And then, the second part of your question.

No, I had never given any thought ever to portraying George Washington.

I had seen probably the few movies were made for TV movies that they had made.

Welcome to talk with history.

I am your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jenn.

Hello.

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired, both travels,

YouTube channel journey, and examine history through deeper conversations

with the curious, the explorers, and the history lovers out there.

Now, Jenn, this is our hundredth episode.

We've been doing this for a couple of years now, and we have a very

special guest joining us today.

So we.

Really have a guest who needs no introduction, but I'm

going to give him one anyways.

He originated the iconic role of George Washington in the groundbreaking

musical phenomenon, Hamilton, his powerful vocals and nuanced performance

captivated audiences worldwide.

And his portrayal of the first president sparked important

conversations about history.

From there, he only picked up steam, continuing on his career on the

silver screen of television and I'm making his career very, very

short, but most importantly, the most important thing about our guest

is he has a passion for history.

So welcome, Mr.

Christopher Jackson.

Thank you so much for joining us on talk with history tonight.

Thank you for having me.

Happy 100th.

Thank you so much.

this

What a, milestone.

a, this is a great milestone for us.

Especially kind of bootstrapping a podcast in our living room whenever we can.

So thank you so much for joining us and, we're really happy to have you.

just so people know kind of how we got connected with, with you we'll

kind of tell our audience Hey, how the heck did you guys get connected

with, with Christopher Jackson?

Yeah,

it was honestly, Chris, it was amazing experience for me.

I am even wearing my history has its eyes on you t shirt.

I love

was driving back from a friend's house in Uniontown, Pennsylvania,

and I was driving past Fort Necessity, which if you know the

song, history has its eyes on you.

George Washington is talking, I'm, I'm younger than you are

now given my first command.

So I stopped there and I just did those lines real quick.

And I talked about what George Washington is talking about learning

in that moment and how lucky he is to learn because he didn't get killed.

And he didn't lose his command, which were two things that

probably should have happened.

And so he, he's talking about how lucky he got in that moment and how he's

trying to teach that to Hamilton, that you don't always get to learn from your

mistakes, but if you do like really bring it, take it on and, and, and change,

people's lives for the, what you learn.

And you had reached out, you saw that reel and you said you never

got a chance to visit it before.

You.

Took the role, but then you and then you said you were a fan of

mine, and I almost lost my mind

Sure.

I mean, you guys, I mean, it's so cool.

I grew up in Southern Illinois, so being, that's, I grew up

in, I was born in Metropolis, Illinois, inside of Fort Massac.

So, when I was, When I was young, they had they had two pair of Buffalo, like

actual Buffalo that they had in a small pen that you could drive down and just

park and watch the Buffalo sort of graze in a, in a, in a paddock, if you

could call it, that was so small, but Fort Massach and in, and then later

I moved to Cairo, which was, Which is at the southernmost point of Illinois.

So there's a lot of history baked into and into that area,

especially around the civil war.

And so for, for me, it was just always so intriguing to know that, General

Grant stated Magnolia manor, the cupola, because there was no other tall buildings,

he could see the confluence of the rivers and blah, blah, like it was just

always that's, that's where I learned.

I got into the arts because I think of my interest and passion for history.

It was just.

Always.

So the humanity of it was always the most

Oh, of

course.

And so, so watching you walk through Fort necessity and it looked

very much like a Fort Massac or Fort Defiance, like all of these sort of, you

could still see the, the, the, the dirt from the readouts, but it was, it was nice

to know it was really cool to know that.

Real people built those things and a hundred and some ideas later, they're

still here and there was significant.

And why were there significant?

And then, then you dig and then it's, it's, you walk through

just like what you're doing.

And I think that's

Yeah That was like that's the whole importance of the channel is

to take you to the location Like walk you through history Like I wanted you

to see what it was like and to stand in the footsteps of those history

makers Like what were they seeing?

What were they thinking?

So when you were first approached to plage George, Washington

Washington what was your reaction?

What did you know about him?

And how did you feel about portraying that person in history?

Honestly I found out.

About the project that Lynn was doing.

I, I want to say somewhere like in 2011 ish or 2010, excuse me, we were

still doing in the Heights on Broadway.

And so the first, the first, I've told the story the first time I heard

anything about it, Lynn had come back for vacation and he had talked to Tommy

and, and he bought this biography, which, there's a picture of him in a

hammock or a floaty in a pool somewhere in the Caribbean where he was reading

this book and he was really intrigued.

And, when we started Heights Tommy and Lynn and I were all reading a

team of rivals at the same time.

It's just sort of, Tommy was like, read this.

And I was like, Oh yeah.

And it was of course a page turner

for those of you that have read it.

and w it was fantastic.

And we all just we love a good read.

We're always intrigued.

But the fact that he found, this idea for a show he, we were actually on stage

and performance when he told me about it, like it was in the middle of the

show, in the first act of in the Heights.

Well, so the inside of Broadway, right?

