♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein, and I'm gonna be in conversation today with Dr. Selwyn Vickers, who is the President and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and scholar in the Reconstruction of the United States which occurred after the Civil War.

Uh, and we are coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium at the New York Historical Society.

So let's talk first about your background.

So did you grow up in the South?

VICKERS: I did, David.

I grew up in Alabama.

Um, my parents were educators, um, who, uh, really felt education was the great equalizer.

So had grandparents who, uh, valued it as well.

My maternal grandmother, um, went to, uh, high school in the 1920s, but she had to travel 200 miles to find a high school and then ten summers to get her bachelor's degree in the 1940s and taught school for over 40 years, so, um, a strong sense of the value of education in our family.

Um, and equally on my father's side, um, my grandfather, uh, could not read and write until 44, and he taught himself how to read and write.

And he signed his name with an X before then, but became the mayor of his town, uh, after having 13 children by one wife, so big family.

RUBENSTEIN: So, so what city did you grow up in, in Alabama?

VICKERS: Tuscaloosa where my dad went to the University of Alabama and Huntsville is where I will call home.

RUBENSTEIN: So you grow up and say, "I wanna be a pancreatic cancer surgeon"?

Did you say that when you were a little boy?

VICKERS: No, no.

I-I had the fortune, uh, one of my father's brother, uh, was a physician in, in Dayton, Ohio.

I went to his graduation from the University of Cincinnati, and it was really unique for me to be able to touch and see somebody who was a physician 'cause I didn't see models of that in my community.

And that sorta really spurred my interest in becoming a physician.

RUBENSTEIN: So you went to, uh, undergraduate at Johns Hopkins.

VICKERS: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And were there a lot of Black undergraduates from Alabama at Johns Hopkins then?

VICKERS: Yeah, not many.

You know, I, I applied early decision, uh, because I knew I wanted to be a doctor.

I asked people, "Where do you go if you wanna be a doctor?"

I thought I was going to the medical school.

To my surprise, I was going to the undergrad.

(audience laughs).

Um, there were a class of 550, 17 African Americans, three of them were from Alabama.

RUBENSTEIN: But you also did go to the Johns Hopkins Medical School eventually.

VICKERS: I did, I did eventually go there.

RUBENSTEIN: And after you graduated, did you say, "I wanna be a pancreatic cancer surgeon" then?

VICKERS: You know, uh, I struggled to basically, um, deal with my passion because it was pretty long and rigorous.

I didn't know if I wanted to do it.

But at the end of the day, I realized that was the only thing I was really gonna be happy doing.

And so I, um, applied and got accepted to stay at surgery at Johns Hopkins, which at that time, and certainly over the time period, really became, I think, maybe the premier program in the country for surgical training.

RUBENSTEIN: So talk about Memorial Sloan Kettering.

When did, when did it start as a cancer center?

VICKERS: So, uh, 1884, uh, it became one of the first three comprehensive cancer centers in the 1970s.

Um, it's the oldest private and largest private, uh, comprehensive cancer center and really total cancer hospital and health system in the country.

So it's unique in the fact that it's larger than 80% of health systems in America but only focuses on cancer.

RUBENSTEIN: So you've been the CEO and president for about 18 months?

VICKERS: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: I should disclose I've been on the board of it for a while.

So, let's talk about Reconstruction.

VICKERS: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, you know, you're a cancer surgeon, and being a cancer surgeon is a pretty full-time job, and obviously, running a hospital is a full-time job as well.

So how did you have time to get interested in this, and when did you, you start that interest in the Reconstruction, uh, period of, of our history?

VICKERS: I grew at the edge of segregation in the early 60s.

My, my father, uh, in the 1930s, um, has this remarkable history, and one of the things he shared really asked me to begin looking at questions of our timing of our country's development.

In the late 1950s, he's a college-educated African American man, uh, with a degree in chemistry and mathematics.

He's a Korean War veteran, and he comes back to America, and he can't vote.

And I began to ask, uh, "I thought the 15th Amendment gave all people the right to vote."

Um, my dad says, "I understand why people may be frustrated in some ways at the flag," he says, "because I went and served and put my life on the line, and yet that flag didn't protect me with the basic rights of being American citizen."

Secondly, I had a, um, had a colleague, uh, at Johns Hopkins, a guy named Levi Watkins.

He was a mentor of mine.

And Levi, uh, as a young boy, uh, was Dr. King's driver.

He was a member of his church at Dexter Avenue but drove him, uh, during the time that he lived in Montgomery.

