see this celebration finally become a federal holiday?It has been just amazing to see the holiday happen. It happened so quickly. After the House and Senate voted, I got an email from the White House inviting me to come down to Washington, DC, for the signing ceremony. It was just extraordinary to have all these people in the East Room who were happy about this - we've been through so much in the past year with the pandemic. I think it will be good for the country to have a day to reflect on <keyword id="70563" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Slavery">slavery</keyword> and the end of slavery.What was it like to see President Biden <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/video-biden-kneels-greet-94-year-old-juneteenth-activist-opal-lee-2021-6">kneeling</a> to greet and honor Opal Lee, the 94-year-old Texas native who has been advocating for a national Juneteenth holiday for years?Well, the first thing that I was impressed with is how easily he got down and got up. I don't know if I could do that. Opal worked so hard to make Juneteenth a national holiday. To see her in the room with the president paying special attention to her, bringing her onstage, and giving her a pen, was just thrilling. She got to see something that she put in motion come to fruition.<div type="image" title="Opal Lee Joe Biden" height="2655" width="3982" msid="84253176" hostid="261"></div>The story of Juneteenth, of course, has to include a discussion about slavery in the US. However, there is now a national debate over the way in which race can be taught in K-12 classrooms, along with critical race theory, which examines how the legacy of racism continues to reverberate through laws and policies that exist today. How can Juneteenth be fully explored in a K-12 environment amid the debate over race in education?Now that it's a national holiday, you have to be able to discuss Juneteenth. I don't see any way around it. There will be challenges to some of those [anti-critical race theory] laws too, and some of them seem to be blatantly unconstitutional. Over the course of doing events for "On Juneteenth," I saw that there are so many books for kids about Juneteenth at almost every level, from kindergarten and first grade to young adults. There are people out there who are talking about it in an age-appropriate way.You recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/opinion/juneteenth-july-4th-holiday.html">wrote </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/opinion/juneteenth-july-4th-holiday.html">an opinion essay</a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/opinion/juneteenth-july-4th-holiday.html"> in The New York Times</a> about the connection between Juneteenth and July 4, where you mentioned the archived 1920s-era footage of Black Americans <a href="https://news.yale.edu/2020/06/19/celebrating-juneteenth-solomon-sir-jones-films">marching</a> in a Juneteenth parade in Beaumont, Texas. What were your first reactions when you saw the clip?It was deeply moving. I know how tough Texas was in 1925 for Black people. I just felt very proud of them, with the sort of resilience in the face of all that I know that's going on in that time period. There's Jim Crow. There are lynchings in parts of Texas. And they're there, continuing on with tremendous faith. Some of them are waving American flags. They're saying, "We are citizens of this place and this is where we belong."Many have remarked that they don't want to see Juneteenth become just another holiday, where its true meaning becomes lost or muddled. What can people do to ensure that the legacy of Juneteenth lives on?I think that members of the Black community who know about Juneteenth and care about it will continue to make the holiday what it's always been. I'm pretty confident about this. I have a feeling that the people who have been doing this for years will teach and exhort the rest of the country to take it seriously.

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed on Juneteenth: 'It has been just amazing to see the holiday happen'

<ul class="summary-list"><li>More than 500 Harvard faculty members are calling for Harvard to keep Claudine Gay as university president.</li><li>Gay has apologized for her remarks during a congressional hearing on antisemitism.</li></ul>In the wake of Tuesday's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crisis-pr-expert-reaction-college-presidents-answers-congress-antisemitism-genocide-2023-12">widely panned </a>congressional hearing on antisemitism, Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania have been facing growing calls from <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/penn-loses-donation-congressional-testimony-antisemitism-2023-12">donors</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-slam-harvard-penn-mit-after-congressional-testimony-antisemitism-2023-12">business leaders</a> to remove their presidents.Liz Magill, the president of UPenn, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/penn-president-magill-resigns-after-intense-backlash-congressional-testimony-2023-12">resigned</a> over the weekend.However, some Harvard faculty members are calling for Harvard to resist calls to remove university president Claudine Gay. More than 500 faculty members signed a letter to the Harvard Corporation, urging the university's governing body not to remove Gay, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/11/faculty-oppose-removal/">Harvard Crimson</a> reported on Sunday.In the letter, the faculty members urged the university "to defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard's commitment to academic freedom, including calls for the removal of President Claudine Gay.""The critical work of defending a culture of free inquiry in our diverse community cannot proceed if we let its shape be dictated by outside forces," they continued.Per the Crimson, the signatories include law professor Laurence Tribe; history professor and Pulitzer prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed; and Derek Penslar, a history professor and the head of the university's Center for Jewish Studies.The university's governing body was set to hold a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/11/corporation-meets-as-scheduled/">regularly scheduled meeting</a> on Sunday. Harvard did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment sent outside regular business hours.Some Harvard faculty members have also taken to social media to defend Gay."I fear too few of us have said what many of us think: She did nothing wrong, &amp; the real failure of leadership would be surrendering to a campaign so hostile to our values," Harvard law professor <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/beidelson/status/1733689294340997393">Ben Eidelson,</a> who has been teaching at Harvard since 2019, wrote on X.Harvard economics professor <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1733692351627833501">Jason Furman</a>, who has been at Harvard for six years, wrote on X, "Claudine Gay denounced calling for genocide before the hearing. She denounced it in the hearing. And she denounced it after the hearing." Furman added that the university still had work to do regarding anti-semitism and islamophobia.The presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn faced calls to resign for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-mit-upenn-college-presidents-response-jewish-genocide-antisemitism-israel-2023-12">their soft responses</a> to a question posed by congresswoman Elise Stefanik on whether calling for the "genocide of Jews" was against their universities' codes of conduct.Gay responded, "It can be, depending on the context." She has since <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-president-claudine-gay-apologizes-antisemitism-jewish-genocide-remarks-congress-2023-12">apologized</a> for her comments in an interview with the Harvard Crimson.While Harvard's governing bodies have kept silent about Gay's future with the university, the MIT governing board has <a target="_blank" href="https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4350010-mit-board-announces-support-for-university-president-after-backlash-to-house-testimony/">released a statement</a> supporting its president, Sally Kornbluth, the Hill reported on Friday.The board wrote that Kornbluth "has done excellent work in leading our community, including in addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, all of which we reject utterly at MIT. She has our full and unreserved support."