You you have moments when you're upstage and there's at that time, there's a

number that's going on in front of us, but we're sort of like in character,

but we're up in, kind of in the dark and that's when we, would catch up on the

day or whatever, tell a joke, whatever.

But we had, we had three and a half minutes to just talk and

it, it built into the show.

nobody knew what we're talking about.

And, the famous, the, the, the sort of the notable thing is he, he looks at me,

we're Right before we're about to go out into the, like the big first act number.

And he's I think I got my next thing.

And I'm like, what?

He's yeah, it's something about the treasury.

Say it's a hip hop concept album about the treasury secretary.

And then off we went I mean, it was literally that quick.

I didn't think anything of it.

I don't know how much time passed between that moment and the next conversation

we had about it, but at some point Tommy Kail approaches me, I'm on stage

doing my warm up before the show.

And he's coming across the stage, Tommy Kail, our director, and

he said, Hey, what's up G dubs.

And I'm like, what?

you just

threw it out there.

What?

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, and they had

the idea, these are my

best

Sure.

So you

the shorthand the shorthand is real, but he was like,

Hey, I didn't audition for it.

That was the purpose was to have me do.

The role.

So that's the first time that I kind of like it started to cook for me.

And then, the second part of your question.

No, I had never given any thought ever to portraying George Washington.

I had seen probably the few movies were made for TV movies that they had made.

And, and sort of, it's, it was always sort of a version of of these, these very lofty

upstanding men who were just sort of like a, a step away from, from the statues.

The marble busts or the portraits and the whole idea behind the casting of of

Hamilton was to to change them enough that that folks would see them in a in a human

way and that we as actors would be able to portray them in a very human way and

and the given circumstances that we were.

Given in the script and in the score would, would then

motivate us to move through.

And then everything that I based Washington on was really based on

just the, what I knew and what I was able to research respectfully about

what is it that stands a soldier up?

What are the things that are important to, to a soldier?

And, and, and then one step beyond that, an officer, Washington

certainly did not come by.

By merit in the way that we understand it, right?

He came, but there were a lot of different things that contributed

to him taking that, that command.

But we were the same age when he assumed command of, of the army

outside of Boston and our show opened and I became George Washington.

So I, I, I tried to figure out the things that we, that we did have in common.

He had a lot of, a lot, most of much of his life was defined

by loss in his early life.

His father was gone, his older brother died, and his best friend

all died by the time he was 16.

And that defined much of what, and the rest of it was aspirational.

Who's more aspirational

than an actor?

that's true.

My father was not a, was not a presence in my life, but I

was fortunate to have really strong and wonderful mentors that, that came

through and kicked me when I needed it, and lifted me up when I needed it.

Gave me guidance and the rest of it.

I just kind of figured out on my own at, 18 in New York studying acting.

So it was the confluence of, of, understanding what leadership meant,

what and, and what appearances.

Mean,

right?

And then incorporating

No, Chris, what I love about that is George Washington was a big risk

taker and he had a lot of aspirations for himself and you, you found that as

a commonality, one of the things I loved about Hamilton and I saw Hamilton 2018.

like third row.

It's a funny story behind it.

But Scott gave me like this Christmas present and he was like,

I'm going to get you to Hamilton.

I'm going to find a way to get you to Hamilton.

At the time we lived in Tennessee too.

So it was funny.

But when I went for the first showing George Washington was,

and you're a man of color.

George Washington was played by African American man.

You're African American.

I loved that and for me to see a man of color play Washington,

men of color built Washington.

George Washington is standing on the shoulders of men of color.

And so to see a man of color play him, I thought it was.

Perfect.

I really did.

It's what I think about when I go there.

Yeah.

It's what I think about when I see the Washington Monument.

I, I, I mean, I, I'm there and I'm in Washington eight to 10 times a year.

I literally think about it every

That's amazing.

One of the things that we like to ask, ask folks when we talk to them

about history is, and you kind of actually already touched on it, was, How we

all tend to learn history, even though it's the same, we learn it a little

differently, we learn it through our own lens, we learn it depending on what part

of the country we live in and we've, the more we've been online and kind of doing

walks with history and talks with history and meeting other people from around the

country talking about the same historical event, we'll all say oh, that's not what

I learned when I was younger, that's not what I focused on when I was younger.

So.

When it came to that for you, you said you were from, from Illinois,

when it, whether it came to, to

Southern Illinois.

Huge distinction.

Huge distinction.

For, for you kind of growing up in Southern Illinois, what do you remember?

You kind of had a little bit of a passion, semi early on, what are some of the things

you remember from, from your childhood?

That was focused on in, in your neck of the woods where you

were growing up in Illinois.

So first I would say that.

Most of my historical education, both in, in school and, and just sort of in,

in the local zeitgeist was kind of the, I'd like to say a holdover from the great

sort of propaganda moment in history.

We've got a, we've probably got a good 65, 70 year span where Our nationalist

identity, especially I think leading up to the decades leading up to, and then

when we finally arrived in 1975 and it's the centennial and it's just sort of

like, so you're, I was born and it's it was like, I think at its greatest, the,

at the Zenith of everybody kind of, dug in and that became the curriculum, right?

