1. Lincoln and the Problem of Race: A Decade of Interpretations

Abstract

i-iong before Alex Haley popularized the idea of "roots," Ameri cans have been concerned with the search for ancestors. The attempt to answer the question, "Who are we?" has often been answered by another question, "Where did we come from?" Al though historians have been responsible for drafting answers to these questions, neither the questions nor the answers are exclu sively within the domain of historians. Popular culture has its own answers, and we have, in fact, often witnessed a real tension between popular history and professional history in answering vital questions about who we are and where we came from. In the 1960s, when race was an overriding concern, our search for self-definition through looking at our roots led to a heated controversy over the real meaning of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was one in a series of American founding fathers, and his views on slavery and race might provide a guide for those troubled days. The popular view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator could provide a source for an American commitment to racial justice. Yet, this picture could lead to an obvious question?if Lincoln pointed the way to racial justice, why, in over one hundred years,