Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Public media provider WNET.ORG is playing a major role in the nationwide Lincoln Bicentennial celebration in 2009 with LOOKING FOR LINCOLN, an unprecedented two-hour broadcast, online, and outreach project that explores the life and legacy of the man widely considered one of our best and most enigmatic presidents. The documentary, presented and written by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (African American Lives, Oprah’s Roots), addresses many of the controversies surrounding Lincoln – race, equality, religion, politics, and depression – by carefully interpreting evidence from those who knew him and those who study him today. It premieres on the eve of Lincoln’s 200th birthday, Wednesday, February, 11, 2009 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

In the film, Gates shows how the Lincoln legend grew out of controversy, greed, love, clashing political perspectives, power struggles, and considerable disagreement over how our 16th president should be remembered. His quest to piece together Lincoln’s complex life takes him from Illinois to Gettysburg to Washington, D.C., and face-to-face with people who live with Lincoln every day – relic hunters, re-enactors, and others for whom the study of Lincoln is a passion.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Among those weighing in: Pulitzer Prize winners Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tony Kushner; presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; and Lincoln scholars including Harold Holzer, vice chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; Harvard University’s president Drew Faust and history professor David Hebert Donald; Yale University history professor David Blight; and Allen Guelzo of Gettysburg College. Former Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett challenges Lincoln’s record on race; writer Joshua Shenk talks about Lincoln’s depression; and New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik illuminates how Lincoln’s words changed the course of history.

A companion book, Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon, was written by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. It contains more than 900 images, many from the renowned Meserve-Kunhardt Collection. Booklist recently wrote, “The Kunhardts’ work is sure to be one of the most popular books in the bicentennial effusion of Lincoln volumes.” It was published by Alfred A. Knopf on November 18.

Buy Lincoln on Race and Slavery, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

In addition, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has edited a book called Abraham Lincoln on Race and Slavery, a collection of everything Lincoln said or wrote about slavery and race, to be published by Princeton University Press. The volume was praised by Lincoln authority John Stauffer as an “invaluable and timely book, indispensable for anyone interested in race relations in the United States…beautifully written and penetrating in its insights.”

LOOKING FOR LINCOLN is a production of Kunhardt McGee Productions, Inkwell Films and THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG in association with Ark Media. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., William R. Grant, Peter Kunhardt, and Dyllan McGee are executive producers. Senior producer is Barak Goodman. Producers are John Maggio and Muriel Soenens. Sole corporate funding is provided by State Farm®. Major funding is provided by CPB and PBS. Additional funding for education outreach is provided by the Motorola Foundation.
……….…
About Kunhardt McGee Productions
For nearly 20 years, Kunhardt McGee Productions (formerly Kunhardt Productions) has been responsible for critically acclaimed historical programming with a reputation for high editorial standards. Most recently, Kunhardt McGee Productions co-produced Oprah’s Roots (2007) and African American Lives 1 and 2 (2006 & 2008) for PBS. Previously, the company produced Freedom: A History of US, an eight-hour PBS series based upon Joy Hakim’s award-winning books. Other notable works from Kunhardt McGee Productions include Lincoln, a four-hour series for ABC; In Memoriam, a one-hour co-production with HBO about Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; and The American President, a 10-hour PBS series profiling all forty-one presidents of the United States. Kunhardt McGee Productions is currently producing a multi-part series, Human Nature, for Vulcan Productions and WGBH’s Nova Science Unit to air on PBS in 2010. More information can be found at: www.kunhardtmcgeeproductions.com.

Bill Clinton

About Inkwell Productions
Inkwell Films was founded by Henry Louis Gates Jr. to produce sophisticated documentary films about the African-American experience for a broad audience. In addition to Oprah’s Roots, Inkwell Films co-produced African American Lives (2006) and African American Lives 2 (2008), and is currently developing The History of the African American People, an eight-part series tentatively slated for national broadcast premiere in 2009-2010.

About Ark Media
Ark Media is a documentary film company founded in 1997 by the producing team of Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin. Ark’s mission is to produce documentary films characterized by rigorous reporting, careful craft, and imaginative filmmaking. For the last decade, Ark has produced films primarily for the PBS series Frontline and American Experience, and for cable outlets such as The History Channel and American Movie Classics. During this time, our films have won nearly every major broadcast award: the Emmy, DuPont-Columbia, Robert F. Kennedy, Writers Guild and Peabody, as well as earning an Academy Award nomination and official selection to the Sundance Film Festival. For more information, please visit our website at www.ark-media.net.

