Quotes from Annette Gordon-Reed

Love does not require taking an uncritical stance toward the object of one's affections. In truth, it often requires the opposite. We can't be of real service to the hopes we have for places—and people, ourselves included—without a clear-eyed assessment of their (and our) strengths and weaknesses.

Laws are sometimes put on the books not for purposes of strict enforcement but as statements about the community's values.

American slavery at its beginnings—obscure, distant, and tragic—is probably for most people a less attractive point of focus than the story of the discovery and political founding of the American nation. If you like your history heroic—and many people seem to—the story of slavery in the early American period is simply not the place to go looking for heroes, at least not among the people most commonly written about. Second

why "Six Flags." The six flags refer to the six flags of the countries that flew over Texas in history: Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, and the Confederate States of America. I have no idea if it's the same way now, but the original park had sections that depicted Texas's time under each particular flag, a conceit that would make less sense as the franchise expanded to places outside of Texas that had no similar multinational history.

American slavery at its beginnings—obscure, distant, and tragic—is probably for most people a less attractive point of focus than the story of the discovery and political founding of the American nation. If you like your history heroic—and many people seem to—the story of slavery in the early American period is simply not the place to go looking for heroes, at least not among the

History is always being revised, as new information, comes to light and when different people see known documents and have their own responses to them, shaped by their individual experiences.

The law might say I could go to a school or into a store. But it could not ensure that I would be welcome when I came to these places.

Because slavery in the United States was racially based, it was easy to graft the legally imposed incapacities of slavery onto Black people as a group, making incapacity an inherent feature of the race.

worshiping heroism, as typically defined, works against the idea that the lives of more common people count and hold lessons for us as well.

Land taken from Native peoples in Texas was then cleared by enslaved people, who were then put to work planting, tending, and harvesting crops.

White supremacy does not demand deep conviction. Ruthless self-interest, not sincere belief, is the signature feature of the doctrine. It finds its greatest expression, and most devastating effect, in the determination to state, live by, and act on the basis of ideas one knows are untrue when doing so will yield important benefits and privileges that one does not care to relinquish.

People want the individuals from the past they admire to be "right" on the question of race—no matter how wrong they actually were—so that admiring such people poses no problem. The difficulty is that not many European-Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were what we would consider to be "right" on the question of race, which, at a minimum, requires believing in the equal humanity of African Americans.

I don't adhere to the idea that you don't make moral judgments. I think history is a moral profession. We don't just look back and say, oh, and here is how they slaughtered the innocents, and go move on.

Origin stories matter, for individuals, groups of people, and for nations. They inform our sense of self; telling us what kind of people we believe we are, what kind of nation we believe in. They usually carry, at least, a hope that where we started might hold the key to where we are in the present. We can say, then, that much of the concern with origin stories is about our current needs and desires (usually to feel good about ourselves), not actual history.

Empowered Black people made the intangible benefits derived from Whiteness less valuable.

The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually," he told Bellini, that every man in Europe "must be either the hammer or the anvil.

Adams and Jefferson exchanged a series of letters comparing the virtues of the French character to the dour and gloomy English: the French "have as much happiness in one year as an Englishman in ten

We would consider the nearly twelve-year-old a child. By the standards of Elizabeth's day, twelve marked the beginning of the end of childhood for most females, but particularly for female slaves whose status as property made the designation "child" short-lived.

Love does not require taking an uncritical stance toward the object of one's affections.

when I hear people say "Six Flags," my mind fills in "Over Texas" and I have to resist the temptation to explain why "Six Flags." The six flags refer to the six flags of the countries that flew over Texas in history: Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, and the Confederate States of America.

I get the distinct impression that the prominence of Parker's husband and son shaped the presentation of how she ended up as part of the Comanche community in the first place. Parker's life is judged by the men to whom she was attached: a powerful and important husband and a powerful and important son. That she was kidnapped is fine because she married well.

Of great importance, as I have said in another context, the image of Texas has a gender and a race: "Texas is a White man.

Founder's Chic: Our Reverence for the Founding Fathers Has Gotten out of Hand, Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2003.

History is not just about the things we like or the people we want to love and admire—a fantasy date with our favorite dead person.