JAMIE RICHARDSON: The JFK35 podcast is made possible through generous support from the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.
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BILL BARKER: And then imagine the Constitution of the United States, which begins in its first line. What is it? We the people. There's never been another system of government and law that begins with such a first line.
MATT PORTER: This week, the JFK Library invited actors to its Presidents' Day festival to portray historical figures like President Thomas Jefferson. Today, we'll speak with two of those performers and ask them what it's like to bring history alive next on JFK35.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
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MATT PORTER: Hello. I'm Matt Porter. Welcome to this episode of JFK35.
Each February, we take a moment to celebrate our past presidents and American history on Presidents' Day. The JFK Library hosts its annual Presidents' Day festival, which features actors who play past historical figures, like presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln among others. I was able to sit down with two of those living history interpreters-- Audrey Stuck-Girard from Boston, who has played Abigail Adams and other 18th century women for the last 10 years, and Bill Barker from Charlottesville, Virginia, who has played Thomas Jefferson for more than 40 years. This is my interview with them.
I guess the first question is, what is it like to be a living history interpreter, to put yourself in the shoes of someone who lived, in your cases, hundreds of years ago?
BILL BARKER: Ladies first, Audrey.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: I would say there is a lot of responsibility when you step into someone's shoes like this since these were real people who had firm beliefs and thoughts and consequences to their actions. You don't want to misrepresent or necessarily put words in their mouth or use someone's legacy or personal history to tell a different story than their own. So it's a constant juggle of is this something in my circumstance-- is this something that Abigail actually thought, believed, would act on, versus is this me pulling a little bit of Abigail's personality and using it for my own agenda?
So there's some-- yeah, definitely some heavy weight along with that. But when you have a person you're portraying who is as in depth and has such a legacy in the historical record as Abigail Adams or Thomas Jefferson, that is a wonderful, wonderful resource because we actually do have letters and correspondence, things where we can see in her own handwriting, this is Abigail saying, I believe this about this. So, good tools and it makes it a bit easier not to misrepresent them when you're able to use their actual words.
BILL BARKER: Right on, and particularly letters between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams. I couldn't agree more with that weight and responsibility. That is on one shoulders to get these individuals right, to be able to step in their shoes in their world and to realize the great differences over 200 years in time. Often, we submit ourselves to what is called presentism and in this particular year 2023 to be too ready to put on to the past what we take for granted today without realizing this was a different world 200 years ago, 250, 300 years ago, that so much was still the wilderness and the forest primeval in North America, that there were very few urban markets or centers of trade and commerce, that most people lived on farms, and that most people were continuing to migrate westward into the wilderness.
And when you take on that persona and that frame of mind and that witnessing of that particular world, you're trying to tell a story, and you're trying to hope the future will be able to see into that past, see something different than what we see every day here in our modern world, and come to a better understanding of these individuals in their time and what they were doing in order to improve their conditions and in order to hope the future will be able to live a better life, a healthier life, a more free life to-- that the future might fulfill their capacity much more to what they want to be that might be possible in the early 19th century or the 18th century.
MATT PORTER: And this gets to a point I want to ask both of you, but I'll start with you, Bill. You know, you're both men and women out of time, right? You exist in a different century, a different period of American development.
But the people who are interacting with you live today and see-- they see both of your characters' legacies through visions of today. For example, Bill, I'm sure this is a common question. I saw you get it today at the Presidents' Day Festival here-- Thomas Jefferson's problematic relationships with having slaves.
And obviously, in today's culture, that is a very different situation than for Jefferson, who lived in the 18th century. How do you answer questions like that? How do you prepare yourself to try to answer not as Bill Barker, the person who understands the character and the time, but as Thomas Jefferson, who doesn't live during today's time and needs to talk to someone who does, and explain your relationship there?
BILL BARKER: Well, first and foremost, I hope the individual is familiar with our Declaration of American Independence because there's his stand upon this particular subject. Jefferson knows the question that's going to be asked even before you ask it because he's been asked it. He's had to struggle and wrestle with this during his own life.
