PREFACE

This book is an expanded version of the Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities that I was privileged to deliver to the Library of Congress in March 2002. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the National Endowment for the Humanities, its past chairman William R. Ferris, its current chairman, Bruce Cole, and the National Council on the Humanities for choosing me to deliver the Jefferson Lecture on the thirtieth anniversary of the series.

The Jefferson Lectures began in 1972 with Lionel Trilling’s address on “Mind in the Modern World.” As hard as it is to believe, the Jefferson Lectures are more than a tenth as old as the nation they serve. I am honored to occupy a line of succession that includes Saul Bellow, Walker Percy, Toni Morrison, John Hope Franklin, and so many other luminaries.

It is humbling to receive what has been called the highest intellectual honor bestowed by the U.S. government. I feel especially humbled and appreciative because I interpret this honor as a statement about my field, African-American studies, which arrived in the academy only three decades ago.

I am especially proud to be a fellow country-man of Jefferson’s in several senses. As a citizen, like all of you, of the republic of letters. As an American who believes deeply in the soaring promise of the Declaration of Independence. As a native of Piedmont, West Virginia, and, hence, in a broad sense, a fellow Virginian.

Who knows? Judging from all the DNA disclosures of the last few years, I may even be related to him. For all of us, white and black alike, Jefferson remains an essential ancestor.

John F. Kennedy once famously addressed a group of distinguished intellectuals by saying they were the greatest gathering of brilliant thinkers to visit the White House since Jefferson dined alone. It’s a great line—but I don’t think Jefferson ever did dine alone. Even when no one was at the table with him, someone was cooking for him, someone was bringing him his food, and somebody was busy planning his next meal. And the chances are good that some of those people were African Americans. And it is Jefferson’s role in the shaping of black literary and political discourse that is the subject of this book.

I hope that readers will accept my challenge to recuperate Phillis Wheatley, the first African poet in English, from the long shadow of Jefferson’s misgivings about her gifts.

 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Cambridge, MA February 19, 2003