And Levi was the first African American cardiac surgeon to finish Johns Hopkins and became a-a good friend as he recruited me there.

And throughout the years as we maintained close ties and he couldn't get into the school I was the dean of when he applied.

At that time, my school would pay for African Americans to go out of state.

But Levi really helped me also understand the impact even though as a surgeon, there is an impact around both social responsibility, uh, and our societies that still have benefit for all people by reminding us both of history and understanding the impact that we can have as citizens today.

And the final person who really, I think, in the most recent years is Bryan Stevenson.

Bryan is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which really, if you haven't seen it, is a phenomenal place that takes us through the journey of the relationships of African Americans to this country particularly throughout the journey from Africa to here, but also the journey within this country itself.

RUBENSTEIN: Abraham Lincoln had a plan for Reconstruction.

It was called the 10% plan- VICKERS: Yep.

RUBENSTEIN: ...where, as I understand it, he thought that if 10% of the voters in a state were to say, "We will be loyal to the United States," they could come back into the Union.

Is that a fair to summary?

VICKERS: Yeah, I, I, I think Lincoln's, that was his plan, and his view, I think, of the process evolved over time.

But he clearly put that plan in place because I think the evolution at the time of his thinking was, "How do we actually restore the Union?"

And before the Civil War, "How do we preserve it?"

I think if you examine Lincoln's second inaugural speech, which is not often talked about, it's very clear that prior to, um, the, the Civil War or in his first inaugural speech where he speaks about preserving the Union, differences in culture, he speaks very clearly that this, this issue of slavery was the cause of the war.

And he speaks even about the context of it being a punishment from God, if you would, because of the sin of both North and South, and he's right.

Uh, slavery clearly was a problem of the South, but the vast majority of the slaves were insured out of New York City.

And so he purposely says that this is a problem of the country, and he highlights the fact that, uh, even if we have to do this, our challenge is to understand how do we deal with 250 years of free labor?

And so I think, um, his plan probably would've evolved, but I think at the time, this was a way to say, "How do we get the country back together with only 10% of the citizens agreeing to be loyal to the Union?"

RUBENSTEIN: So that was his plan, and, um, after the 13th Amendment, was passed, um, he was asked to make a speech at the White House, and he came out and made a speech in front of some people, including John Wilkes Booth, who was there, and he said something to the effect that maybe some educated Blacks would be allowed to vote.

VICKERS: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And that apparently set off John Wilkes Booth.

And so Lincoln was assassinated, uh, a few days later.

Uh, he was succeeded by, um, Andrew Johnson, who had been his vice president from Tennessee.

Was Johnson a big supporter of Lincoln's Reconstruction program?

VICKERS: No, I, I mean, historians, and me being far from being one but an amateur, would qualify him in the running as being one of the worst presidents of all time.

Uh, Johnson, uh, was a Democrat from the South, uh, in Tennessee, um, and was a regional governor appointed by Lincoln, and the party thought it might be a good sign of restoration in bringing the Union back together by having him be a part of the ticket.

But he did not necessarily agree with that much of what Lincoln had, and in fact, the period of time of his first two years, there was immense regression, uh, with Black Codes.

Uh, Johnson was not a part of the Southern aristocracy and wanted to make sure that those individuals recognized him but simply needed them to acknowledge him and the, and the Union, and they could easily come back into the Union.

So, uh, he had, he had certainly no ser-ser-interest to carry out the full breadth of Lincoln's plan.

RUBENSTEIN: So in the 1866 midterm elections, uh, the Republicans won overwhelmingly, and the House and the Senate became roughly two-third Republicans, which they were very, very interested in Reconstruction in a way that would allow Blacks to be able to be citizens... VICKERS: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: ...and to vote and so forth, but Johnson didn't like that, and as a result, he was impeached.

VICKERS: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And he barely survived.

VICKERS: Yeah, it was a challenge, but it was clearly that shift in what was thought to be a plan for Reconstruction under Johnson that saw the regression, if not a formal slavery, one that was reinstituted by Black Codes and rules that basically hampered people from owning property, being out after sundown, and really having any chance at an economic foothold.

Um, they then, with that change in gaining the majority that allowed them to have a veto-proof process, enacted a Military Reconstruction Act.

And one of the things that, uh, was pretty impactful was that the South was five military districts, led by five Union generals.

And, and they had broad-reaching powers, particularly to impact the Black Codes that were really limiting the progress of Negroes in the South.

And if you remember at the time, because a fifth of the White men were killed in the Civil War where 700,000 lives were lost, most Southern states were somewhere between 45% and 47% African American.