He was born into a slave-owning society. He inherited, at the age of 14, his father's free holdings, meaning that his father, Colonel Peter Jefferson, owned, at that time, over 3,500 acres outright-- there was no debt-- and that Colonel Peter Jefferson owned the majority of families living on that acreage. So this is the world into which Jefferson was born.
This is representative in his time and in his person and family the former colony of Virginia in the midst of 12 other colonies and that there was slavery in every single one of them. And this was not overnight. This was for generations.
This is for centuries. And to know that Jefferson and many others have written that while we were the colonies of Great Britain, there was nothing we could do to end the importation of enslaved, and we tried to end it. Even before he wrote the Declaration of American independence, he wrote what was titled The Summary View of the Rights of British America.
This was published in Williamsburg the summer of 1774. It was brought up to Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress which Jefferson had hoped to attend. He fell ill. He couldn't go there.
And so his name does not even appear on this pamphlet. But my point, he writes-- and you can find copies of this still available. On the bottom of page 16 to the top of page 17, for the most trifling reasons, I quote, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, His Majesty has denied laws of the most salutary tendency.
The abolition of domestic slavery is the general desire in those colonies in which it first began. But previous to the freeing of the enslaved we have, it is necessary to cease any further importations. And yet our repeated attempts to affect that by prohibitions, by duties, by petitions which might amount to a prohibition, have received his Majesty's negative. End quote.
So this is two years before he writes not only the first two paragraphs of the Declaration, all men are created equal-- and by that, men capitalized means mankind. They all understood we're not created equal in face or form. We're not created equal in mental capacity one individual compared with another. But we are all created free in nature. We're all born free.
The second part of the Declaration is a long litany of all of the grievances for which we never received redress. And so we hope the future will understand, as Jefferson and the 13 colonies all understood, we're told we have all the rights of Englishmen, particularly the right to petition for redress of grievances. And yet they were not represented in Parliament. We have no representation. People yell taxes, taxes. The taxes were minimal, and anyone could have afforded to pay those taxes, particularly the Threepenny tax on tea.
It is the fact that there was no representation. So my point, within that litany of grievances, he also writes, the King is indeed a tyrant for ignoring our petitions to end the importation of enslaved-- for capturing a poor people, bringing them half way about the globe to subject them to indentured servitude for life, waging cruel war against a people who never did him any harm. Now, you may all search for that clause within those grievances.
You're not going to find it because two delegates representing two different colonies-- the one, South Carolina, the other, Georgia-- refused to vote on behalf of the Declaration so long as that clause remained in there. So that clause was struck in order to maintain-- what did Lincoln have to work on, well, nigh 100 years later-- in order to maintain the Union. What are we going to do to keep us together?
That's the most remarkable thing we've accomplished to begin with, to bring 13 individual nations together. So this subject of slavery will continue to divide our new nation, and we will no longer be able to blame it on the British. This is something that Jefferson is going to contend with when he has the honor, before he leaves the presidency, to sign legislation that ends the importation of enslaved to our nation.
But it does not end the commerce. And when we have that Missouri Compromise admitting Maine as the 23rd state free and then we admit the vast territory of Missouri as our 24th state enslaved, what does Jefferson say? This is a firebell in the night. It could signal the knell of our Union. All I fear do not see that speck on our horizon that will fall upon us as a great tornado. So you realize this grappling upon this particular subject is something that Jefferson and so many, many others-- the Adams, particularly. Oh my heavens, the Adams and Franklin and Alexander Hamilton-- grappled with their entire lives.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: If I may, I'd like to add to this. Very eloquently spoken, Bill, about the efforts and ideas of the people living in the time period, even those conflicted with the circumstance of enslaving people, owning humans, and also trying to lay the groundwork for hopefully a nation where that would not be the case someday, but very complicated and no one person had answers, and as we all know, eventually, there was Civil War as a result of it.
But speaking to the question of ourselves as 21st century people bringing to life the story of these 18th century personas, I personally, Audrey, find it very important to lay out the complexities of a person. It's very easy, for example, in contrasting Jefferson in the south and Adams in the north to say, oh, well, the north didn't have the slaves and whatnot. There were certainly enslaved people in the northern colonies in the early northern states.
