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From
the March/April 2003 issue of The Horn Book Magazine Letters to the Editor After reading Russell Freedman’s comments (“An Interview with Russell Freedman”, November/December 2002 Horn Book) in regard to Abraham Lincoln, I was reminded of Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous quote that “history is a set of lies agreed upon.” In the interview with Roger Sutton, Freedman stated, “By today’s standards, Abraham Lincoln might [my italics] be called a racist. He supported a plan to colonize African Americans outside the country.” I found Freedman’s statement troubling for several reasons. First of all, I would argue that Abraham Lincoln was a racist by any standard just as I would argue that John Brown (a man of his times who lived during Lincoln’s era) was an anti-racist by any standard. Why should time change the scale of values? In all honesty, I don’t believe that there is much difference between the Abraham Lincoln of the nineteenth century and ultraconservative Republicans of the twenty-first century in terms of the policies they support and the effects of those policies on African Americans and other people of color. The second thing that I found troubling was the fact that Freedman’s statement proved he was indeed well aware that Lincoln worked feverishly for many years to deport blacks, yet he failed to mention this fact (among many others) in his 100-plus-page photobiography of Abraham Lincoln. For example, in his book Freedman writes, “Most Yankee states had enacted strict ’black laws.’ In Illinois, Lincoln’s home state, blacks paid taxes but could not vote, hold political office, serve on juries, testify in court, or attend schools,” but Freedman neglected to mention that Abraham Lincoln supported the Illinois Black Laws as well as the notorious Fugitive Slave Act. Freedman also writes that Lincoln was considered by his friends to be the “riskiest of storytellers,” yet Freedman failed to mention Lincoln’s love for “darky jokes” and his habitual use of the “n-word” in public and in private. Freedman also writes that Abraham Lincoln enjoyed the theater and opera, but again he failed to mention the fact that he also enjoyed blackface minstrel shows. The failure of Freedman to mention facts such as these indicates that feminist scholar Adrienne Rich is correct in saying, “Lying is done with words, and also with silence.” Freedman stated that he didn’t think it was fair to “use our standards and values to judge what someone did long ago,” although he thinks “it’s fair to interpret.” But I don’t believe people can accurately interpret a person or an event when presented with only half-truths. Freedman is certainly entitled to his personal opinions and interpretations about Abraham Lincoln, but as a nonfiction or “factual” author (as he prefers to be called) whose books are read by thousands of children and adults, doesn’t he have a responsibility to present a well-balanced selection of facts, even if some of them are unpleasant? In the meantime, I would like to see Freedman write a book about John Brown or William Lloyd Garrison, men of their times who challenged the social order status quo, no matter what the costs. In my opinion, it is people such as these who are the real emancipators and heroes. Jonda C. McNair Editors’ note: Russell Freedman will respond in the May/June 2003 issue.
I’m not sure which facts I don’t have straight (“Letter” from Elizabeth Law, January/February 2003 Horn Book). Stated on page 15 of the Pearson Corporation’s (Viking’s parent company) 2001 Security and Exchange Commission Form 20-F is “the Penguin Group earns over 90% of its revenues from the sale of hardcover and paperback books. The balance comes from audio books and from the sale and licensing of intellectual property rights, such as the Beatrix Potter series of fictional characters.” According to Pearson’s 2002 Annual Report, page 28, the Penguin Group in 2001 had sales of $1,197,000,000 and profits of $117,000,000. Using a much more conservative number than Pearson, say five percent, would suggest that licensing accounts for about sixty million dollars of revenue. Given there’s not a lot of overhead associated with selling licenses, the profit margin on that sixty million dollars must be very attractive. I’ve reread my article several times. I can’t find where I said children read “more and better books” in the halcyon days of the 1960s and 1970s. I did say business was different in the sixties and seventies. I did say publishers continue to publish outstanding new literature each year. The point, as Law states, is visibility. How do you find the good literature among the six thousand or so new children’s books published each year? And surely you are not suggesting that a good review in The Horn Book has little influence on what books librarians choose to promote? Interestingly, The Horn Book reviews about half the number of books that it did in the late sixties, even though there are now between two and three times as many. Are standards at The Horn Book higher now? Or are there just not as many high-quality books? Yes, books with media tie-ins have always been among the most popular. But what is different now is the degree of cross-promoting. In 1969 you had the movie and the novelization of The Parent Trap. Today — for, say, Madeline — you have the books, a movie, videos, and a line of toys, dolls, outfits, and accessories that approach the Barbie-esque. In such a highly commercialized environment, the relationship children have now with Madeline is different from the relationship children had in 1969 with The Parent Trap. Today’s reader of Madeline is a consumer, and a corporate ethic that has infiltrated book publishing is culpable for this. By the way, as a young adolescent in the sixties, I thought Hayley Mills was pretty hot. Daniel Hade |
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