Fred Hord, professor and chair of Africana studies at Knox College, visited campus to give his speech, “Knowing Him by Heart: African-American Makings of Abraham Lincoln,” to a packed room Tuesday evening in Westlake Hall.
The event was a part of the Armstrong lecture series, which is sponsored by the history department. Hord contacted the African-American studies program during the summer of 2017, looking to build connections with other departments.
“Dr. Hord was invited by my colleague Rob Hawkins, who’s also director of the African-American studies program,” chair of the history department, Brad Brown, said. “So, tonight’s lecture is actually kind of a combination of contributions from the Armstrong lecture series as well as African-American studies. It had been a long-standing desire on both of their parts to invite him over to give a talk, so finally it worked out this year.”
During his talk, Hord discussed Abraham Lincoln’s status as an icon and how it’s important to demystify the past president. Hord revealed that although Lincoln grew during his presidency, he made racist jokes and said black people were not his equals.
“In particular, since we’re sitting in Illinois which likes to present itself as the home of Abraham Lincoln and he had, as we all saw tonight, ways in which we need to maybe take Lincoln down off the pedestal, examine him more responsibly as a full historical actor who had flaws and positive qualities and everything in between,” said Rob Hawkins, associate professor in department of history and director of the African-American Studies program.
Hawkins believes Lincoln serves as an example as to how all historical figures should be examined.
“[We should] take them not as they are presented to us, but also to take that same sort of ethic to looking around us to things we take for granted or choose not to investigate every day,” Hawkins said.
Hord also introduced the idea of a “horrible gift of freedom,” which examines how saying that freedom is a gift means that whites are surrogates to blacks. He told audience members that there is no such thing as a neutral position on today’s issues, so having no position is a position.
“Students feel like they don’t have a chance against the administration or whoever’s responsible for the problems. It’s easier to just walk away from it, but then you leave everything in tact,” Hord said. “I would start with what’s within reach. If you’ve got five or six students for whom you have respect who have a common issue here at Bradley that they think really ought to be addressed, then I think bring them together.”
At the end of his talk, Hord said that he expects big things from students because that’s who will be here for the next fifty or sixty years. He saved time at the end for students to ask questions about his speech and activism.
“He seemed very passionate about what the people of today feel and it was really nice to see that because lots of people tend to put younger people on the sidelines and don’t really respect their opinions,” Rachel Masloske, junior television arts major, said. “But it was really nice to see how he respected the opinions and really wanted to know what the students thought about the entire lecture.”
[…] professor and chair of Africana Studies, gave the talk “Knowing Him By Heart: African American Makings of Abraham Lincoln.” The event was a part of the Armstrong lecture series at Bradley […]