And while John Adams and Abigail Adams did not own any humans themselves, Abigail grew up in a house with enslaved servants and lived and interacted with them on a regular basis. And then after slavery was ended in Massachusetts, there were a few people who had been part of her father's house, an enslaved woman named Phoebe Abdi, who was a very dear person in Abigail's life for the rest of her life, and ended up being one of Abigail's tenants for years.
When she went to Europe to join John, she asked Phoebe to live in their house rent free so that it would be seen to, and Phoebe got the benefit of living without rent for several years, and Abigail got the benefit of making sure that the house wasn't being vandalized or going to ruin. But these are complicated circumstances. And even then, even though she was a supporter of universal education and very boldly spoke up about the fact that Black people should have education, should have opportunities, it was also clear in her writings that she had difficult feelings around people of color and certainly some of that white guilt and certainly some of the fear of the unknown.
While there were enslaved people in New England in the early years of the nation, they were outnumbered by white people in the area. And so Abigail had some heebie jeebies around racial politics that I, Audrey, want to make sure I am being clear about because I would never want to say, oh no, well, they didn't own slaves, so they were fine, and they were completely absolved of that human sin of having enslaved people. No, it was complicated, and certainly, the Adamses, even without owning slaves themselves, were beneficiaries of a system where it was so very entrenched. So it is difficult to straddle the line of speaking as she felt and saying, no, I want to make sure that this young Black man in my service has a full education, I want to make sure that Phoebe is a respected woman, but also some really awkward things to wrap your head around as a person in the 21st century, and I don't want to misrepresent or make it seem like it's absolved.
BILL BARKER: Exactly, or make it seem like we're making excuses either, I mean, because they are, in many ways, excuses when you look at it from 200 years in the future that-- but then what about in their time? You know, how may they be judged in their time with what they have inherited as to what they are doing about it? You know, and maybe a lot of that is stalling, or maybe a lot of that is increasing fear and concern of what could happen. You know, Jefferson wrote something very profound in his time. He said, far too many incongruities and accusations against these people for so long will not be easily forgotten by them.
MATT PORTER: So, he foresaw things, and they both had issues. It's really great to know that you guys have done so much work to see what they've written to be able to talk about these issues. I do want to touch on a few other things. Audrey this goes to you, which is Thomas Jefferson is fairly well known, covered well in the history books, and some would probably say, unfortunately, the first ladies are not often covered as well. So for you, when you're probably talking to an audience who knows maybe not very much about Abigail Adams or who she was, what is that like for you, and what are those conversations that you tend to have with people who interact with you?
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: Very good question, and you are entirely right. Too often, the women of history are not fully documented or have the flesh of their personas really brought forward and left for the average person to see. And even someone like Abigail Adams, who is honestly a household name with most Americans-- people have heard of John Adams.
They know he was a president, and they've probably heard of Abigail as well. That makes her one of the women of the 18th century that we really a great deal about. But even then, she's normally just distilled down to that three word phrase. Remember the ladies.
And the letter in which she wrote the phrase remember the ladies is important, and she put forward a lot of interesting ideas in that exchange and the following letters between her and John, where they sort of rattle back and forth about in this new nation that we're devising this-- so 1776, when they're writing these letters to each other. As we're coming up with this new code of laws and conduct and we're thinking towards these Utopian ideals, how do we construct a city on a hill, shining new nation, remember that there are half of us in this country who have previously been overlooked. But still, yes, just those three words is such an oversimplification of this person.
Portraying Abigail is incredibly fortunate because we do have her words and writing. So many women who, even if they were somehow at some point in the historical record, either through their own letters or writing or some documentation of something that happened in their lives. Far too often, either those personal letters or writings were destroyed at the end of their lives or the stories, the narratives are all crafted within the realm of the men that they lived near so that you have-- you learn about Dolley Madison because you learn about President Madison, and it's this little subset to the historical narrative. So, having a person whose hundreds of letters that she wrote to her husband, to her sisters, her children, her cousins, friends, for decades of her life is a beautiful treasure trove of a resource to be able to operate off of and to bring this person to life again.
