On March 31, 1968, days before he would be assassinated, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. It was not his prophetic “Mountaintop” speech. That day, King spoke from the cathedral’s pulpit ahead of his Poor People’s Campaign, pressing the conscience of the congregation with the moral outrage of poverty. It was his final Sunday sermon. On April 5, just a week later, more than 4,000 mourners would come to the cathedral for his memorial service. In the summer of 2022, I went to the cathedral and found myself just feet from President Woodrow Wilson’s tomb and memorial. Along with others, I had been invited to speak about the new commission that the church had just unveiled: stained-glass windows and tablets by artist Kerry James Marshall and poet Elizabeth Alexander to replace those dedicated to Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The Confederates’ stained-glass windows had remained in the church for nearly 70 years, erected through a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The tomb of Wilson, the first Southerner elected president after the Civil War, had been deliberately installed beneath these stained glass windows… We are in the midst of a crisis of regard in the United States, amid our triumphs. Our persistent unwillingness to see one another has put pressure on the operation of vision itself. We have shaped our own self-portrait through omissions and negations. We have had debates about monuments and markers — even stained glass windows — because we know the facts of what they were meant to do.… To examine this history is to expose how we have learned not to see the fictions that legitimate racial injustice and inequity. The work of revision — of re-seeing — must continue. For where we once blocked our rightful view of one another, we now have the means to build windows. We can see the story tied to the representation all around us. The question is whether we still have the will.“ Excerpt from Washington Post piece out today in print tomorrow. Thank you, Amanda Katz! 💫🙏🏾
On March 31, 1968, days before he would be assassinated, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. It was not his prophetic “Mountaintop” speech. That day, King spoke from the cathedral’s pulpit ahead of his Poor People’s Campaign, pressing the conscience of the congregation with the moral outrage of poverty. It was his final Sunday sermon. On April 5, just a week later, more than 4,000 mourners would come to the cathedral for his memorial service. In the summer of 2022, I went to the cathedral and found myself just feet from President Woodrow Wilson’s tomb and memorial. Along with others, I had been invited to speak about the new commission that the church had just unveiled: stained-glass windows and tablets by artist Kerry James Marshall and poet Elizabeth Alexander to replace those dedicated to Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The Confederates’ stained-glass windows had remained in the church for nearly 70 years, erected through a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The tomb of Wilson, the first Southerner elected president after the Civil War, had been deliberately installed beneath these stained glass windows… We are in the midst of a crisis of regard in the United States, amid our triumphs. Our persistent unwillingness to see one another has put pressure on the operation of vision itself. We have shaped our own self-portrait through omissions and negations. We have had debates about monuments and markers — even stained glass windows — because we know the facts of what they were meant to do.… To examine this history is to expose how we have learned not to see the fictions that legitimate racial injustice and inequity. The work of revision — of re-seeing — must continue. For where we once blocked our rightful view of one another, we now have the means to build windows. We can see the story tied to the representation all around us. The question is whether we still have the will.“ Excerpt from Washington Post piece out today in print tomorrow. Thank you, Amanda Katz! 💫🙏🏾
On March 31, 1968, days before he would be assassinated, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. It was not his prophetic “Mountaintop” speech. That day, King spoke from the cathedral’s pulpit ahead of his Poor People’s Campaign, pressing the conscience of the congregation with the moral outrage of poverty. It was his final Sunday sermon. On April 5, just a week later, more than 4,000 mourners would come to the cathedral for his memorial service. In the summer of 2022, I went to the cathedral and found myself just feet from President Woodrow Wilson’s tomb and memorial. Along with others, I had been invited to speak about the new commission that the church had just unveiled: stained-glass windows and tablets by artist Kerry James Marshall and poet Elizabeth Alexander to replace those dedicated to Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The Confederates’ stained-glass windows had remained in the church for nearly 70 years, erected through a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The tomb of Wilson, the first Southerner elected president after the Civil War, had been deliberately installed beneath these stained glass windows… We are in the midst of a crisis of regard in the United States, amid our triumphs. Our persistent unwillingness to see one another has put pressure on the operation of vision itself. We have shaped our own self-portrait through omissions and negations. We have had debates about monuments and markers — even stained glass windows — because we know the facts of what they were meant to do.… To examine this history is to expose how we have learned not to see the fictions that legitimate racial injustice and inequity. The work of revision — of re-seeing — must continue. For where we once blocked our rightful view of one another, we now have the means to build windows. We can see the story tied to the representation all around us. The question is whether we still have the will.“ Excerpt from Washington Post piece out today in print tomorrow. Thank you, Amanda Katz! 💫🙏🏾
