The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. In June, 1871, French sculptor, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi arrived in New York City with his assistant Marie Simon. Bartholdi was in the United States to raise funds for and find a location for a massive statue that he intended to build and gift to the United States. The project was called Liberty Enlightening the World, and Bartholdi and his friends in the French American Union conceived of it as a token of the long friendship between France and the US. French author and professor Edouard Rene de Laboulaye, an abolitionist who was a deep admirer of the American Republic, had encouraged Bartholdi to travel to the US. It was during a dinner party hosted by Laboulaye that the idea of the sculpture first arose. During his five month trip, Bartholdi met many prominent Americans, including President Grant, Senator Charles Sumner, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Brigham Young, and he realized that American interest in the statue was greatest if he pitched it as part of a centennial celebration of the country, although he wouldn't actually make that deadline. The French people began to contribute toward the cost of the statue, while the Americans fundraised for the pedestal. The US Congress voted in February, 1877, to designate a site for the statue. On Bartholdi's trip, he had chosen Bedloe Island in Upper New York Bay, which was then the site of a fort, and Congress agreed to the location. In 1956, the island was renamed Liberty Island. Even before Congress approved the site, or the funds were raised, Bartholdi set to work trying to figure out how to create the enormous statue shaped like a woman with her right arm upraised, holding a torch. Laboulaye had approved his plaster model, and Bartholdi set to work creating the hand and torch, which he then sent to the US for display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Bartholdi hired civil engineer, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who would later construct the Eiffel Tower, to devise the structure of the statue, which posed challenges because of the height and the weather elements it would face in New York Harbor, including wind. Eiffel's solution was a massive inner framework of iron over which the copper sheets would be draped. Pedestal work began in the US in 1885, but it stopped when they ran out of funds. It was Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, who ran a successful fundraising campaign to save the project. Lady Liberty arrived in New York Harbor in pieces in 1885, but it was put in storage for a year while the pedestal work was completed. In 1886, with the pedestal finally finished, the pieces of the statue were reassembled by a majority immigrant workforce. Finally, on October 28, 1886, Bartholdi formally unveiled Liberty Enlightening the World. President Grover Cleveland accepted the gift on behalf of the United States, calling Bartholdi, "the greatest man in America today." A few decades later, two men, New Yorkers this time, instead of French, began to discuss a different kind of landmark project for the city. Their discussion occurred not in a Laboulaye style dinner party, but, according to legend, in a men's room. According to actor Eddie Dowling, John J. Raskob, former head of finance for General Motors, approached former New York Governor Al Smith at the Lotos Club's urinals. Smith had recently lost the 1928 presidential election to Herbert Hoover, and Raskob had a new venture for him to pursue. Supposedly, Raskob said to Smith, "Don't worry, Al. I'm going to build a new skyscraper, biggest in the world, and you're going to be president of the company." Smith agreed to Raskob's offer of a $50,000 a year salary, and they got to work planning for the largest building, not just in New York, but in the world, which meant topping the recently completed Chrysler Building, which, with its silver spike, reached 1046 feet. Just two months after their building project was announced in 1929, the stock market crashed, triggering what would become the Great Depression. Still, Raskob and Smith carried on with their plans, selecting a site at Fifth Avenue and 34th St,  where the outdated Waldorf Astoria Hotel was for sale, primed for demolition and redevelopment. Rather than naming the building after himself, Raskob chose a moniker that evoked New York itself, calling it the Empire State Building, after George Washington's reference to New York as the seat of the empire. As Smith explained, the building was, "intended to stimulate trade, commerce, and continue to make New York the imperial city of the world." Smith, as the public face of the project, was a key piece of Rascobs' vision. Promotional materials described Smith as, "so well known to the public that his very presence placed the seal of integrity upon the undertaking." The architectural plans were revised several times in a bid to ensure that the Empire State Building would remain the tallest building in the world. Once they began work, the building was constructed quickly at a pace of four and a half floors per week, with a total timeline lasting just a year and 45 days. Of course, Raskob and Smith didn't do that physical construction work themselves. It took more than 3000 workers to produce the building, including raising the 57,000 tons of steel making up the building's frame, pouring 62,000 cubic yards of concrete, installing 64,000 windows and 67 elevators, and laying 10 million bricks. On May 1, 1931, President Herbert Hoover, Smith's rival for the presidency, pressed a button in the White House that turned on the lights of the Empire State Building in New York, symbolically opening the building. It remained the world's tallest building at 102 stories and 1250 feet until the World Trade Center opened in 1972. Around three and a half million people visit the Statue of Liberty each year, which is now operated as part of the National Park Service and is accessible only by ferry. The observation deck of the Empire State Building sees about 4 million visitors per year. The building is now owned and operated by a publicly traded real estate investment company called Empire State Realty Trust Incorporated, and the building continues to operate as an office tower, housing over 1000 companies, including LinkedIn, Shutterstock, and Workday. Joining me in this episode is writer, historian, and freelance editor, Dr. Vaneesa Cook, author of, "Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks."