MATT PORTER: And one of the things I find most interesting is not just when you're interacting with, again, people from the 21st century. But when you interact with each other-- and in the case of two, you're both of you-- both of your characters lived at the same time together, and your husband, who was also here on Presidents' Day, can interact with you. How do you guys-- because to me, it's very interesting to see how you guys actually talk to each other and kind of react to each other.
What do you guys feel about that and how you prepare to, like-- you're not just walking encyclopedias or dictionaries, but you are living people that say like, hey, I remember you and things like that. Sometimes, you, Bill Barker, who are playing Jefferson, and Adams sometimes get a little prickly at times. Tell us a little bit about what you do when you encounter each other and what's that like for you.
BILL BARKER: Well, Audrey, I think you'd agree that we're actors. We're actors. So you know, it is our job.
It is our art to take on that persona, to take on that character, to take on the innards and outers, outsides, of these individuals as they feel and interact with one or the other. So it's like when you're on stage. Between the time the curtain goes up and the curtain goes down, that's all that the audience is going to see as you stand there interacting reciting lines out of a play.
But when you're interpreting, when you're in that first person historical persona, yeah, they're the lines as the script more or less. But if you try to get every single word of those letters between them scripted in what you're saying, oh, it's dull. I mean, are you really performing it unless you're truly interacting it and realizing, well, they may have used those words for that particular letter, but when they're speaking with one or the other, they're using different words?
They're human. They're interacting. They're able to look at one and the other and get a sense of vibes and feelings that are coming from one or the other.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: Right.
BILL BARKER: And I think that's the job, isn't it? That's the effort-- to breathe history so it can come alive and sustain itself in the future.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: It's also interesting to, as Bill and I do, sometimes the events that we do, there is a specific day in history that we are inhabiting and living in. This is August 1 of 1801, and President Jefferson is recently in office, and the Adamses are back home in Massachusetts. And at that point, there were some very strong beliefs that was not a happy time between Mr. Jefferson and the Adamses, and it would be years until they began correspondence again.
Abigail actually began writing to Mr. Jefferson before John did after this period of time because of the passing of Jefferson's daughter who, as a younger child, Abigail had watched and cared for for a period of time when they were living in England. And in that interim time, so the end of the Adams presidency, beginning of Jefferson's presidency, some strong animosity between these people. But if you look at an earlier period of their life, they're enthralled with the brilliance of each other's minds and the way they can share their fascination with literature and high ideals and art and culture and everything they experience together.
And then later in their life, especially between John, who outlived Abigail, and between Thomas Jefferson, an appreciation of the places they had been and a realization of this is the legacy of what we have left in history. And if we continue to write to each other, we can have a new chapter. And that friendship was rekindled.
So it's also hard to go back and say, all right, if it's one day in history, I can definitely pinpoint Abigail felt this way about Thomas Jefferson in August of 1801. If you say I am Abigail from the amorphous time period of the life of Abigail Adams, then you have a whole range of feelings and opinions about these people you're interacting with. So, like Bill said, it does go to those moments of living and breathing in the shoes of the person and being able to pick up on what's being put forward by the other actor who is bringing life to their own persona.
MATT PORTER: And this has been such a great conversation. I wish I could keep asking you so many more questions, but I'm to ask you guys one more question for both of you, which is in your work studying your character's history, is there a particular part of their story, part of their history, moment in their life, that for you, you really grab on and are like, this is something about Abigail that I really connect with or really resonate with? And the same for Thomas Jefferson, and we'll start with Abigail.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: I've been thinking about this a lot at least recently because I am working on another program that is one of those amorphous Abigail Adams of her life rather than one specific day. So, trying to pick sort of the central theme of what I'll talk about. Abigail, at the tail end of her life, when she realized that she was approaching her final years, wrote a will of sorts.