On March 31, 1968, days before he would be assassinated, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. It was not his prophetic “Mountaintop” speech. That day, King spoke from the cathedral’s pulpit ahead of his Poor People’s Campaign, pressing the conscience of the congregation with the moral outrage of poverty. It was his final Sunday sermon. On April 5, just a week later, more than 4,000 mourners would come to the cathedral for his memorial service. In the summer of 2022, I went to the cathedral and found myself just feet from President Woodrow Wilson’s tomb and memorial. Along with others, I had been invited to speak about the new commission that the church had just unveiled: stained-glass windows and tablets by artist Kerry James Marshall and poet Elizabeth Alexander to replace those dedicated to Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The Confederates’ stained-glass windows had remained in the church for nearly 70 years, erected through a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The tomb of Wilson, the first Southerner elected president after the Civil War, had been deliberately installed beneath these stained glass windows… We are in the midst of a crisis of regard in the United States, amid our triumphs. Our persistent unwillingness to see one another has put pressure on the operation of vision itself. We have shaped our own self-portrait through omissions and negations. We have had debates about monuments and markers — even stained glass windows — because we know the facts of what they were meant to do.… To examine this history is to expose how we have learned not to see the fictions that legitimate racial injustice and inequity. The work of revision — of re-seeing — must continue. For where we once blocked our rightful view of one another, we now have the means to build windows. We can see the story tied to the representation all around us. The question is whether we still have the will.“ Excerpt from Washington Post piece out today in print tomorrow. Thank you, Amanda Katz! 💫🙏🏾
On March 31, 1968, days before he would be assassinated, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. It was not his prophetic “Mountaintop” speech. That day, King spoke from the cathedral’s pulpit ahead of his Poor People’s Campaign, pressing the conscience of the congregation with the moral outrage of poverty. It was his final Sunday sermon. On April 5, just a week later, more than 4,000 mourners would come to the cathedral for his memorial service. In the summer of 2022, I went to the cathedral and found myself just feet from President Woodrow Wilson’s tomb and memorial. Along with others, I had been invited to speak about the new commission that the church had just unveiled: stained-glass windows and tablets by artist Kerry James Marshall and poet Elizabeth Alexander to replace those dedicated to Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The Confederates’ stained-glass windows had remained in the church for nearly 70 years, erected through a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The tomb of Wilson, the first Southerner elected president after the Civil War, had been deliberately installed beneath these stained glass windows… We are in the midst of a crisis of regard in the United States, amid our triumphs. Our persistent unwillingness to see one another has put pressure on the operation of vision itself. We have shaped our own self-portrait through omissions and negations. We have had debates about monuments and markers — even stained glass windows — because we know the facts of what they were meant to do.… To examine this history is to expose how we have learned not to see the fictions that legitimate racial injustice and inequity. The work of revision — of re-seeing — must continue. For where we once blocked our rightful view of one another, we now have the means to build windows. We can see the story tied to the representation all around us. The question is whether we still have the will.“ Excerpt from Washington Post piece out today in print tomorrow. Thank you, Amanda Katz! 💫🙏🏾