More than 500 Harvard faculty members have signed a letter defending president Claudine Gay and urging the university not to remove her

Skye GouldAndrew Johnson faced impeachment over his refusal to work with Congress.On March 4, 1865, Andrew Johnson drank several glasses of whiskey to stave off what might have been nerves or a fever.Then, the vice president-elect headed off to his inauguration.The weather outside was terrible, so the ceremony took place in the crammed Senate chamber. Things went downhill after Johnson was sworn in."The inauguration went off very well except that the Vice President Elect was too drunk to perform his duties &amp; disgraced himself &amp; the Senate by making a drunken, foolish speech," Michigan Republican Senator Zachariah Chandler recalled in a letter to his wife, <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Andrew_Johnson.htm">according to the official US Senate website</a>. "I was never so mortified in my life, had I been able to find a hole I would have dropped through it out of sight."About a month later, Abraham Lincoln was cut down by an assassin's bullet and the "drunken, foolish" Johnson became president.While Lincoln is remembered as one of history's greatest chief executives, Johnson consistently ranks in the bottom five in most contemporary polls. So, what went wrong with the so-called "Tennessee Tailor"?To find out, Business Insider spoke with Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard University and the author of "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Johnson-Presidents-President-1865-1869/dp/0805069488/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1492619246&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=andrew+johnson+annette+gordon+reed">Andrew Johnson</a>."According to Gordon-Reed, Johnson's tarnished reputation is well-deserved, thanks to his deeply-held prejudices and general failings as a leader."I think he's one of the worst," she told Business Insider. "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-james-buchanan-was-a-bad-president-2017-3">James Buchanan</a> is usually the person who's ranked as the worst, but Buchanan was dealing with a lot of really tough problems. Johnson had a way. There was a path forward."<h2>Humble beginnings</h2>Johnson was <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/20/bound-for-glory">born in a log cabin</a> to a poor family in North Carolina. His humble beginnings imbued him with a lifelong sympathy for poor white Southerners, as well as bitterness toward wealthy Southern plantation owners, according to Gordon-Reed.After working for a time as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/first-jobs-of-us-presidents-2016-10/#andrew-johnson-was-an-apprentice-tailor-for-his-mom-6">a tailor's apprentice</a> at his mother's behest, he ran away and eventually settled in Tennessee. He didn't learn to write until the age of 18, when his new, 16-year-old wife Eliza McCardle taught him.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_McCardle_Johnson#/media/File:Mrs-E-Johnson.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>Johnson's wife Eliza taught him to write.In Tennessee, Johnson began to accrue some success in the political realm, starting with a stint as an alderman.He rose to the US Senate, where he became the only Senator from a Confederate state to remain in Congress after the Civil War broke out in 1861."He decides to remain in the Union, which is a very courageous thing to do," Gordon-Reed says. "He faced death threats and attacks and so forth. He wanted to stay in the Union because he believed in the Union."His decision attracted the attention of President Lincoln, who appointed him military governor of the largely-recaptured Tennessee in 1862. Johnson's new position, along with his bold rhetoric against the rebel states, led him to become a reviled figure in the Confederacy.It also proved a boon to his political career. When it came time for Lincoln's re-election in 1864, he cast aside his original vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, in favor of Johnson. The move was a bid to show his commitment to reconciliation between the North and South in the waning days of the war.<h2>After the war</h2>After Lincoln's assassination, Gordon-Reed says that many Southerners were initially frightened of Johnson, especially after he began calling prominent Confederates before him."At first, it made people think that he was going to be really hard on them," Gordon-Reed says. "They were frightened of him. He had been using all these harsh words. It must have been a great feeling for him to have them have to come up before him and ask for a pardon."The harsh measures that Southerners feared never came to be. Johnson would eventually issue <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72360">general clemency</a> for all former Confederates in 1868.Gordon-Reed says that Johnson's allegiances shifted after the war. His resentment toward the planter aristocrats dissapated as he began to realize that the Republican-controlled Congress hoped to reshape the South and give newly freed slaves political rights. Johnson's negative feelings towards African Americans went far beyond widespread 19th century prejudices, according to Gordon-Reed.As a result, Johnson's opposition to Congress' Reconstruction agenda didn't just impact federal law.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_and_Johnsond.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>This contemporary political cartoon depicted Lincoln and Johnson as working together to repair the Union."The Congress did override him on many things, but he gave white Southerners hope," she says. "He sort of strengthened the spirit of defiance in them. Law can only do so much. You can pass laws, but if peoples' attitudes aren't changed, the laws aren't going to do any good."She says the rift between the White House and Congress was also worsened by Johnson's abrasive leadership style."The stubbornness that helped him in some areas made it difficult for him to be an effective leader," she says. "People don't respond to threats or recalcitrance. He couldn't work with people. He thought he was right all the time and just wouldn't budge. His success would also probably predispose him to thinking that he's right. Think of it, you look back and you say, 'Look, I started out life as a tailor's apprentice who ran away. There were runaway ads for me. I didn't learn how to read until I was in my late teens. My wife taught me how to write. I am where I am because of my skills, because I know how to maneuver.'"