It wasn't a legal document because women had no right to own property of their own. Everything that was owned by Abigail was actually owned by John. So she had no legal standing to write a will of her own.
But decades prior, she had, from a little inheritance, she had gotten from when her mother passed away, started making investments or using that little bit of capital to acquire what she called her pin money, which she then often put back to the use for her family, either purchasing stocks and bonds, making investments to further the family, buying land in northern Vermont that she would bequeath to her children. So she had this little bit that she truly did hold in her heart and believe as her own even though there was no legal standing to it. And at the end of her life, she made provision for the remaining benefits of that little bit that she believed to be her own to be bequeathed a little bit to her two surviving sons but primarily the people she recognized were her granddaughters and her nieces, especially the unmarried ones-- so, these young women who she wanted to make sure had just that little bit more leg up because they were not legally provided for by the state or by the country.
So she left shares of the Weymouth toll bridge to her granddaughters and used those last actions to further promote the women who would come after her. And that action so beautifully encapsulates what she lived her life trying to do. Yeah, that's my Abigail beautiful moment.
MATT PORTER: Oh, that's great.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: Yeah.
BILL BARKER: It's a privilege to be able to do what we do and to share it in and breathe that life from the past so that people might get a sense of that breath today. Part of that is being able to portray Mr. Jefferson on site at Monticello upon the grounds he actually walked through the house that he designed and saw so much life in that house. And by that, I mean not only births but marriages and more than their fair share of death inside that house and around Monticello and his adjoining farms.
But another privilege is being able to come here to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum and breathe that life into so much of what President Kennedy represented. I remember those days. I remember them vividly. And I remember that President Kennedy often quoted Thomas Jefferson.
In fact, I believe that there was only one other 20th century president that quoted Jefferson as much, and that was Franklin D Roosevelt, with whom Joseph P. Kennedy was quite familiar as he served as our ambassador to England during FDR's administration. So, to come up to the JFK Library and Museum and to do this work, to breathe this history, history which was such a love of President Kennedy, as we already know, and see the present generations kind of see that glimmer of hope and to sense that spirit which is so much of who we are as Americans the President Kennedy represented, it is a deeply moving and emotional experience. And we're sitting here now in this particular room looking at photographs of President Kennedy on the wall, and there is a vitality, and there is a youth.
But there is a spirit that he represented in those days, those early '60s. And while this museum does such a wonderful job of resuscitating, reinvigorating that spirit, it also does equally as wonderful a job as portraying what he contended with, what President Kennedy contended with during his short, short time and what we're still contending with and hope that that spirit can remain alive in us to continue to rectify things that could otherwise tear us apart. You know, it's interesting that we still look upon Thomas Jefferson or Abigail Adams and John Adams.
As you were saying, you know, they leave us their letters. They leave us a lot of the words. But there's still so much about them we don't know.
And I cannot help but think in what has only been a short history, what, 50 years ago that this was President Kennedy's last year as president, 50 years ago. And I cannot help but think of that by biography, and I beg pardon that I'm forgetting the author. But what a wonderful title, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye. And look how it resonates now 50 years later. And we're still coming here, and we're still revisiting and wanting to know him in his history. So, this resonates from one generation to the next as Americans, our spirit.
MATT PORTER: I don't think I couldn't have said it better, and thank you for both of you because of your work, we are also able to continue to revisit Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the other living history presidents and first ladies of our time. So, thank you for giving you your time to come here, and thank you for taking a moment to talk to us on the podcast.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: Thank you so much for having us.
BILL BARKER: --very much.
AUDREY STUCK-GIRARD: It's a pleasure to be a part of this.
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MATT PORTER: Thank you for joining us today. Bill Barker and Audrey Stuck-Girard's performances from this year's Presidents' Day Festival are available to watch online. You can find links to their performances as well as the performances of presidents John Adams and Abraham Lincoln on our podcast page.
If you have questions or story ideas, email us at jfk35pod@jfklfoundation.org or tweet us @JFKLibrary using the hashtag #JFK35. If you liked what you heard today, please consider subscribing to our podcast or leaving us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening and have a great day.