Hi, Vaneesa. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  10:29  
 Thank you, Kelly. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  10:30  
Yeah, I am looking forward to this conversation. I want to start by asking a little bit. This is, I believe, your second book, so what got you started on this topic, on thinking this would be a project you wanted to work on?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  10:44  
So the idea for this book stemmed from an incident that happened in the summer of 1945, and for several years I kept on hearing reminisces about this incident, particularly on like this day in history, July 28, they would talk about the day when a World War II pilot accidentally crashed his B 25 into the upper floors of the Empire State Building, and what a huge disaster that was for the damage of the building and killing several people, and how that was this interesting tidbit about the Empire State Building history. And whenever I heard that over the years, something inside of me told me there was a book there, and I wasn't quite sure how to delve into that topic, or what kind of material I could extrapolate from that one incident. So, at first, I intended to write a book about the history of the Empire State Building, and include that anecdote in it, but then I realized that there were already a couple of books written about that topic, and very well researched, so then I came up with the idea of, oh, well, there's the Empire State Building as a prominent landmark in New York City, also the Statue of Liberty is right there, and we don't usually think about them in conversation with each other. And then I realized one of them represents or symbolizes empire, the other symbolizes liberty, and as a historian, I knew that narrative very well about how the United States has tried to reconcile empire and liberty throughout our history, the tensions between those two, and so I already had that narrative to draw upon and weave into the story of the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty. So I'm really telling three different stories interwoven in this book, one about the conception, construction, and reception of the Empire State Building, same with the Statue of Liberty, the idea behind it, the construction or building of it, and then the unveiling and public interpretation of it, but then also throughout the chapters I talk about that history of trying to work out empire and liberty, the United States as an expanding empire over the last 200 years, and then also a nation dedicated to liberty, and the debates about that.

Kelly Therese Pollock  13:05  
So, you're as you just mentioned, you're telling this kind of larger story of American history. How did you conceptualize putting this all together into a story? What are the sources you drew on, and how did you sort of figure out what that framework might look like?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  13:21  
Yeah, so I did read, research, or use for research some of those books that I mentioned that were already written about the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty as a baseline to get, you know, just a sense of that history for each of the landmarks, but then I was very deliberately trying to tell this story through people, because I didn't want it to be this cold, you know, architectural history of these two structures. I wanted to bring in familiar names to appeal to a general audience, which the book does, and so I found I curated and included a lot of anecdotes and wrote them as vignettes throughout the book, and so there are a lot of familiar names, and some interesting, maybe little-known facts about familiar historical figures, such as Henry Ford, Frank Baum, who was the author of the Wizard of Oz series, Helen Keller, who went to the top of the Empire State Building, and even though she was deaf and blind, gave a very vivid description of her experience up there. People like Jane Addams, Queen Elizabeth, presidents throughout US history, from George Washington to Lincoln to FDR, JFK, they all feature prominently. Donald Trump, not into his presidency, but he happened to be a partial owner of the Empire State Building in the 1990s and there was a lot of controversy about that ownership and his approach to the ownership, and so there's a lot of familiar names that will pop up as you're reading this, and and maybe you'll think about these people in a different way. Also, there's a lot of pop culture references with the two landmarks. So the movie, King Kong was very instrumental in bringing attention to the Empire State Building, that movie in the 1930s the movie Rocky, other films that that the two landmarks appear in, and so that kind of exposure increased their visibility of the public and helped make them icons.