On March 31, 1968, days before he would be assassinated, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. It was not his prophetic “Mountaintop” speech. That day, King spoke from the cathedral’s pulpit ahead of his Poor People’s Campaign, pressing the conscience of the congregation with the moral outrage of poverty. It was his final Sunday sermon. On April 5, just a week later, more than 4,000 mourners would come to the cathedral for his memorial service. In the summer of 2022, I went to the cathedral and found myself just feet from President Woodrow Wilson’s tomb and memorial. Along with others, I had been invited to speak about the new commission that the church had just unveiled: stained-glass windows and tablets by artist Kerry James Marshall and poet Elizabeth Alexander to replace those dedicated to Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The Confederates’ stained-glass windows had remained in the church for nearly 70 years, erected through a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The tomb of Wilson, the first Southerner elected president after the Civil War, had been deliberately installed beneath these stained glass windows… We are in the midst of a crisis of regard in the United States, amid our triumphs. Our persistent unwillingness to see one another has put pressure on the operation of vision itself. We have shaped our own self-portrait through omissions and negations. We have had debates about monuments and markers — even stained glass windows — because we know the facts of what they were meant to do.… To examine this history is to expose how we have learned not to see the fictions that legitimate racial injustice and inequity. The work of revision — of re-seeing — must continue. For where we once blocked our rightful view of one another, we now have the means to build windows. We can see the story tied to the representation all around us. The question is whether we still have the will.“ Excerpt from Washington Post piece out today in print tomorrow. Thank you, Amanda Katz! 💫🙏🏾
On March 31, 1968, days before he would be assassinated, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. It was not his prophetic “Mountaintop” speech. That day, King spoke from the cathedral’s pulpit ahead of his Poor People’s Campaign, pressing the conscience of the congregation with the moral outrage of poverty. It was his final Sunday sermon. On April 5, just a week later, more than 4,000 mourners would come to the cathedral for his memorial service. In the summer of 2022, I went to the cathedral and found myself just feet from President Woodrow Wilson’s tomb and memorial. Along with others, I had been invited to speak about the new commission that the church had just unveiled: stained-glass windows and tablets by artist Kerry James Marshall and poet Elizabeth Alexander to replace those dedicated to Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The Confederates’ stained-glass windows had remained in the church for nearly 70 years, erected through a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The tomb of Wilson, the first Southerner elected president after the Civil War, had been deliberately installed beneath these stained glass windows… We are in the midst of a crisis of regard in the United States, amid our triumphs. Our persistent unwillingness to see one another has put pressure on the operation of vision itself. We have shaped our own self-portrait through omissions and negations. We have had debates about monuments and markers — even stained glass windows — because we know the facts of what they were meant to do.… To examine this history is to expose how we have learned not to see the fictions that legitimate racial injustice and inequity. The work of revision — of re-seeing — must continue. For where we once blocked our rightful view of one another, we now have the means to build windows. We can see the story tied to the representation all around us. The question is whether we still have the will.“ Excerpt from Washington Post piece out today in print tomorrow. Thank you, Amanda Katz! 💫🙏🏾
Just coming on here to say….It very well could be that the power of a photograph is in its afterlife. Images may mean the most long after we’ve taken them. To see this image now is to understand so much history that has been denied, edited out, and not honored about how Americans—all—truly have lived on this here soil. This image is a photograph of John Hope Franklin’s father, Buck Colbert Franklin, the icon of a lawyer. He lived through the 1921 Tulsa Riots. He witnessed the murders. He wrote a book about it. Much of what we know about that history comes from his work. I was thinking back to what Tom Hanks—yes—said about how stunned he was that he had never ever heard about the Tulsa Race Riots and massacre. And how important it was that someone like Tom Hanks who said this, not me. Check out his op-ed on this in the @nytimes. Excellent. So, I’m just here saluting the work of that has gone into amplified unseen histories, and thinking of how much photography has contributed to that invaluable work for the world. When I teach Vision and Justice again at Harvard this Spring semester, I’ll do so undaunted. I will do so feeling that it is an honor to tell the full, rich, expansive history of this extraordinary American project, especially when many of us are being intimidated for doing so. We will stay in the light. Stay filled with joy as we do this work. And I also look forward to bringing this course out of Harvard and into the world. #tulsa #visionandjusticeconference
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
2023! I look back with peace and acceptance to say thank you God for the stunning blessings of this year. It brought the culmination of a dream birthed 10 years ago. Best of all, it brought the realization of a stunning dream I didn’t know I had, one even more significant, more meaningful than I could have imagined. It brought such love, joy, and growth, my such growth that I didn’t even know was in store. My mantra for this coming year: Let it surprise you. Let it defy your wildest dreams. Be open to it all. Stay silly. Dancing. Passionate. Stay focused on love—a gift from the divine always. Stay focused. Stay in service. Enjoy this extraordinary, precious life. All things work together for good.