So you had a large population of now-freed individuals who are, before the 14th Amendment freed, freed slaves who made up that population of the South.

RUBENSTEIN: And with respect to Congress, uh, slaves had previously been counted as 3/5 of a human... VICKERS: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, 3/5 of a White voter.

Now they were gonna be counting as 5/5.

VICKERS: Yeah, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And so there would be more Black voters in some Southern states than White voters.

VICKERS: Absolutely right, particularly in the context of men, right?

Women weren't voting, but in the context of men when so many men died, that percentage of greater numbers of voters was quite significant.

And when the 14th and 15th Amendment passed, 14th now having a huge impact on both citizenship and, you know, part of this idea that we take for granted is the fact that birthright citizenship, born in this country, you have a right of being a citizen.

And you don't find that hardly anywhere in Europe.

There, it's clearly a process in some places in North America, but it is a unique distinction of American citizenship.

And then the rights to due process, the right for freedom and liberty and to be protected by the law was a powerful amendment, and then the 15th Amendment in 1870 really then transformed what rights would exist when people could not be denied the right to vote based on race or ethnicity.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so, as things evolve, uh, Whites who were wealthy in the South were gaining political control.

They were pushing back at the Republican effort in Congress to, uh, enable freed Blacks to vote and have jobs and so forth.

And then 1876 election happened, and 1876 election, there was a compromise.

VICKERS: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And a compromise was more or less something that to enable, um, Rutherford B. Hayes to become president, uh, he would have to agree to withdraw the military from the South.

VICKERS: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: Then the White establishment would be able to gain control of what they wanted.

Is that fair?

VICKERS: Yeah, Samuel Tilden was the representative, a New Yorker, ran for the Democrats.

Uh, four or five states, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, their votes were, uh, contested, and so there was a disagreement about the votes.

The Republicans were in control of the Congress, so they established an electoral commission with one extra Republican vote that was in the commission.

So they could control the outcome.

And, uh, it was clear that they didn't wanna lose the election.

They wanted Hayes to be president.

And the compromise with the Southern Democrats was principally, you're gonna put White Southerners in your cabinet, and two, more fundamentally because what, what the military districts had allowed was something that was pretty unique.

With the 15th Amendment and the right to vote, 80% of registered or eligible Black men voted.

We haven't seen those numbers in our history.

In addition, we had 14 individuals that served in Congress and two U.S.

Senators.

We didn't return to those numbers of representatives by African Americans until 1990 and didn't get a senator until 1964.

Over 2,000 people served in state governments.

Because those states had large numbers of African Americans, all the states, Mississippi, Alabama, had individuals who served in significant offices.

And the South Carolina legislature was majority Black.

RUBENSTEIN: But, but the compromise, the so-called Compromise of 1877 that resolved the election, that went away.

VICKERS: That took all of that away.

So one of the interests I had was, how might America look different if the Reconstruction process, even with its problems, um, if it hadn't matured and allowed a fair process for Negroes in the South to continue to develop and serve in government?

100% right, the Hayes Compromise, all of that was lost because once, uh, that was removed, the height of Jim Crow, the power of the Ku Klux Klan, and the return and the focus on white supremacy became the dominant threat.

RUBENSTEIN: So the Ku Klux Klan was established initially it was in the late 1800s?

VICKERS: Yeah, 1860s.

RUBENSTEIN: And it was designed to basically do things that were not very favorable to Blacks, among other people, Catholics.

VICKERS: Intimidation, yes, absolutely.

RUBENSTEIN: And then ultimately, as we move towards the 20th century, um, you have more and more Jim Crow laws being enforced... VICKERS: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: ...and Blacks are not being able to vote.

There are poll taxes so that you have to pay to vote and other kinds of things.

Um, so 1900 comes, and, uh, basically, uh, we're retrogressing in terms of civil rights.

And then Woodrow Wilson becomes president, and he re-segregates the workforce in the United States government, and then he also shows a movie at the White House, which is the movie of "The Birth of a Nation"... VICKERS: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: ...which, uh, kind of glorifies the Ku Klux Klan.

So you would say that Reconstruction, uh, period of time from 1877 to certainly through parts of the 20th century, we retrogressed.

VICKERS: Many would call it a lost era, uh, beginning with the things you shared, but Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, declaring separate but equal the law of the land, which in no way, as you saw, the South would ever be equal, but clearly be separate and unequal.

Um, and you're absolutely right, Wilson contributed to it in a major way, and not really until the 1960s, um, or '61 that some would call the Second Reconstruction from '61 to '68.