Kelly Therese Pollock  15:18  
Let's talk then a little bit about the origins of the Statue of Liberty. So I think a lot of people probably think of it as this monument to immigration, and that's of course not how it started out. So, can you talk some about what, what the background of that looked like, why the people who conceptualized, created it did so?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  15:41  
Yeah, I think that I learned a lot, or I realized a lot starting this research that I didn't know about the intention of the Statue of Liberty, and where that idea got started. So, I assume that a lot of people don't know that. It really started right at the end of the US Civil War. There were these French, a group of French Republicans who had always admired the US Republic, and they were kind of jealous that, you know, the US had this republic, and the French weren't able to make that happen. They were going through different waves of monarchies and dictatorships. So, there was a group of French Republicans led by Edouard Laboulaye, who, after the US Civil War, they were so relieved that the war had not destroyed the US Republic, that held so much promise as an example for the rest of the world, and they were also very pleased that liberty had been extended to more people, all the former enslaved Black Americans. And so Laboulaye wanted to offer a gift to the United States, particularly Lincoln. He revered Lincoln, and Lincoln had been assassinated, but he sent something to Mary Todd, and he wanted to send a gift statue to the United States, and so he mentioned this in the company of young sculptor Frederic Bartholdi. Bartholdi took a long time to pursue the idea in the United States, and then also to construct it, and so it was decades, a decades long process. During that process, the intention and the meaning behind the statue from Bartholdi's perspective changed. By the time that he finished it in the 1880s, it had been, you know, 20 years since the Civil War, and so that seemed passe, but as he toured the United States, he realized that it was coming up on the centennial celebration, so he came here in the 1870s and realized that, oh, there's this 1876 celebration that's imminent, so maybe I can tie it to that and and still celebrate the US Republic, but more towards the independence in 1776. And that's why on the tablet of the Statue of Liberty she does have that date on there, 1776, and many people might not know that there are broken chains under one of the feet of the statue, and that is the only reference left to that original intention of commemorating the emancipation of slaves and the end of the civil war.

Kelly Therese Pollock  18:05  
So then let's think about the Empire State Building and the background and construction of it. And I hadn't realized that Al Smith was part of that story. So what, perhaps a little more straightforward of a story, why do you build a tall building? Because you know you're building a tall building, but you know what? What was the background of that?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  18:25  
Yeah, so that construction happened a lot faster. It's 13 months, I think, a little over a year from opening day, when they started the foundation and started construction. And Al Smith was instrumental in that. He had run for president and lost to Hoover and the former governor of New York, native son of New York, needed something else to do. So a wealthy financial guy named John Raskob came to him, and they had been friends through the Democratic Party, and Raskob said, "Hey, I have an idea to buy this parcel of land in New York City and build this huge skyscraper, and I want you to help me promote it." And so that's where that collaboration came from. And Al Smith was very associated with the building from start to finish, and they did not make the money they intended at first, because even though the plans were being finalized at the end of the 1920s the stock market crash and the Great Depression happened, and so they weren't personally affected by it, but the building, when it opened in 1931 just didn't get the rental space from businesses that they were hoping for, because of the tight times. They did get some money from tourism from people wanting to go up to the observation deck, but that didn't make them solvent until after after World War II.  