It's we kind of codified.

All of the things, all of the, like the blatant lies that historians

knew, but didn't want to burn.

It's almost as if they didn't want to burden children with the truth.

If as if, as if that wasn't, if, as if the truth wasn't already interesting

enough, I think that it was sort of a wash in slogan and I don't want to say

propaganda as if, as if it's not, I don't want to be Pollyannish about it.

Propaganda is a huge part of how governments.

Support themselves and the public and, and, and make things easier for

the, the greater amount of people to learn the population to learn and,

and sort of hold on to I had the benefit of being raised very early on.

My mom was still finishing her teaching degree.

When I was, I think she, when I was like five or six, so the first six years of

my life, the real formative years, we spent a lot of time with my grandparents

who were both black entrepreneurs.

They came out of sort of that the Booker T.

Washington sort of like bootstrap, go to technical school, get a trade.

They were, they own funeral funeral homes Jackson funeral homes.

And they, they were.

Self made.

It's not even doesn't really begin to describe them.

They were old enough that the old ways were still very much an everyday thing.

So I remember my grandmother making her own, washing powder out of lye soap

and our, our body soap was lye soap.

And I used to cut the, get to cut the blocks of lye, soap like

that was all a part of my life.

And then on my mom's side of the family, they were all farmers.

And so, I, I grew up, I spent half my time with my, with my father's

parent, my father, some of my paternal grandparents, and then with my maternal

grandparents, they were very much farmers.

It was, they lived in and around and on the land.

And so I got that education as well.

I mention that because culturally and historically, both of my

grandparents placed a great deal of importance on understanding what.

I was a part of and where I came from.

So I was ever aware of the importance of knowing who and how the civil, how exactly

the civil rights movement not only came to be, but was sustained and how it was.

Changing shape.

I remember watching Jesse Jackson at the democratic convention.

I remember his, I am somebody speech.

I was watching it.

I remember those moments and they were codified because my grandparents set me

down and explained it to me in real time.

I was four or five years old, you know what I mean?

So those kinds of things, like I always had a sense of what was happening in the

world and what I, not only what my place was in it, but what was expected of me.

Yeah.

As a citizen, as a black man, as someone who was through, through my

life circumstances, forced to move between both sides of my family.

And it's still in, in, in a still very segregated.

Emotionally and mentally part of the country.

And so I learned how to code switch.

I learned how to go along to get along.

I learned how to push slightly and softly.

I learned how to push loudly and, and not so not, not without with a lot of

nuance and it was a great benefit to me.

So as I moved through, my schooling.

History made sense because I had already received an education of foundation in

that and taught how important it was.

I always took, I always took history very seriously, second only to music.

That was, that's just how it had that and lunch, but that's how it kind

of, that's how it kind of formed.

That's how it kind of formed me.

And I, and I I've, I've been ever grateful especially in this Hamilton

experience, because I felt I was.

Primed already to understand the context of it, and really play it with commitment.

That was the,

It's the two things you love.

Now your paternal grandparents, your African American grandparents, were

they part of the great migration?

Did they?

Were there families from the South?

So this is the funny story that I meant to tell you.

I promise I'll give you the short, shorter answer than the last two.

So my wife and I get on ancestry.

com the other night.

I have avoided it.

I have avoided it.

I have avoided it.

My last name, there's not a lot of touch points that are, that are positive,

but it turns out that we're in the same bloodline as, as, as old Andy.

Which is crazy to me.

He and his wife didn't have kids, but his his parents are, are in

my family's bloodline is crazy.

you got to come to Tennessee then.

That means you got to come to the hermitage.

But, but then go back even further because John Jackson, who was

a captain in back in the colonies was a member of the, the Prince Phillips war.

Who was also, I mean, that whole anti native American thing runs all the way.

There's two genocidal maniacs in my family tree.

And I'm like, yo, this is, this is nuts.

But so we're, so cool.

Yes, they were a part of the great migration.

One of the reasons why they both went to mortuary school was from the Booker T.

Washington sort of bootstraps, a talented 10th kind of ideal.

And, on my, on my grandparents back parlor, there were four

portraits hanging on the wall.

There was, there was a black Jesus Christ.

There was Martin Luther King jr.

And there was Mary McLeod Bethune and there was Booker T.

Washington.

They were very much.

I mean, that was, that was the back wall of their parlor.

And so growing up and seeing and knowing that, My, My, every, it's

every generation prior to mine, each, each couple had like at least

nine kids, every single generation.

it's it's insane.

But they, they were mostly from the northeast northeast Arkansas area.

I mean the, the, the northern east most corner right next to Memphis.

So they weren't really that far from where they mostly settled,

which was Metropolis and, and Cairo.

But it was all close to the river, and I grew up going to Memphis.

Going to mud Island.

And, I was there, I was there when the, when the, the Memphis bell movie

had come out and they had nine B 17s.

I was

Oh my gosh.

Oh, no

way.

