Scott Simon talks to Colleen Shogan who leads the National Archives about the challenges facing the agency in a time of deep political polarization.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
How do you preserve the documents that help tell the story of America in a time when so many disagree about what that story is and where it begins and leads?
COLLEEN SHOGAN: This is the Declaration of Independence. You can see it’s somewhat faded.
SIMON: Colleen Shogan, archivist of the United States, showed us the vaulting rotunda of the National Archives.
SHOGAN: We have over a million people that come every year into this rotunda to see our founding documents. And these documents are in trust from the National Archives, but they really belong to the American people.
SIMON: These documents include, of course, the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and presidential thank-you notes and dinner menus, among the 13 billion records, a number that grows every day, email by email. In 2026, the rotunda will include the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Elsewhere in the archives, an exhibit explores some of the most charged chapters of American history from civil rights…
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Well, I would think of civil rights as those basic rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution.
SIMON: …To the failed effort to get the Equal Rights Amendment added to the Constitution in the 1970s…
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The Equal Rights Amendment should be ratified.
SIMON: …To snapshot of the complexity and controversy of America’s story. A recent report by The Wall Street Journal, based on several unnamed sources, accused archivist Colleen Shogan of putting a, quote, “rosy spin” on American history as part of a $40 million makeover at the Archives.
Of course, I have to ask about a Wall Street Journal article that came out in October that said, for example, you had replaced a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King leading a civil rights march with one of Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon shaking hands in the White House. Did that happen?
SHOGAN: No, it did not happen. And I just want to make it very clear that I have never taken down a picture or a record here at the National Archives and replaced it with something else other than our routine rotations that we do at the National Archives for preservation purposes. That particular instance, I believe, was a photograph of Martin Luther King that was considered to be part of a selfie station for kids in the educational center, where kids could take a picture with a famous person.
SIMON: They could pose with…
SHOGAN: They could pose…
SIMON: …Dr. King, you’re saying.
SHOGAN: …With the photograph using technology. And what we found was that picture of MLK was not suitable for a easy selfie. So we have replaced that chosen photograph with one of John Lewis, the civil rights icon, when he was crossing the Pettus Bridge, which is more suitable for a selfie.
SIMON: What about the allegation that, for example, the very haunting photographs Dorothea Lange took of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II, after the attack at Pearl Harbor, were removed?
SHOGAN: Right. We will also be discussing Japanese incarceration at several places in the exhibit. We have a terrific exhibit in the Rubenstein Gallery called “Records of Rights.” And in fact, we discuss Japanese incarceration fairly extensively in that exhibit. So we have many, many stories we want to be able to tell here at the National Archives through the 13 1/2 billion records. We would love to have the space to be able to tell all of them, but we do have to make choices.
SIMON: Yeah. How do you make those choices?
SHOGAN: Well, we make those choices in a way in which we have a lot of eyes on the projects. We have exhibit professionals. We have archivists. And then, when we make some of the choices, we take a step backwards and say, are we depicting the United States representationally in all of its diversity, in a fair and balanced manner, which really reflects the United States itself? We do want people to feel welcome, but I can’t control people’s reaction to the records that they see. The reactions that people have are going to depend upon their own background and their own personal experiences.
SIMON: Yeah. What are the challenges in these political times of trying to please everybody? As I don’t have to tell you, as a historian, everybody has stories that are important.
SHOGAN: That’s correct. And we do have to make choices. So I think when you are a nonpartisan leader in a time in which we have some political conflict and partisanship in the United States, you are probably not going to please everyone all of the time. But that’s why it’s so important that you adhere to those values of nonpartisanship. That’s why I would say it’s more important now than ever because of that.
SIMON: What do you think the archives can do for Americans?
SHOGAN: I think that Americans can come to the National Archives and actually feel a degree of unity because even if we disagree on policy or we disagree on politicians and what they do, I hope that we can agree on the basic principles of the United States, those principles that are contained in the Declaration of Independence, and then the framework of how we are going to protect those principles in both the Constitution, of course, our Bill of Rights. I hope we can agree upon the rules of the game and the principles of the game.
SIMON: I’m struck by the fact that the story never quite ends or ties up neatly, does it?
SHOGAN: No, it doesn’t. We are always going to be in pursuit of a more perfect union. So the story never ends as long as American democracy continues, and we should never want it to end. We should always be trying to figure out how we can better fulfill, once again, those principles and promises that Thomas Jefferson gave us in the Declaration. If we actually stop, that’s actually the end of democracy. I want to always see forward motion, moving forward, in the United States.
SIMON: Colleen Shogan, who is a national archivist of the United States. Thank you so much.
SHOGAN: Thank you.
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