Kelly Therese Pollock  19:44  
Liberty, empire, both kind of complicated concepts and meaning changes a lot over time, especially for liberty. Let's start with liberty. What did Bertoldi, Laboulaye, what did they think of liberty? Like, what was the meaning for them, and then how does that shift over the course of, you know, it's, it's now been over a century since then, you know, what does that look like over time?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  20:13  
For them, for the French Republicans who gifted the statue, like Laboulaye and Bartholdi, and that cohort, including descendants of Marquis Lafayette, liberty was very much connected to Republican values, so republicanism, which meant representative government from the people, by the people, and that is something that was very rare, even in the 1860s when they had this idea about the statue. And so, because it was so rare, and the United States was going through this experiment of trying to maintain a republic, that was, that was very.. it drew their admiration. They didn't.. they, and I talk about this a little in the book, they did make a distinction to democracy. Full-fledged democracy to them was a little bit dangerous, because they were afraid it could devolve into mob rule, and they had seen that happen in 1789 for example, and so they, they did think there should be this buffer of representatives in Congress or some other assembly, but I think they did want it to be expanded to more people over time. They realized that the United States didn't completely live up to that promise, even after the emancipation of slaves, there was still women who did not have full citizenship rights, including the right to vote, until 1920. And so that was something that they, they hoped for, that the republic in the United States would continue to expand those rights and live up to that promise. Today, I think it's still similar, I, you know, that kind of definition. I think that more and more people are demanding those rights or fighting for them as minority groups and excluded groups, and I think it's important to recognize that liberties once gained aren't secure forever, that they can be pushed back, and we're seeing that today, so it's a constant struggle to demand liberty from powers that be.

Kelly Therese Pollock  22:07  
Yeah, part of the story that's interesting here is the role of government in securing or limiting liberty. I think that's especially clear as you're talking about FDR and the New Deal, and Al Smith, of course, who was a Democrat, and you know, had competed with FDR for the nomination, has a very different view of what the role of government should be. Could you talk some about that?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  22:34  
Yeah, so there was some tension between Al Smith and his Democratic Party rival, Franklin Roosevelt, especially when Roosevelt became president, and the New Deal really expanded a lot of executive power and democratic power, centralized at the top with all these programs that were being created by the federal government. And so Al Smith did speak out, and he actually paired up with, teamed up with Herbert Hoover, in a lot of this criticism, because Hoover, as a Republican who believed in small government didn't want that kind of centralized power from from the executive, and so they did speak up against it, the New Deal in particular, But there was also, for Hoover, at least, an economic component to it, that they believed that the government was controlling the economy too much, and that they were afraid it was going towards socialism in that leftward direction too far. So that was I talk about that debate in itself about economic freedom. For some people it can be all about the pursuit of your happiness and your wealth, and that should be a part of freedom, but then there's the other end where you start to exploit people or countries for that money making ability, and that can impinge on the freedom of other people.

Kelly Therese Pollock  23:47  
Of course, the occupants of the Empire State Building might be on that side of trying to make money and potentially exploiting people. You know, I think it's maybe people are starting to think more about this idea of American empire, but of course America has typically tried to, you know, sort of shy away from the empire label. Can you talk some about that? What, what that means for the United States to, throughout its entire history, been an empire, but yet try to present this view of it, and not exactly being an empire.

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  24:23  
Yeah, so that has a long history, going back to the Revolutionary era, and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson coined the phrase Empire of Liberty to label the United States as a special kind of empire that was, yes, we're expanding and taking over territory and increasing our power and influence, but we also want to remain dedicated to liberty, and so that's always been a very difficult straddle for the United States to reconcile those two things, because they are by definition opposites. The empire part, you know, is about exerting control over territory, in particular, but people and influencing people, and in foreign parts of the world. And the liberty part, of course, is about liberating people, and so the United States has used that rhetoric of liberty, even while expanding as an empire, especially throughout the world after 1898 when it acquired colonies and became, for all intents and purposes, an empire, but it still maintained that image of itself as liberty loving and trying to extend liberty to other people, and that was often the rationale for, say, the Philippines taking over the Philippines. Well, we don't want another empire to grab them and oppress them, so we'll maintain this control over them and teach them self government over time, and so that's been a common refrain throughout US history of of saying that we're really just controlling them until they're capable of self government, but that can look very different to the people around the world who are under that control or being pressured to do what the United States demands, and so it does tend to cause some resentment around the world that we see play out from time to time.

Kelly Therese Pollock  26:05  
Yeah, it's interesting to see the types of empire building that the US does as well, not always just going in and conquering, although that happens as well, but things like dollar diplomacy and good neighbors. What does that look like?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  26:21  
Yeah, so that's what's called soft power, and it has been employed by other traditional empires, like Great Britain or Spain, so it's not completely new, but the United States really ran with that idea as a way to convince itself and everyone else that it was still liberty-loving. The thought was that, as long as we're not, we don't have boots on the ground, or you know, a formal colonial relationship with these with with countries, then it's not technically imperialistic, but if you're pressuring countries with guns in a military invasion, or you're offering money incentives that they can't really say no to that's a, that's another form of empire that's, you know, a little bit softer, but you know it's more threatening, but it's still the US way of doing empire, really took advantage of those, those techniques.