I got, I got sprayed in oil that yell.

Yeah, it was amazing.

I

We do a whole video on Mary McLeod Bethune.

We go to her house.

We talk about the 6888.

It's really cool.

She's very important.

An amazing story.

Amazing story.

Burger T.

Washington actually went to school here outside of Norfolk.

He went to Hampton University right here out of Norfolk.

So a lot of, we're, we're crisscrossing the history here.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah.

And we're talking about huge schools

of thought too.

Like I'm more of a Dubois I, I, I relate more to what.

W B Dubois, his, his sort

of philosophy, but I, I've read Booker T and I understand both.

I understand that how, how those, how they both collided diverged

and then came back together.

There's a lot of ideas in those moments in those, in that period

of time that still influences us today, though, you've had, you had to

have read it in order to really

understand it.

But

it's a lot.

Have you

It is a lot,

like a thousand pages.

I told my

I've got the first and I have the first and the second edition.

like, I took a radical African American class.

I said, that's what's radical.

The length of this book.

He started laughing.

Oh my God.

Yeah, I tried to get through his, his Philadelphia not experiment the, the,

the, the treaties he wrote on, on black folks in Philadelphia, which was

like, it was almost like Deuteronomy.

I was like, I'm, I'm doing my best,

so, when you found out you were playing George Washington, what,

did you go to any historic places?

Did you read any books?

What movies did you watch?

Or were you just I'm just going to make it my own.

I'm going to find my own way here.

The day that Tommy walked up to me and explained to me

why he called me G dubs, which was like, I think it was later that day.

Actually, I went to the borders after the show.

I went down to Madison Square Garden.

There was a borders there on 34th street and I bought Ron

Chernow's biography on Washington.

And from that moment till the time that I left Hamilton, I think I made

it through that book seven times.

So that was my Bible pretty much for the first time.

It was the first time in my career that I had been given an opportunity to truly

research And the, the important part that I found really early on was that, it's not

called Washington, it's called Hamilton.

So we only really see Washington when his movements intersect with Hamilton's.

So what became super important was knowing exactly what, what was happening with

Washington the moment before he sees.

Hamilton, the moment before he comes into a scene and knowing what he

was going into was really important.

So, if you're watching the movie or have you seen the show, like when Washington

makes his first appearance, it's during my shot, it's during the end of my shot.

Now, those moments didn't exactly line up, but then, but they intersect

in that Washington does go into.

New York.

And he does see these, these rabble rousers down in the town square.

He sees all of that right before he almost loses his entire

army in battle of Brooklyn.

So like in a series of retreats, right?

So, but it was really important for me to know what he went

through in Boston, Mm hmm.

how everyone was calling it a victory.

And he was consumed with the fact that it.

It wasn't a, it wasn't a sound victory that, that he almost, again, at every

turn, especially in the first, like two and a half years, three years

of the, of the, the, the war, he was close to losing his army, like Mm hmm.

And I think not only was he, from his papers and writings, like I get

the sense that he was as equally concerned about the welfare of the

army and his reputation, because.

Posterity was so important.

So it's like I even and even in the telling of this story, it's important

to me to know that, even though we don't really discuss any specific things

like he's not just worried about losing the battle, he's worried about losing

his livelihood and his reputation too.

And those are at times equally motivating

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think that, so to ask the question or to answer the question,

like those humanizing moments.

Because it's not, that's not a glorious, honorable thing to be

worried about your reputation.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's a very human thing.

But, and for the guy who has to play him, it's really

important to know that that's a part of, that's a part of it.

You know what I mean?

And so all of those moments, the way that they intersect, become

really, really, really important.

I did get to go to I got to go to Mount Vernon.

The folks at Mount Vernon were incredibly gracious.

We were filming a doc as we were preparing for the, the, the show.

And so I got to go, we got to Mount Vernon about three o'clock in the afternoon.

It was a coldest November day.

I think I've ever experienced in my life.

I think it was November, but it was, it was bone rattling cold, but we

were there until nine 30 that night.

Oh,

cool.

the place down.

We got a private tour.

We got access to some things that the public generally don't get to see,

but that they still show that house without a fireplace going is, is wow.

Freezing.

Mm hmm.

it's

terrible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I got to go to Valley

Forge.

Yay.

Mm I had never been there after being on the East Coast

for, 30 years, I'd never been there.

I had no idea that the grounds were the size that they were.

In Illinois, we celebrate Pulaski Day.

My family lives in Alexander and Pulaski County.

So I but to be able to, to see his quarters.

The vastness of, of, of that space and the, the, just the stories

that the ground will tell you.

And the proximity to Gettysburg was striking to me, this last this last

summer I gave an appearance at Dickinson college and then had, had another

gig with with the U S army orchestra.

And so I drove from Dickinson and PA to DC, and I'd never made that drive before.

And we drove, I drove, Within 10 miles of the Gettysburg grounds.

And I was like, wow,

It's just the way that it was just very striking.