<h2>'Them and us'</h2>As the war over Reconstruction raged between Johnson and Congress, the chief executive decided to embark on a speaking campaign known as the "Swing Around the Circle" in 1866, during which he would argue in favor of his lenient policies toward the South. The tour ended up being an excuse for the president to take his paranoid rhetoric on the road.In "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Swing-Around-Circle-Destroyed-Presidency/dp/1440102392">The Swing Around the Circle: Andrew Johnson and the Train Ride that Destroyed a Presidency</a>," author Garry Boulard says that contemporary reporters recorded Johnson as arguing with speech attendees, suggesting that leading Republicans ought to be hanged as traitors, and declaring, "I don't care about my dignity" when questioned about his un-presidential conduct.The "Swing Around the Circle" turned out to be a disaster, but Johnson's combative mentality did not change.<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Johnson-Presidents-President-1865-1869/dp/0805069488/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1492619246&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=andrew+johnson+annette+gordon+reed">In her biography of Johnson</a>, Gordon-Reed also records an instance where the president declared to a delegation of visiting black leaders, including the abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass, that he was "... certain that they shared the values of their masters when it came to poor whites, and that alleged universally shared distain bore the evidence of cooperative effort to keep his 'people' down.""His leadership style was 'You're for me or you're against me,'" Gordon-Reed told Business Insider. "It's a very Manichean view of the world. Them and us."His impeachment came about in 1868, when the House of Representatives accused Johnson of violating a Congressional act by replacing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Republican and a Lincoln appointee.During his trial, the president blamed his troubles on "a mendacious press" and a "subsidized gang of hirelings," according to "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Impeachment-Andrew-Johnson-President-United/dp/0486230937/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1492703148&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=Trial+of+Andrew+Johnson+by+andrew+johnson">The Trial of Andrew Johnson</a>."The House voted for impeachment, but Johnson was later acquitted by a single vote during the Senate trial.He finished the rest of his presidency, but declined to run for a second term. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090120211653/http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/chronology/usgrant1869.cfm">According to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inauguration Ceremonies</a>, Johnson ignored custom and did not attend his successor Ulysses S. Grant's inauguration.<h2>'Unconquerable prejudice'</h2>Despite his impeachment and one-term presidency, Johnson concluded his tenure having gained popularity with white Southerners, a group that had once despised and feared him.In fact, Johnson's legacy also wasn't consistently considered dismal until somewhat recently. US President Harry Truman even wrote a piece defending him in a 1959 edition of the The North Carolina Historical Review, titled "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23517375">The Most Mistreated of Presidents.</a>" <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/johnson/impact-and-legacy">UVA's Miller Center</a> says that such positive accounts tend to praise Johnson's rags-to-riches background and stubbornness, ignoring his flagrant racism and inability to work with Congress.Gordon-Reed says it's too simple to simply look at Johnson as an inept leader.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#/media/File:Andrew_Johnson,_Farewell_to_all_my_greatness_cph.3a03724.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>This Harper's Weekly political cartoon mocked Johnson as he left office."He actually managed to derail the things he that wanted to derail," she says. "Johnson thought keeping black people out of the polity was good for the nation because he thought it should be a white man's government."She says that in an era where the South would have likely been forced to accept any terms for reunification, the president's actions had a devastating impact."This may be bringing present day sensibilities into it, to suggest that of course you want all the citizens of the country to participate," she says. "That wasn't his view. He thought he was doing good by the country by keeping blacks out of power."That being said, Gordon-Reed says that it's important to distinguish between "bad" and "important" presidents. Johnson was both a bad and important president, she argues, because of the impact his actions had on the country. His obstruction and failures led to violence against freedman, and the continued oppression of African Americans.Johnson's deeply held racism - "unconquerable prejudice," in the words of contemporary Illinois congressman Elihu Washburne- led to what Gordon-Reed calls a "tragic circumstance.""His feelings about African Americans were not just the kind of everyday racism that would have existed in the nineteenth century," she says. "He had a real antipathy towards blacks. You can see the tragic irony of someone who is overseeing the United States after the end of the Civil War who has that kind of feeling. There could have been a time, if we had a different president with a different attitude, even just sort of normal prejudices for the time, the country could have gone in a different direction. His prejudices, his hatred of African Americans, colored so many of his policy decisions. That's what his presidency after the war was all about." <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-impeachment-process-president-congress-constitution-2017-2">This is how impeachment works - and what a president would have to do to be impeached</a></h3> Please enable Javascript to watch this video