George W. Bush

About WNET.ORG
New York public media company WNET.ORG is a pioneering provider of television and web content. The parent of Thirteen, WLIW21 and Creative News Group, WNET.ORG brings such acclaimed broadcast series and websites as Worldfocus, Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, Charlie Rose, Wide Angle, Secrets of the Dead, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Visions, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack,Wild Chronicles, Miffy and Friends, and Cyberchase to national and international audiences. Through its wide range of channels and platforms, WNET.ORG serves the entire New York City metro area with unique local productions, broadcasts and innovative educational and cultural projects. In all that it does, WNET.ORG pursues a single, overarching goal – to create media experiences of lasting significance for New York, America and the world. For more information, visit www.wnet.org.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
– President Abraham Lincoln

LOOKING FOR LINCOLN
Wed. February 11th, 9 p.m. on THIRTEEN and THIRTEEN HD. Thu. February 12th, 9 p.m. on WLIW21.
(Check your local listings)

THIRTEEN commemorates the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial with Looking for Lincoln, a landmark two-hour special dedicated to the life, legend and legacy of our nation’s 16th president. The program, which airs on the eve of Lincoln’s 200th birthday and features a comprehensive, content-rich Web site, reflects THIRTEEN’s ongoing commitment to producing groundbreaking public television programming and web content.

Presented and written by acclaimed Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with commentary by Doris Kearns Goodwin, LOOKING FOR LINCOLN explores the controversies, paradoxes and contradictions surrounding our nation’s 16th president. Gates embarks on an ambitious, cross-country quest to understand Lincoln, which takes this accomplished scholar from Illinois to Gettysburg and Washington, D.C. Along the way, leading historians, former presidents and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors weigh in on Lincoln’s influence on our nation’s history.

Gates, who also hosted the popular African American Lives and Oprah’s Roots, recently spoke with THIRTEEN about Lincoln’s impressive legacy:

What made Lincoln such a unique president?

Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth – more than any other American President. He was essentially a man of his times, resolute in his belief in the inequality of the races. But within the cauldron of the Civil War, he began to see that there could not be a United States without freedom for the black man. He came to embrace blacks, particularly those that fought so valiantly for the Union, as fully deserving the basic human right of freedom. He was slow to the cause to be sure, but once he got there, he was unshakable. Now, we will never know how far he might have gone had he lived. That’s part of the mystique that still surrounds him: the question “what if?”

Why is Lincoln’s legacy so contested?

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery. For others, it was Lincoln the humble man who rose to greatness, or Lincoln the great Commander, or Lincoln the martyr. Every generation since his death has conjured up their own Lincoln. There were many Lincolns — enough for people to love and hate.

Growing up in West Virginia, what was your early impression of President Lincoln?

Lincoln was the only white man’s photo hanging in people’s homes where I grew up, other than Jesus. We knew him as a great emancipator. He was the man!

What surprised you most about Lincoln as a person and as a president?

This project has been a tremendous learning experience for me. I had to really wrestle the fact that the Great Emancipator had a much more complicated relationship with race than I ever dreamed. He had strong white supremacists views, and favored the expatriation of freed slaves to colonies in Africa or Panama, even as he was writing the Emancipation Proclamation. This was deeply disappointing to me, but also led me to perhaps a deeper appreciation of the human foibles of the man.

What do you think Lincoln would think about Barack Obama — an African-American man — assuming the presidency?

He would be shocked. After he got over the shock, I think he would find it ironic that his most direct heir was a black man — and a mulatto. Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology. People don’t realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances. Obama, I think, shares much of Lincoln’s political intelligence. I think Lincoln would admire that.

What served as a turning point for Lincoln, in terms of his understanding of race?

Getting to know Frederick Douglass really helped him to appreciate the potential for black people. Lincoln really didn’t know any black people, other than his barber. Frederick Douglass really impressed him with his intelligence and his insight. Perhaps even more important was Lincoln’s desperation over the war. It was in his search for a way out of the darkness – both of personal loss and military defeat – that he saw the moral and practical necessity of emancipation.

How did Lincoln become such a mythic figure in American history?

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating “Lincoln the myth.” He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man’s president.

What impact did Lincoln’s assassination have on the nation?

His tragic death had an enormous impact on the American psyche. When Lincoln died, people were calling him the “American Christ” — his sacrifice analogized to Jesus’ crucifixion washing away the sins of a guilty nation — and to Moses dying on the verge of the Promised Land. It was a very religious society and these comparisons came freely. It was doubly ironic because, of course, he had been so widely detested during his Presidency.

What do you hope Thirteen viewers will learn about our nation’s 16th president from watching Looking for Lincoln?

That he was a great man because he wrestled honestly with his own fears, prejudices and limitations. He overcame them, by and large. And that’s the best any of us can hope for.

Lincoln was a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human being — and therein lies his appeal. The more human he was, the taller he stands in American history.