And because you guys spent a lot of time on the road, obviously the fact

that those pivotal moments were to our country were so close together is both

like heartbreaking and just ironic.

You know what I mean?

It was, it

was really

It really was.

And I, I just went to Valley Forge myself.

I went to Washington's headquarters.

You went on a cold day in um, to Mount Vernon.

I went on a freezing cold day in December to Valley Forge.

And I, it kind of reminiscent of the army freezing.

there in December anyway, and I got to be alone in Washington's headquarters

because no one was there that day.

And they told me all the stories about Washington being there and being with

all of his aides, including Hamilton.

With Hamilton downstairs in the park, in that

little room, that little tiny room piled with papers and close Yeah.

they were like, Washington touched bannister in Washington.

So, and then they told me Martha came and moved and stayed with them.

And I said, did they share a wall with his aides?

And they're like, yeah, I'm like, if I was a Martha, the first thing I

would be is like, push this bed away

from the Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Aren't the aren't the Rangers.

They're amazing

though.

Like it was, they are so engaged and, and, and know so much.

It's, it's really, it's a really cool.

It makes it so much, so much just more awesome to get that

kind

of, you

know,

And you can feel it.

I always say you can feel the history.

Like I could.

I, to be in the space of where it happened, it was just

really amazing to be there.

So it's great that you got to go to, to the, both of those um, but you

still haven't been to Fort necessity.

So we, you have to

no, no.

But I'm going to, I'm going to starred on my map.

And now that I know that, that it's not quite as far West as I thought it was.

Yeah.

I don't do a lot of cross country traveling, driving anymore, but yeah,

I'll, I know I'll, I'll find my, I'll make

my way out there

for

Yeah, like a Pittsburgh trip.

When you go to Pittsburgh, it's a

good.

And if you want to visit uh, the United flight 93, it's kind of close

to that memorial is where so it's, it's

kind of, yes, exactly in Shanksville.

Yeah.

So, so I, I love to kind of you know, away from, from the shows.

I love the personal stories when I get to talk to people on the One of the things

that I've enjoyed, I joke all the time.

Um, And and for folks who are who are new to the podcast is I'm

actually not the history buff, right?

Jenn's the history nerd.

I kind of married into this and I have, I have learned a

lot since we started walk with

I bet.

I bet.

so much.

I can, I, I sound so much smarter than I used to.

, But one of the things that, that, that we love to ask on talk with history,

again, different people, different perspectives , is what's the, kind

of the first major historical event that you remember from your childhood.

That kind of first moment where that that that bubble was really kind of broken

because when you're young, you're kind of, for lack of a better word, it's all you.

You're the center of your own universe.

And then there's that one event That everybody remembers and all of

a sudden they're like, Oh my gosh, the world is, is a bigger place.

Something happened.

That's major.

It's that flagpole moment in your life.

For some people, it's personal.

For me, it was, I'm from California, so it was a major earthquake, right?

When the A's and the giants had that, that um, during the

I was watching.

Yeah.

I was watching the

so, so what's something like that for, for you,

probably

probably the challenger

because Krista McAuliffe was from

Kentucky

yeah.

Oh,

and where in Kentucky she was from.

I don't quite remember, but like where I was growing up, Kentucky

was right across the river.

So she may as may, may as well have just been living on the

other side of the bridge there.

And we were all watching it.

They had wheeled the wheel, the TVs into, the cafeteria, the classroom.

We were in a classroom.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was, I think, the first, probably, yeah, that first moment where

the world changed a little bit for,

Yeah.

So, so I didn't answer

because you and I are close to the same age, Chris.

I was born in 77.

I'm older than Scott.

I call myself a Puma.

I'm not a full cougar.

I'm only five years older, but so I didn't want to

You're, you're, you're only

bragging on Scott's taste.

It's all good.

It's all good.

Your life does not suck, Scott.

Yes.

This we can

I didn't want to like taint it because that's the

first thing I remember too.

Same thing.

I remember them willing in the televisions.

I remember it exploding, but they're not, didn't say that's what happened.

I remember my

Yeah.

The confusion of it.

Yeah.

and then just going back to the classrooms and we were so

excited, but now we're not excited.

So I didn't quite understand what had happened right in that moment,

but I knew later that night when watching the news with Reagan and my

parents, I kind of put it all together.

But in that moment it wasn't, One of the things I loved about Valley Forge

and one of the great stories they tell is there's like 200 men of color that fight

for Washington during the Revolutionary War, and most of them are free.

There's a lot of there's enslaved and there's free.

So here's Washington leading men of all different backgrounds.

And You know, people always wonder about him as an enslaver, but here

he is leading free men of color and then after death, uh, Martha sets his

enslaved free and people always wonder, well, how do you wrestle with these two

things to, like, look at somebody and be inspired by them, but also look at.

They, the biggest, probably the biggest sin of American history is enslavement.

And so to have someone who's done both is hard for people to wrestle with.

And as a historian, I always try to tell people, you don't have to judge them.

You don't have to wrestle with them.

You don't have to try to come to terms with that.