How one of the worst US presidents in history alienated Congress to the point that he was impeached

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/RoyallMustFall/photos/pb.158532991163252.-2207520000.1446490404./159835391033012/?type=3&amp;theater">Royall Must Fall Facebook</a></div></div></div>Harvard Law School is ditching its official seal, following months of protests urging its removal because of its ties to a slave owner, <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/15/corporation-hls-seal-change/">The Harvard Crimson reported</a>.The Royall family's coat of arms was adopted as the seal to honor slave owner Isaac Royall Jr.'s gift to Harvard college upon his death in 1781, which allowed the formation of Harvard Law School."You should feel free to discontinue use of the shield as soon as you see fit, and we will look forward to receiving your eventual recommendation for a new shield, ideally in time for it to be introduced for the School's bicentennial in 2017," a letter from Harvard College President Drew Faust and William Lee, a senior fellow, wrote to Law School Dean Martha Minow.In 2015, a movement called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RoyallMustFall">"Royall Must Fall</a>" formally began on campus with a rally of about 25 people."These symbols set the tone for the rest of the school and the fact that we hold up the Harvard crest as something to be proud of when it represents something so ugly is a profound disappointment and should be a source of shame for the whole school," Alexander J. Clayborne, one of the law students involved, told The Crimson last year.More largely, the students aimed to draw attention to and correct the legacy of slave-owning on Harvard's campus.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/RoyallMustFall/photos/pb.158532991163252.-2207520000.1446490404./159840547699163/?type=3&amp;theater">Royall Must Fall Facebook</a></div></div></div>"We demand the removal of the Harvard family crest as the crest of the law school and we demand that the Royall Chair of Law be renamed as well," Students for Inclusion, a student group on campus, <a href="http://socraticshortcomings.tumblr.com/post/131916652647/royallmustfall">wrote on its Tumblr page.</a>"We also demand that systemic oppression be recognized as pervasive and endemic to the law school and we demand that it be addressed by the faculty and by the student body at large." However, there are at least a couple of dissenting opinions on whether the school should have changed its seal.Harvard Law School professor Annette Gordon-Reed<a href="http://time.com/4259450/harvard-law-school-shield/"> published an opinion piece in Time.com,</a> imploring students not to advocate for the removal of the seal, but for it to stay as a constant reminder of the past."The enslaved at the Royall Plantation and the graduates of Harvard Law School should be tied together as they have been without our knowledge for so many years, and as they always will be whether we choose to hide that connection from the world or not," she wrote.Visiting law school professor, Daniel R. Coquillette, argued a similar point. While he called Royall "a coward, and a brutal slaveholder," Coquillette <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/11/2/harvard-law-seal-change/">told the Harvard Crimson in 2015 </a>he didn't think the school should change the seal."As a historian ... you just deal with the fact that this guy founded the school and tell the truth about it," he told the Crimson. "To change things is to act like [they] didn't happen, and that's a mistake."

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Historian Annette Gordon-Reed on Juneteenth: 'It has been just amazing to see the holiday happen'

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How one of the worst US presidents in history alienated Congress to the point that he was impeached

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Harvard Law School finally removed the seal of a 'brutal slave owner' - but not everyone agrees with the decision

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