Kelly Therese Pollock  27:13  
So we mentioned that at the beginning of its existence, the Statue of Liberty was not about immigration, but it, of course, develops this over time. How does that happen?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  27:25  
So, on opening day in October, 1886, there were some passing references. It wasn't, I would say, a focus of the speeches that day, even though steamships apparently were coming in through the harbor as the ceremony was going on. I think at least one speaker made a passing reference to the statue welcoming newcomers to the United States, and then the next day there were some newspaper reports that hit that theme as well, saying that, you know, there's this new statue with her, her torch aloft, welcoming in hopefuls to the United States who wanted to build a better life and enjoy more freedoms in this country. So, but Bartholdi, from the, from, from that beginning, he pushed against that a little bit. He really wanted this as a very general celebration of the Republic, the US Republic, and Republican values, and so he didn't want it to be pigeonholed into immigration specifically, but that that reference point became more prominent after Ellis Island opened in the early 1900s. So Ellis Island was not there as a processing center for immigrants when the Statue of Liberty was unveiled, but once it was and immigrants were being were entering the United States through Ellis Island, very close to Liberty Island, that connection became more clear. And then also in the late 1800s, you know, immigrants, future immigrants, would hear their family members who had already gone to the United States write letters home and say, "When you come, look for the Statue of Liberty," and so they really did look forward to that, and got emotional when they saw the Statue of Liberty, and very often used the statue as a reminder not to take liberty for granted, and to feel so lucky to be and be in the United States.

Kelly Therese Pollock  29:14  
You write throughout the book of the Statue of Liberty as a place of protest as well, including from literally its opening day. What are the kinds of protests that people are doing? Why are they choosing to do it in this place?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  29:30  
Yeah, that was one of the surprising things that when I was researching, I didn't realize how many protests had either happened at the Statue of Liberty site or that it was used as a form of protest, with you know, referring to it and writing a newspaper, editorials, or whatnot. So, from the very first day, as you said, there were a contingent of women from the New York State Suffrage Association. They rented a barge and had protest signs and a bullhorn, criticizing the Statue of Liberty that was in the form of a woman, and yet women couldn't even vote yet, and had limited rights. And so they really highlighted that hypocrisy of the United States, and women really weren't even allowed on Liberty, it was Bedloe Island at that point, but on the island during the ceremony, except for the two wives of the French dignitaries, who were there, including Bartholdi, but otherwise women did not have access to the island. They did not have access to the banquet dinners afterwards, so there was very clear exclusion that, that, that did, that did make that put that hypocrisy into relief, but you know, other minority groups as well called it a sham or referred to it as hypocrisy. Asian Americans who were mistreated in the country, Black Americans, there were items in newspapers calling out the Statue of Liberty for symbolizing unfulfilled promises. W. E. B. Du Bois, the famous Black intellectual, noted how, when he came back from Europe and saw the Statue of Liberty on one trip, he said, you know, isn't it ironic that she has her back toward America and the problems of race that are still such an issue here for limiting liberty. So it was women, Black Americans, Asian Americans, but then it was also used as a protest site for people who had issues with the Vietnam War. So, the veterans against the Vietnam War in the late 60s, early 70s, at one point they occupied the island for two days as a form of protest to get attention for calling for peace in Vietnam. Even Iranian, pro-Iranian Shah students in the United States. They occupied the island, but then it's also been ubiquitous in political commentary and political cartoons. So I do reference examples of that throughout the years, where Liberty is often drawn into cartoons to show how liberties are being violated.