All you need to do is know the truth.

That's it.

And then from there, you can decide.

You can look at some things and go, I'll learn from that.

I'll learn to do it this way, or I'm going to learn from

this and do it better this way.

But you don't have to judge them.

I mean, like that really isn't your job, but how do you wrestle with that?

Do you ever have people say things to you or you know, ask you questions like that?

you know, how do you respond to that?

I think there's room for all of the, all of the thoughts.

Cause I've had all of them.

I had them all before anybody knew that Hamilton was ever gonna be a thing.

So they only freed slaves because they didn't want to place the burden of the

tax and the upkeep of those living persons on whomever would be inheriting them.

If the person that was going to be inheriting the slaves could not afford

to do that, that was the main impetus.

Interesting.

Of

And since I've learned that fact or that idea,

I found it very important to include that into the conversation.

course.

Because I'm not prepared to venerate Washington or any of his contemporaries

or any that followed him with any sort of virtue because, well, at

least when they died, Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

you're right you know what?

I've also learned that there's a.

There's a process by which we, the history gets, the history is living, right?

And then as eras move on, then the story is told, it's codified

somehow, generally, by sitting out in the sun and drying for a bit.

And then we just kind of like, assume that role, and then we start Promoting it.

And we're still not past that.

We're really not past the sort of post civil war slash reconstruction,

construction of the American narrative.

We're still just sort of like the general public is still sort of learning why

all these statues just got taken down.

And why would you want to take down a statue?

Because it was based on lies.

So we don't, and we don't want to live in that space.

So, social change takes a long time to, to actually evolve and, and to happen.

With that, I, when I went to see, when I went to visit Mount Vernon,

the first time I was 11 years

old.

So everything is just sort of like in a postcard, right?

Then the next time that I actually went there was in preparation for this role.

And the first place that I went, As a kid was to see all of the stuff that

was old, the antiques, the real things.

What did Washington touch?

When I came back the second time, I came back.

And the first place that I had to go to before I would go into that

house were the slave quarters, Yes, because I had a different

awareness and there were different things that were important to me.

And instead of thinking about what did Washington touch?

I'm thinking about, well, which slave planted that tree?

And that fence row, that, that stone row that goes on for three

quarters of a mile, who did that?

And Washington's teeth weren't wooden.

They were ripped out of another human being's mouth and sent

to a dentist in Philadelphia.

Like these are different concerns.

These are, it's a different awareness, right?

So, and I, and I make that point because our understanding evolves over time if

we allow it to, and if we pursue it.

You can't just sort of like, let it fall on you.

You got to chase after it much in the work that you do.

People can't know something different unless you show them something different.

And if you are in a position as a history, historian to share that, then

God bless, because that's the only way to sort of reverse, not undo the

narrative, but just bring it to the sun.

Let it be the real thing.

And let it be all of those things.

And there's nothing that I could have ever done or said as an actor or an

artist portraying this guy's life that would have changed the facts.

Yeah.

So you can humanize.

I mean, it's not to distract.

It is not Lin's.

Lin's intention was not to distract anyone, right?

It just wasn't.

It wasn't my intention to portray that.

If someone received that or, or, or took away, that away, I have to live with that,

but that was not, the artist's intention is to paint a picture and the, the

consumer or the, the, the person who comes to experience the art should be provoked

and And then have a thought and whatever that thought happens to be as an artist,

I'm open to that because that's my job.

My job isn't to tell you how to think or what to think.

It's to show you something that might.

inspire thought that might inspire the next great idea that might inspire

the next great movement or the next great act of kindness or civil service.

All of that, all of that.

That's, that's my, that's my job.

I know what my job is.

It's, it's, it's as narrowly defined as possible, as it can be.

But Washington Jefferson, Madison, Madison was the biggest slave holder in

the, in the United States at the time.

What I just learned from this, Michael Harriot's wonderful book,

Black AF History, was that the number of slaves from, from the English

perspective, the number of slaves that you owned, you've got 50 acres of

land for every slave that you owned.

Which incentivized the practice of shadow slavery from the Africans.

So, and I've been, I've been studying this stuff for a while.

I know a lot, but I never knew

that one fact, right?

So, it, it, you're all, there's

always more, you're right, there's always more to learn.

And that's why history provides a really amazing picture because even in

our research, there's so many people doing it and now you just have to

get to the information, but I never

knew that.

And as that translates then to the first thing I thought about was, well, of course

they owned as many slaves as they could.

Of course they were incentivized to do it in spite of, England banning the practice.

Of course all of this stuff happened and it doesn't, it doesn't it

doesn't take away from the fact.

The facts, the timelines, the actions.

I look at these men and I say, they never lived up to the ideals, but my God,

they, whether they intended to or not created a platform on a piece of paper.

They wrote things down that had never been written before.

And from that, we were able to aspire to all of these very natural

rights and then, and, and continue the tradition of the enlightenment.

We are lucky that they wrote better than they were.

Yeah.

That's what I always say.

we're lucky, we're lucky.