Sole corporate funding for Looking for Lincoln is provided by State Farm®. Major funding is provided by CPB and PBS. Additional funding for education outreach is provided by the Motorola Foundation.

A film by
Kunhardt-McGee Productions
Inkwell Films
THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG

In association with Ark Media

LOOKING FOR LINCOLN

Presented and Written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr

With Special Commentary by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Producer/Directors
John Maggio and Muriel Soenens

Editor
R.A. Fedde

Senior Producer
Barak Goodman

Executive Producers
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
William R. Grant
Peter W. Kunhardt
Dyllan McGee

Associate Producers
Konstantinos Kambouroglou
Ben Robbins

Senior Historical Consultant
Philip B. Kunhardt III

Historical Consultants
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Allen Guelzo
Harold Holzer
James Horton

Director of Photography
Stephen McCarthy

Composer
Joel Goodman

Associate Editor
Jenna Bliss

Editorial Assistant
Jamila Ephron

Field Production Assistants
Adam Aslan
Shaun Blake
Thomas Dooley
Greg Dunham
James Green
Devindra Sooknanan
Tony Thompson
Derrick Vidas
Aziza Ngozi Walker
Josh Wright

Office Production Assistant
Danielle Varga

Additional Camera
Sam Shinn
Ava Berkofsky
Michael Chin
Ines Sommer
Chris Teague
Clarence Ting

Sound Recordists
Joe Maggio
Mark Mandler
Rich Pooler
Len Schmitz
George Shafnacker
Russ White

Camera Assistants
Matt Caulk
James Green
Aaron Kovalchik
Josh Wright

Graphics
John Vondracek

Director of Animation
R.A. Fedde

Stills Animator
John Lee

Audio Mix
Bill Cavanaugh

Narration Recording
Brian Heidebrecht
Kevin Jette
Dana Brennan

Colorist
Eli Friedman

Online Titling
Ron Procaccio

Interns
Megan Abell
Kalle Ahl
Hayden Bird
Hilary Gaines
Ben Gold
Katy Haas
Laura Hutson
Rebecca Lasky
Ariel Sheeger
Zeynep Uygun

Bookkeeper
Stef Gordon

Archives
ABCNews VideoSource
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum
AP/Wide World Photos
Corbis (Bettmann/Flip Schulke)
©2006, J.D. Crowe, Mobile Register
Photo by Dean Franklin (wikimedia)
Getty Images
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Historic Films
Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.
Jeanne M. Kearns
Kentucky Historical Society
KRON4 News Archive
Library of Congress
University of Louisville Photographic Archives
Joseph N. Nathanson Collection of Lincolniana, McGill University Library
National Archives
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Artwork from Lloyd Ostendorf’s Abraham Lincoln, The Boy, The Man. Permission by Phil Wagner.
©2006, Jeff Parker, Florida Today
Picture History
Pond5
Revostock
U.S. Senate Collection
Thought Equity Motion
©2008, Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News

Wardrobe
Charles Davidson and The Andover Shop

Thanks
Joanne Kendall
Angela De Leon
Maggie Gates
Liza Gates
Tina Bennett
Bennett Ashley
Evelyn Higginbotham
Larry Bobo
Marcy Morgan
Asako Gladsjo
Douglas Wilson
Emma Ketteringham
Justin Haythe
Chief Justice Frank J. Williams
John Lupton
George Tinkham
Robert Mazrim
Bob Rogers

Special Thanks to
Looking for Lincoln and the
Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area

FOR THIRTEEN/ WNET
Coordinating Producer
Stephanie Carter

Project Manager
Julie Schapiro Thorman

Editor
Jevon Roush

For Kunhardt McGee Productions

Chief Counsel
Robert Gold

Business Affairs
Mary Farley

Production Coordinators
Mike Maron
Amy Rockefeller

Archival Research
Jill Cowan
Peter Kunhardt, Jr.

© 2009 WNET.ORG, Kunhardt McGee Productions, Inc., and Inkwell Films Inc.

This film is a production of WNET.ORG, Kunhardt McGee Productions and Inkwell Films in association with Ark Media.

Designer
Lenny Drozner

Pagebuilding
Brian Santalone

Creative Director
Nicholas Miller

Technical Director
Brian Lee

Director of Digital Strategy
David Hirmes

Director of Production
Daniel B. Greenberg

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Dan Goldman, Executive Director, thirteen.org. Bob Adleman, Business Manager.

© 2009 WNET.ORG. All rights reserved.

Looking for Lincoln Heritage Coalition

One Life: The Mask of Lincoln (National Portrait Gallery)

Lincoln Bicentennial website

Lincoln Home National Historic Site

Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site

Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project

Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life by William Henry Herndon, Jesse William Weik – 1892