Thank you to three women who have so touched my heart! I’ve been a chapter about the history of Japanese Internment for book #3 for One World / Random House. During World War II, ten internment camps for Japanese Americans were purpose built by the military scattered across more rural, remote sites in the western United States. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps in the United States after Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in February 1942. There were no trials. There were no hearings. Those with Japanese ancestry were given days to pack and board trains and buses for detention centers and internment camps where they stayed for up to three years. Their main crime was simply being. Not a single person was convicted of espionage toward the United States. The constitutional rights of Japanese Americans were infringed. Will overrode law. The constitution did protect their rights. After stays of up to three years, those interned left to find their homes taken, the businesses gone, needing to rebuild their lives. The intergenerational impact remains a hidden history. I flew back to Utah to interview three women about this history. What stays with is their positivity in the face of this injustice—all of the good she wrested from it—was moving beyond measure. Slide two shows Jeanette, to my right, in a photograph taken by Dorothea Lange just before they were sent to an internment came. I have taught from that image before. I had no idea that I was meeting her just a few days ago. Thank you to my three graces and to the universe for conspiring to bring us together. I hope to do justice to it all.
Thank you to three women who have so touched my heart! I’ve been a chapter about the history of Japanese Internment for book #3 for One World / Random House. During World War II, ten internment camps for Japanese Americans were purpose built by the military scattered across more rural, remote sites in the western United States. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps in the United States after Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in February 1942. There were no trials. There were no hearings. Those with Japanese ancestry were given days to pack and board trains and buses for detention centers and internment camps where they stayed for up to three years. Their main crime was simply being. Not a single person was convicted of espionage toward the United States. The constitutional rights of Japanese Americans were infringed. Will overrode law. The constitution did protect their rights. After stays of up to three years, those interned left to find their homes taken, the businesses gone, needing to rebuild their lives. The intergenerational impact remains a hidden history. I flew back to Utah to interview three women about this history. What stays with is their positivity in the face of this injustice—all of the good she wrested from it—was moving beyond measure. Slide two shows Jeanette, to my right, in a photograph taken by Dorothea Lange just before they were sent to an internment came. I have taught from that image before. I had no idea that I was meeting her just a few days ago. Thank you to my three graces and to the universe for conspiring to bring us together. I hope to do justice to it all.
Love my amazing ladies! Happy holidays from Amy Sherald, Carrie Mae Weems, Jordan Casteel and I! 💫💫💫💫📸 @derekblasberg 🫶🏾
Love my amazing ladies! Happy holidays from Amy Sherald, Carrie Mae Weems, Jordan Casteel and I! 💫💫💫💫📸 @derekblasberg 🫶🏾
Last day of the semester and asurprise profile in The Harvard Crimson about the community built from the vision, venture, and love. Here’s to what lies ahead! Here’s to the care we show for each other through it all. ✨✨❤️ Link in bio
Last day of the semester and asurprise profile in The Harvard Crimson about the community built from the vision, venture, and love. Here’s to what lies ahead! Here’s to the care we show for each other through it all. ✨✨❤️ Link in bio