And it's not that there weren't people in the, in the Continental

Congress that weren't already beating the drum, but there were just so few

that it didn't permeate through, that at the, at the moment at the time,

but so many of the things that we're fighting for now are, are, are based

around the ideas that these men.

We're able to get down in spite of themselves.

And that's it.

If you're a spiritual person, I will say that is, that is nothing short of

a miracle or an act of God, because men will always find a way to get in their

own way,

And always find a way to let their, their most base selves be the thing that they

lead with but like to, to, to come, to, come into all of this enlightened and

aspirational thought in spite of the things that they were doing on the side

or, kind of leading with is kind of a

miracle.

So it's kind of hard to not buy into the whole America or being sort of,

or ordained and especially anointed or appointed to create a space

where as many people can be free as

possible.

That's what I always say.

I always say we were, we are reaching towards an ideal.

that we've never quite gotten to.

We have never gotten to yet, but we keep reaching for it.

And we keep trying to be better and we keep trying to learn.

And like you said, like you hope to inspire the, what I do with history

is I try to, I don't tell people what to think either, but I try

to teach, teach them how, how to historians show you the information.

what's a primary source, what's a secondary source, right?

Who is saying what?

And like you said, even with how the story changes at Mount Vernon, how the

focus of the story changes at Mount Vernon, I always tell people, reach back.

History is always there.

You know, The people who made Washington are there.

They're still there.

You reach back and you can find them.

Right now, we're still trying to find their names.

I wrote a whole paper in grad school called Say My Name, Say My

Name because the names get lost sometimes and even trying to find

the name is hard, but they're there.

Those people are there and to remember them, to remember what they did, like

you said, who planted that tree, who made, who put that, we're remembering

their part in building the country.

And it's just as important as George Washington.

And that's what I think is so great about a person of color playing

George Washington is like you're showing that they're just as

important at building the country.

I always say every other person's a woman.

They were just as important and is building this country as the

men, even though they don't write

question.

so.

They're there.

They're just, they're doing their job.

It might not be a formal power, but their informal power is still there.

And I love that, Chris.

I love that.

Yeah.

And you see their, their fingerprints on all of it.

Do you know what I mean?

I just feel like now when we tell the story, we get to tell it without

the cynicism, without the, the, the patronizing tone and the, that, that.

Often.

And in spite of having eight children, she also, what do you mean

in spite of having eight children?

A woman would bear eight children in, in, in a fairly, really fairly

primitive setting and yet have a thought and yet teach herself how to read.

I was doing a reading a couple of weeks ago of this play.

And we were the character.

One of the characters I was portraying was a man by the name of Alan Allensworth.

And he was a Colonel in the, in the U S army and around the.

Turn of the 19th century founded a town out in California, but one of the things

that he, this character was constantly saying that the playwright didn't

know is that, I taught myself to read.

I taught myself to read.

Well, 92 percent of black folks in America couldn't read at the end, the day after

slavery ended and within 20 years, over 60 percent could, and no time in the

history of, of, of modern man kind of has.

That kind of change ever happened.

amazing.

Do you know what I mean?

Like it's, it's knowing these things that will shape your, even

just the, I'm an actor doing a reading that, a hundred people saw

cause they're developing something.

But as an actor, knowing Mm hmm.

put me in a position to educate the people that actually wrote the thing Yes.

Yes, know what I'm saying?

So like the importance of just sharing information, especially historically based

information is such a profound thing.

It's such a profound thing.

It's such a powerful and empowering kind

of thing to

do.

absolutely.

I, I completely agree with you.

And you know, Chris, I really thank you for having this conversation with You

know, I find it important to tell the stories that don't want to be told Right.

And like getting deep into the South and I'm, I uncover stuff and I tell

these and, you know, sometimes people don't want to hear it from, from this.

But I always try to tell them, listen to the history, not me,

listen to the history, listen to what I'm trying to tell you.

And even if you just want to read it, it needs to be And like Ida B.

Wells was always like, turn the light of truth on it, right?

The truth needs to be told.

It's there.

Just someone's got to shine the light on it,

I love that quote too.

Turn a lot of

truth on it.

I do.

I've

always loved that

quote.

Yeah.

And I will say, Chris, Hamilton inspired so many people to learn history.

Yeah.

I mean, I left school to go to Hamilton.

I left the class.

My professor was like, go.

I was like, I'm going to miss

Dig.

I'm going to go how much She's like, go.

She's like, Jennifer, go see

Tell us about it.

Tell us about it.

And then I brought her

back like stuff from the gift shop.

And

Yeah, you did.

Yeah, you did.

I love

it.

like.

And we stayed staged door and they signed her.

It was amazing.

uh, But she, you know, getting a master's degree of history.

I tell people all the time, everyone's a historian, right?

Everybody, it's hard.

Like, why would I have a master's degree in this?

But I tell people, so I can learn what makes something historically accurate.

How are historians measuring the truth?

Like how there are secondary sources that can get very.

tied into primary sources and they can, you can believe that actually what

happened, but if you can't find it, like I really had to dig deep because you

hear some of the same stuff over and over, but what really happened, right?

