Jefferson's Pillow: A Black Patriot Confronts the Myths of the Founding Fathers (Hardcover)

by Roger Wilkins (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This astonishing book by the 1980s antiapartheid leader Wilkins (a professor of history at George Mason University and Pulitzer Prize-winner) provides a brief, but tremendously incisive demythologizing of four Virginian founders Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Mason (whose stature Wilkins justly elevates) and their conflicted attitudes toward race, in the process humanizing them and deepening our appreciation of the internal struggles involved in achieving their greatness, however flawed or incomplete. (There's nothing forced in this evaluation, as Wilkins acknowledges their enormous contribution to activists such as himself today.) Where others routinely excuse past figures or judge them by present standards, Wilkins exemplifies a subtler, sounder approach. Reaching back to England and Virginia in the 1600s, he briskly illuminates the historical, ideological and socioeconomic contexts that made a burning concern for freedom not just compatible with slavery, but materially and psychologically dependent on it. Surprising connections prove particularly revealing, as when Wilkins describes two English-educated second-generation Virginia aristocrats as suffering "something akin to the problems encountered by the bright barrio or ghetto youngster who is selected and groomed and sent to Harvard and then tries to return to his or her roots." He gets inside the "addictive" naturalness of privilege that slaveowners enjoyed via his own draft-deferred student experience during the Korean War, but without forgetting his ancestors' suffering as slaves. Indeed, reflections on his family history ground Wilkinsand allow him to develop enormous sympathy for and insight into his subjects without losing balance or excusing the inexcusable. His insight recalls James Baldwin, arguably the best we've ever had for appreciating the humanity of even the most flawed among us without yielding an inch of moral principle.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Wilkins brings the credentials of a history professor and longtime civil rights activist to this exploration of the reality of slavery and black patriotism in the founding of the nation famous for its notions of freedom. In the lives of George Mason, James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, Wilkins finds the essential ingredients of the ideals and standards on which the U.S. was built. He avoids the easy and predictable critique of these men in the contradiction of their ideals and their tolerance for the institution of slavery. Instead, he humanizes them, exploring the dominant influence of their class and status on their ideals and the influence of the material privileges they enjoyed as a result of slavery. Wilkins explores slavery within the context of the times but doesn't moderate the impetus for the current struggle that has resulted from the incapacity of these men to recognize their moral contradictions. This is an important look at the essential and ongoing contradictions at the heart of American ideals of liberty and patriotism. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 163 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; Fourth Printing edition (July 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807009563
• ISBN-13: 978-0807009567
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #218,139 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Four Virginian founders, their influences and their legacy, August 8, 2001

By A Customer

In an age when Americans either lionize the founders and perform idolatry on them (see David McCullough) or disparage these men as hopelessly racist and dysfunctional, Wilkins performs another great service for his fellow Americans- he sees these men clearly for what they were and still are. Studying four Virginians (Jefferson, Mason, Madison and Washington), Wilkins looks at their writings and their culture and draws out their views on freedom and slavery. Comparing these views with their acts toward black Americans and the culture of 18th century slave-holding Virginia, he sees this quartet as both shaping and shaped by the world in which they live. They are Americans after all, with all the complexity and idealism that comes with being a thoughtful American. Of the four, Jefferson perhaps gets knocked around the most, but then he deserves such treatment more than his fellows. But Wilkins is not interested in scoring points against these men; rather, he seeks to understand why such educated and thoughtful men could build a nation with a great and wicked contradiction at its heart- the existence of slavery in a land devoted, on its face, to freedom. As usual, Wilkins does not remain in the 18th century but draws parallels to our own day. His subjects remain models for liberals (in the eighteenth century meaning of the word) all around the world today, fighting for basic human liberties in both awful and wealthy places. Americans cannot help but be products of these men on some level, for all that we think of as American has in part been passed down through the hands and minds of these men. To understand his four Virginians is to begin to understand our own times, in both its marvelous ideals and its unfulfilled promises.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New View of Patriotism, September 1, 2001

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

No one doubts that the Founding Fathers, during the American Revolution, and the Constitutional Convention which followed it, produced a remarkable government to institute remarkable ideals of freedom and citizenship. They also did little to abolish the antithesis of freedom and citizenship, slavery. How can black people be patriots if this is so, and how are they to regard their portion of the American heritage? "Can I embrace the founders who may have `owned' some of my ancestors?" This is the backbone question of _Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism_ (Beacon) by Roger Wilkins. Wilkins has been an Attorney General, won a Pulitzer for his Watergate coverage, and has worked for the cause of civil rights within America and within Africa over several decades. He feels himself to be deeply American and deeply patriotic, and his book provides a guide to why there is no paradox to such feelings. It represents a new and useful way of looking at the founding of the country for both blacks and whites.