Kelly Therese Pollock  32:06  
Yeah, and of course, the Empire State Building is in lots of popular culture. The image is used a lot, but interestingly, often not referred to Empire, but actually very romantic ideals, literally romantic ideals, when people are like meeting on the top of the Empire State Building. Do you have explanation for why that might be?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  32:29  
Yeah, that was another interesting reality that I picked up on. In fact, when I was first talking about the book to some friends and scholarly colleagues, and explaining the premise of the book, and I said, you know, how the Empire State Building symbolizes empire, and they gave me a quizzical look, and they were like, really? It represents empire? And I was like, well, it's in the name, first of all, but I kind of, I guess it kind of surprised me that people no longer associate the Empire State Building with that concept of empire when it was so clearly the intention of the builders and the promoters of the building in the 1930s, and you'll read the rhetoric in the book that you know Al Smith definitely put it in those terms, that this is a symbol to economic power of the United States and to our empire in New York being the hub of that. I guess it lost some of that over time, became more romanticized, especially because of its architectural beauty, and you know, its prominence in the skyline of New York as a landmark. And then movies incorporated into their love stories, as, as you mentioned, so you have "An Affair to Remember," with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and then, of course, "Sleepless in Seattle" doubles down on that in the 1990s and referred to an earlier movie and meeting at the top of the Empire State Building. So I think it took on a more romanticized and even innocent image over the decades, and that is also amplified by the construction of bigger skyscrapers, including the Twin Towers. When they were opened in the early 1970s that wasn't those towers were absolutely dedicated to economic power and extending US influence around the world, and so I think that symbolism shifted from the Empire State building to the World Trade Center towers, and they became used in films about economic greed or Wall Street, or whatever, and so that those towers took on that meaning, and they became the bigger skyscrapers in New York City. So, I think that helps explain it.

Kelly Therese Pollock  34:40  
So, I want to switch gears for just a minute, and ask you, you also do editing and indexing, and I would love to hear a little bit about indexing, and how, like, it feels like it must involve so many choices and decisions on what's important, what's not. So I wonder if you could just talk about that for a little bit.

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  35:00  
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. I do have my own freelance editing and indexing business. It's called ScholarScope, and I've been doing it since I graduated from grad school. I graduated a little over eight years ago, but the business is eight years, and I do index my own book. So, I did index the Empire and Liberty books, so if you're flipping through and using the index, you can see my work that way too. I do it for a variety of clients, academic clients, mostly historians, but a variety of topics, and it is a lot of people I think think of it as a very boring kind of accounting type of, you know, just inputting entries and the page number, and that is certainly part of it, but it's also creative, because you have to figure the book out, and you have to figure out how to organize the terms, and the people you have to know which people or terms are going to be mentioned so much that you have to subcategorize them, and so that's always a fun task of trying to figure that out. So yeah, it does involve a lot of decisions about how to organize the entries, which ones need sub entries and cross referencing, and all that kind of thing to make it as user friendly as possible.

Kelly Therese Pollock  36:14  
Empire and Liberty is a fascinating book. Can you tell listeners how they can get a copy?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  36:20  
Yes, it's available through most online booksellers, including Amazon, Walmart, other online formats, and websites like that. Check your local bookstore. If they don't have it, please ask for them to stock some copies, and also libraries. If you're, if your local library doesn't have it, please ask them to purchase a copy, and then also from the Beacon Press webpage, in particular, that's the publisher, so you can get it directly from them as well.

Kelly Therese Pollock  36:48  
Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  36:51  
I guess the takeaway that I would like readers to think about when they read this book is again thinking of the United States as an empire, which, as you mentioned, isn't usually the way we imagine our country, but it has been. But you know, empires are nothing new or special. In the history of the world, they've come and gone. Strong militaries aren't anything unique or special, they have also come and gone. But the liberty part, I think, is what makes the United States special, and it's what has earned the admiration of the world, even if it's imperfect, which it is. It still draws attention from the world and the hope of the world that it will continue, because almost everybody wants liberty and freedom, and they want that from their government and their nation as well. And so you know, think of the US as an empire, but what really makes it unique and special is the dedication to liberty and that ongoing struggle.

Kelly Therese Pollock  37:53  
Vaneesa, thank you so much for speaking with me today.

Dr. Vaneesa Cook  37:56  
Thank you very much. 

Teddy  38:14  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistoryPodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Instagram @Unsung__History or on Facebook @UnsungHistoryPodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@HistoryPodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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