What was really happening that day?

What was, who really said what?

and so those are the kinds of things that are kind of harder

for historians to do and harder to pull uh, but I really thank you.

You know, Hamilton meant a lot to me.

I have the shirt.

I have the book.

And as a historian, I felt like you really validated my work.

And so I thank, I thank you guys for what you did.

I appreciate that.

That's, that's kind of a common thing.

Response from true historians.

Cause it's I mean, the majority of the things that as a historian, the majority

of the things that you do are completely.

by yourself, you're in the stacks reading micro what used to be micro

fish, but now you're like digging, like you're, you're driving two hours to,

to go, stand next to a pile of weeds.

There has no marker, but you know that this is a place where something

happened, and the only reason why any of this ground has any value at all.

In our memory is knowing what has happened in certain places.

It's why we venerate battlegrounds.

It's why we commemorate or memorialize places that, you know where things

that are significant happened so that you don't repeat if they were

bad, that you don't repeat them.

There was, there was a tremendous amount of, of a racially based

unrest in, in my hometown.

And, my, my hometown is, is South, well, South of the Mason Dixon line.

But it was a pit of vipers for a hundred years.

There was a lynching in my, in my town of a young man who, is

believed that he was mentally impaired and yet didn't stop them.

And I was, God, I was.

I didn't really, I'd heard ramp rumblings about it growing up there, but I never

knew the facts of it until, several years ago when I was doing some research and

came across it, John Lewis marched in our, in our, in our, my hometown I saw

not six months ago, I discovered pictures.

That John Lewis marched at the, at the public swimming

pool because it was segregated.

And when a young black boy got in the water, they drained the pool

and closed it down, filled it with dirt the next, like next week.

But these are things that I never knew.

Thurgood Marshall came to my, came to my town right after he had joined the

NAACP to bail out one of the workers who had been arrested in my hometown.

At the local customs house, which is, which held the courthouse.

And I didn't find that out until, several years ago when I was

researching a project that I'm writing.

So like all of these things, like I come from a town of 1500 people, it's

not that hard to know what happened, someone's always willing, to talk,

but I was 17, when I left there, so 18 years old, I didn't know to ask

those things and believe it or not.

My history teacher lived there when all was all happening and he still

didn't bring it up, and I was curious.

I asked questions.

So my point is, is that, once you get a taste of how powerful

knowledge is, it is absolutely

infectious.

and if you give into that, from my perspective as an artist, the quote I

live by is that my job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

And historians have a very, a very similar path.

If you're doing it right.

If you're doing it right.

If you're telling stories that didn't happen,

that's something else.

But if you're doing it like you are it's just enough to put it there and

think what you will, say what you will, change how you will, or not.

But you can't ignore it because the burden of knowledge rests upon the bearer of it.

Once you know something, you can't pretend

to not know it.

Now you have your own conscience to wrestle with.

That's what it is, but that's what historians do.

Oh, I love it.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you for giving us this time today.

Thank you for liking that video.

Happy to talk to you guys.

I'm telling you you're living a life of artists You're doing stuff that you

that is interesting to you and that you know is important and it reaches

people It's just nice to know it.

Sometimes it's nice to hear back from the world because you, you make the

thing and then you put it out in the world and it's making, it's making TV,

theater is a different thing, but making television, it's like you shoot something

two months ago and then it comes out five, five months later, hope people like it,

you forgot you did it, or you're still living in it, but no one else is there.

There's no audience, so it's, it's in the immediate, it's,

it's great to talk to you guys.

I really enjoy, I do really enjoy what you guys are doing.

Thank, thank you again so Chris.

Um, I mean, for our audience, I mean, do you have any kind of things coming

out places to you want people to look you up or anything like that?

I mean, we're See next?

Oh, I am I am, you just, you can see I'm in my

studio right now.

I'm, I'm working on a record.

I'm writing a musical.

I've got three TV shows that are.

In various stages of development.

And one of them is a historical

drama that is based on the Pullman porters, from George Pullman from of

railway fame starts four days after the end of the civil war.

And we, it's an anthology which is, which has been a really, it's a fun

Americana kind of story, which is going to be a lot of fun to, if we can.

ever finish the damn thing.

But there's, like I, I have always tried my best and worked really hard at

doing as many things well as I could.

And it's kind of, cause it kind of fills up sort of the curiosity in, in my life.

And it challenges me to try to do things that I'm not good at at all.

But this is what we're doing.

So, Sex and the City doesn't really, we don't pick back up until May

and it's probably going to be next calendar year before that comes out.

Of course, next year is the big 10 year anniversary for Ham.

So I'm sure there'll be some, things floating around around that too.

But right now I'm, I'm, I'm burning macaroni and cheese in my oven.

And torturing my kids as they watch me eat it, just because I have to.

being a good dad.

And, that's it.

That's it.

And and, and trying to trying to learn as much as I can about as

much as I can and, and talk to good

folks like you

guys.