Ken Burns: E pluribus unum = DEI

George Washington was a deeply flawed man and became a warlord because enslaved people afforded him cannon, muskets, powder and ball even as he excluded Black soldiers from his militia.

Filmmaker Ken Burns appeared with Fresh Air's Terry Gross in a live interview where he shared his perspective on the six-part, twelve hour PBS documentary series, The American Revolution and called that particular (un)civil war the most consequential in human history. They talked about how Washington and Benjamin Franklin simply seized tens of thousands of acres from the Indigenous population and why women, Native Americans, enslaved and free Negro people were excluded from the declaration that "all men are created equal." 

Burns also said he lost millions of dollars to produce future documentaries after the Orange Julius cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasing. During the interview he called diversity, equity and inclusion the same thing as E pluribus unum (out of many, one) and that he would be denied by the Trump Organization to even talk about the series anywhere on properties held by the federal government. 

An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. [PBS]

In another public radio broadcast Christopher Cox talked about Sacagawea and the Hidatsa telling following his New York Times Magazine story.