Which Lewis was willing to do again and again and again. Tell us the worst and were there. The Washington National Cathedral announced on March 10, 2021, that they had chosen Jon Meacham as its first canon historian, a role that is part of a cathedral initiative that will turn part of a long-empty building into the new College of both Faith and Culture. The couple has kept most of their information out of media besides some of it. He is currently living a blissful married life. This shift found its fullest expression in what became the most important sentence in the English language: We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. I think that sentence has changed more lives around the world than any other. Coziness begets predictability and boredom. As for the New York Times, Jon has been part of the team, writing some of Joe Bidens speeches for the 2020 United States presidential election, such as Bidens acceptance speech. He issued the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. For Lewis, Meacham writes, a Christian life meant standing up to injustice, and racial integration was a means of bringing the world into closer tune with the Gospel. There is a subtext. But is that partisanship reflexive or can it be reflective? The Union soldiers stood with him, and the military tide turned. Jon Meacham, the best-selling author of a number of biographies as well as The Soul of America, a celebration of American democratic values, opens His Truth Is Marching On in a hagiographic vein. If we cant change and evolve as citizens and leaders, then we are undoing the American Revolution. (He was to be known to history as "Virginia John" Lincoln.) He grew up in Chattanooga, Tenn., about 1,000 yards from the Confederate headquarters on Missionary Ridge, site of a Union victory on Nov. 25, 1863. We came through that not least because JFK had the guts to ask for help, Meacham said. Its about openness to changing circumstances and data. If were not curious about the great forces shaping the world, we fall apart, Meacham said. From the creators of the 2021 Webby Award-Winning Best Podcast Series, It Was Said, and Hope Through History, C13Originals and the Pulitzer-Prize Winning Best-Selling Author, Jon Meacham, join together again for a brand new series that will guide listeners through critical moments in our history. We have to listen and admit occasionally that the other side has a pointthat is America at its best., The third quality is empathy, which includes both acts of mercy and of self-interest. [15][16] From May 2010 to April 2011, Meacham was co-host with Alison Stewart of Need to Know on PBS. Menu. But he didn't know that. In 2004, a media columnist called Meacham "the oldest 34-year-old journalist in the world," a superlative intended to convey "stature, not advancing age.". In 1716, Hannah Lincoln gave birth to John Lincoln, who continued the family's migration south and west when he and his wife, Rebecca Flowers Lincoln, settled on a large farm on Linville Creek in the Shenandoah Valley in 1766. The Anti-Defamation League awarded Meacham its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Prize. On how Lincoln approached the summer of 1864: He believed that slavery was wrong. Because the constitutional order has not been in as perilous a state since Lincoln himself became president, he explained. The Constitution is fundamentally a Calvinistic document its theological and assumes our sinfulness and that we will do the wrong thing far more often than the right thing. It was real.. -American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House Nov 4, 2008 [4] Follow Jon Meacham. He holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University. At 21 he participated in the Freedom Rides, was assaulted by a mob and spent a month at Parchman Farm, the notorious Mississippi prison William Faulkner called destination doom. At 23, Lewis was elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and became the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. Now, he has a new philosophy on life. Mainly because its easier to take on a certain set of facts and a certain view and stick with it., The greatest leaders have changed their minds: Lincoln about emancipation, FDR about intervention, JFK about nuclear war, and Reagan about the Soviet Union. Therefore, Jon earns his salary as a writer, reviewer, historian, and presidential biographer. Spanning the period from 1941 to 1998, the book involves writings of noted civil-rights leaders, novelists, and journalists, like John Lewis, James Baldwin, William Faulkner, and David Halberstam. Transcript. His PhD took 53 years. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Spanning the period from 1941 to 1998, the book includes writings of noted civil-rights leaders, novelists, and journalists, like John Lewis, James Baldwin, William Faulkner, and David Halberstam. To overcome these forces, Meacham says, we must recover the true original intent of Americas founders. His Truth Is Marching On is well worth reading, especially for readers with an abiding interest in the intersection of religion and progressive politics, but it's not the comprehensive portrait of the American hero for which many might be hoping. 4/12/2023 | 7 PM ET: New York, NY 92nd Street Y In conversation with David Rubenstein Website . 2016: The Sandra Day OConnor Institute's Spirit of Democracy Award. Sound familiar? Yes, it is. To answer this question, Jon Meacham quoted two statistics: Only 17 percent of Americans trust the government (down from 77 percent in 1955), and average household income is $58,000, some $70,000 less than what a family of four needs for a middle-class life. Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Destiny and Power, American Lion, and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. And fortunately, it was rewarded by events. This interview was conducted by Steve Inskeep, produced by Lilly Quiroz and edited by Jacob Conrad. It's all going to work out. He is also a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor to Time magazine, as well as a former editor-in-chief of Newsweek. Eisenhower told him to make important decisions with all his advisers in the room. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2009, the book was cited as an unlikely portrait of a not always admirable democrat, but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life.His otherNew York Timesbestsellers includeThomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, exploring the relationship between the two great leaders who piloted the free world to victory in World War II, andAmerican Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. Besides, there is no information about his siblings and some childhood info. Early on, Lewis aspired to be a minister; as a child, he preached to a captive audience of the familys chickens. In the 1960s, for the first time in United States history, young people stood at the cutting edge of American radicalism. who had it sewn into the rug in the Oval Office, involved in a PAC that donated to a Republican senator who had been a guest on the show, gave an interview to Anderson Cooper in that latter capacity, to rival the corruption of the Fox News-White House relationship. "He was under immense political pressure to say, 'We'll settle all that in due course,'" Meacham explains. Jon Meacham Is A Member Of . And that may sound simplistic, but I firmly believe and I argue this, that that was Lincoln's moral vision. In the Hands of the People. Affiliate Program Disclosure. Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt University and the Vanderbilt logos are trademarks of The Vanderbilt University. A politician is up for reelection, holding firm to their moral convictions however politically unpopular in the pursuit of preserving an endangered democracy. harassment, SNCC did not long outlive the 1960s. She taught in Metz, France under a Fulbright Scholarship. begins to fall apart without an empathetic understanding of each other. Meacham described how President George H.W. Born in 1940, Lewis was one of 10 children of parents who owned a farm in Jim Crow Alabama, a world where lynchings were not uncommon, judges flagrantly violated the Constitution and police officers openly conspired with Klansmen. This article was published more than2 years ago. In what was supposed to have been a defense, then-ABC News President Roone Arledge said viewers werent hoodwinked because Will was a ''known partisan.'' Meachams biography of President Bush was named one of the ten best books of the year byThe Washington Postand one of the best books of the year byThe New York Times Book Review,Time, National Public Radio, and theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch. I do not believe we're going to see the massing of great armies in the way we did in the 19th century. Born in Chattanooga in 1969, Meacham was educated at St. Nicholas School, The McCallie School, and graduated from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with a degreesumma cum laudein English Literature; he was salutatorian and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Privacy Policy. Meacham has also been awarded honorary doctorates from several universities: As of 2014[update], Meacham resides in Belle Meade, Tennessee. Journalists. Taurus Journalist #43. Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Top 250 TV Shows Most Popular TV Shows Most Popular Video Games Most Popular Music Videos Most Popular Podcasts. Meacham also credited Biden for a moment in his speech when he cited all the firsts in Kamala Harriss ascent first woman, African American woman and South Asian woman to be elected vice president. It's a remarkable thing for an American president to say. He described the American Revolution as the most important shift in Western thought since Constantine converted to Christianity: recognizing that we were born with the capacity and reason to determine our own destinies. A new biography by historian Jon Meacham examines the oft-discussed life and legacy of former President Abraham Lincoln through a very specific lens. One time Pulitzer Prize for Biography winning, Jon Ellis Meacham is a multitalented, American author, as well as a journalist. Over at CNN, contributor Jen Psaki, a prominent communications aide in the Obama administration, just vacated the payroll after she signed up as an adviser with the Biden-Harris transition team. ( married,single, in relation or divorce): How many children does jon meacham have ? Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates, People doubt her as a female roofer: Were proving them wrong every day, She rescues baby squirrels: Theyre quite destructive. And that's why I think it's so important to follow that Lincoln example of a humble recognition that no human being has a monopoly on truth, but that there is a moral intuition, there is a conscience and you want to do everything you can to be in accord with this universal law of treating others as you would be treated. Jon Meacham. Meachams latest book, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, published in August 2020. Meacham was also honored with the 2015 Nashville Public Library Literary Award; other winners include John Lewis, Robert K. Massie, Margaret Atwood, John McPhee, Billy Collins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Irving, Ann Patchett, John Updike, David McCullough, and David Halberstam. Ultimately, we would get the 13th Amendment a few months later, but he was willing to go down politically for that principle. Unfortunately, apart from a brief afterword by Lewis himself, His Truth Is Marching On ends in 1968 with Kennedys assassination. Accessibility information. You have to believe it. Meacham threw in one more quality: candor, or openness about the scope and cost of great enterprises. His parents are Jere Ellis Meacham (1946-2008), a construction and labor-relations executive who was decorated for valor during the Vietnam War, [2] and Linda (McBrayer) Brodie. Lincolns shadow hovered over Meachams childhood, long before he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer. 53 Year Old Journalist #15. Distinguished visiting professor of history at, This page was last edited on 25 January 2023, at 08:58. 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