The title of the book comes from Jefferson's first memory: being carried on a pillow by a slave riding on horseback. Wilkins accepts that such privileges of culture did shape the ideas of Jefferson, Madison, Mason, and Washington, but he looks at the role of slavery as something not contradictory to their efforts for freedom but as essential to those efforts. "The fact is that without black Americans, including the 40 percent of Virginians who were black, the America that General Washington led into revolution in 1775 would have been a vastly different place - a poorer and weaker place, much less capable of waging a successful revolt. And Mason, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison might themselves have been poorer, better, less conflicted, and more honest. I would argue that they might also have been less learned, less strategically astute, and less politically wise. Blacks and their works were present in the Revolution as essential elements both of its strengths and of the Virginians' greatness." Slaves at Monticello and Mount Vernon, in this view, worked in their own way as partners in the birth of the new nation, and toward eventual extension of its principles even to their descendents.

In a wise book, Wilkins is forgiving of the addiction to privilege. He has capably blended national history, family history, and personal philosophy. He realizes that the Virginia aristocrats about whom he writes are really not to blame for accepting the privilege they had as simply being the natural way of the world. He has felt the same way, for instance, not questioning his privilege of student draft deferment during the Korean War, nor his commuting to work in a "powerful European sedan." He admits he has his moral challenges and his addictions, perhaps not on the moral level of slavery, but present and accepted nonetheless. "To be human is to live with moral complexity and existential ambiguity. I don't need for this nation to be perfect in order for me to love it; I love it because it is home, and because all of the touchstones of my life are here... Whereas some people view America primarily as a place of economic opportunity, I see it as having afforded me the chance to make something of myself by exerting relentless energy in the effort to hold up my end." As a useful primer on patriotism for us all, _Jefferson's Pillow_ represents energy well spent in meditation upon our conflicted founding.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Waking from the Dream, July 17, 2001

By	Nicholas Powers (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

Can we believe in America? The question reverbrates through the lives of many of us. Historian and civil rights activist Roger Wilkins answers with this book. It is a powerful, passionate and eloquent summary of Colonial Era race relations. Our Founding Fathers, indeed everyone in the book, is portrayed as tragically human with all the hope and horror and truimph that we are capable of.

A keen psychological sense of motives and an empathic ear create a reading experience rarely had. Prejudiced readers, both white and black, will not be comforted by this book. The easy view of villians and victims that often corrupts our history into vulgar national mythology is not found here. In its place is a nuanced story interweaving ideology, military and political history, profiles of key players and refreshing personal reflections.

If anything, it is Wilkin's experience as African-American man that propels his prose into the past to find an answer to the troubling question of loyalty. It is a question coiled around the heart of many people of color that with every new racial crisis, squeezes tighter.

Using the telling details of a master historian, Wilkins points to the origins of racism in America through the words of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson, said his first memory was of being carried on a pillow by a slave riding horseback. At his death, the writer of the Declaration of Indepedence owned over a hundred human beings. He was not alone as many of our nation's Founding Fathers lived a life cushioned by slavery.

Unstitching that pillow is Wilkins, rousing his readers from sleep by asking difficult questions. How can an African-American be a patriot to a nation that doubted her or his humanity? How could the Founding Fathers wax eloquent of freedom as a human right when they owned slaves? Can we believe in America?

His answer is a terrifying and beautifal yes. He writes toward the end, "I have made speeches that reeked of hopelessness. People who have heard me in that mood sometimes ask how I manage to keep going. My answer is that my ancestors lift me up when I am low. Some of them never drew a free breath, and others very few of them. I try to live as if I am going to have meet them someday and answer the question "Boy, how did you use your freedom?"

He answers the question of how can we believe in America with the deeper one of what did I do with my freedom? We have the freedom to create the America we want. We have this privelege because many struggled and died for it. Wilkin's book reminds us that the blood of that sacrifice came from everyone's ancestors and it has run together. It is a book of human decency and power, have the courage to read it.