RUBENSTEIN: So in 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education decision comes down, and the Supreme Court says, "With all deliberate speed, we should, uh, integrate schools."

Did any schools get integrated right away?

VICKERS: Very few.

I, I, I think what you hear today even so in states rights, many states said, "The court has a right to say whatever it wants, but we're gonna follow Alabama laws or Mississippi or Florida laws.

We're gonna for the law, follow the laws that actually represent our culture."

And it took multiple years and processes of reinforcement or enforcement of those federal laws in order to bring about an end of segregation.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, there is, uh, a movement afoot in the late 1950s to change the laws, Civil Rights Revolution as it's been called by some, and, um, Martin Luther King is a leader of that.

And he's jailed during the 1960 election, and John Kennedy calls him in jail, um, and that gets a lot of support for John Kennedy from the Black community, which many of the Blacks in the South were doc-like, like Dr. Martin Luther King's father, were Republicans because Lincoln had been a Republican... VICKERS: Mm-hmm.

That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: ...he had freed the, the slaves... VICKERS: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: ...So, uh, we don't recognize it, but Blacks in the South were more Republican than Democratic in those days.

VICKERS: They were, they were.

RUBENSTEIN: So the call from John Kennedy to Martin Luther King in the jail, did that swing some votes towards Kennedy?

VICKERS: You're absolutely right.

The whole legacy, we've talked about Reconstruction was, uh, driven by the Republican Party.

And the South, uh, was mostly White Democrats or even the term Dixiecrats, but Democrats, and Blacks, not many at all, were part of that.

The recognition of Kennedy, who many did not know, was impactful for many Blacks to recognize he understood their plight in the South, and yes, I think it did.

RUBENSTEIN: So when he became president, um, in his inaugural address, he talks about the importance of protecting human rights, and Louis Martin, an African American aide to him, inserted in the inaugural address to say, "We're gonna protect human rights at home and abroad," but "at home" was inserted to make it clear that civil rights was also gonna be protected.

But did John Kennedy do very much to promote, uh, civil rights legislation?

VICKERS: Uh, he, he was...

The time that he was there, more of a figurehead but not a great deal, um, and, uh, that was a bit of a disappointment, uh, that he did not carry out as much as people hoped.

But I, but I would tell you that he was, he provided immense hope by just the intonation that he cared about the problem.

RUBENSTEIN: So Lyndon Johnson becomes president, um, when President Kennedy's assassinated.

He's from the Deep South.

His closest supporters in the Senate and friends were ardent segregationists.

VICKERS: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: Why did he decide to push the '64 Civil Rights Act and then later, other civil rights legislation, the '65 Voting Rights Act?

VICKERS: I think it was a sort of a combination of numerous things.

I think it was the influence of people around him, leaders who were able to help him see the problems.

And then I think it was the highlight of a number of atrocities that occurred in the South, um, the march on Selma, the march in Birmingham, King in jail, the bombing in Birmingham.

Like Lincoln who felt that preservation of the Union was important and yet the principles that it was based on was worth fighting for, I think Johnson felt that the, that America was really at, at some level of risk and threat if the federal government didn't address this issue.

RUBENSTEIN: So... VICKERS: And I think broadly, people had seen these atrocities, and he felt that there had to be a change.

RUBENSTEIN: But after that legislation was passed, the '65, uh, Voting Rights Act and other things, it didn't seem that all of a sudden that the African American community was elevated to the level that many of its proponents thought it should be.

There weren't a lot of people still voting in the South.

Um, economic disparities were still fairly great.

So when did the, um, effort to really change this begin anew?

And you would say in the '70s, the '80s, or in this century?

VICKERS: Yeah, I, I, I would say you, you're absolutely right.

There were, uh, a number of, um, laws that were passed.

There was a, a significant federal judge in Alabama named Frank Johnson, and, and you probably know of him.

He, King, and Rosa Parks all arrived in Montgomery in the really early 1950s.

And three of them were fundamental in helping create the platform for that change.

I bring up Johnson because practically, uh, it was because of him the Selma March was allowed to go forward.

Uh, it was because of him that the boycott of the Montgomery Bus System was allowed to actually end.

And then it was also because of him that the Voting Rights Act was really brought about because of his rulings.

Um, he desegregated the entire Alabama school system as a federal judge.

He interviewed every Saturday, a superintendent had to bring their desegregation plan.

So one, I think, David, that the process has been slow.

Number two, um, the opportunity around education has been a big factor in the progression, and that process pushed forward.

There are clearly people who believe that there were tremendous gains occurred through integration, and there are obviously those who think that there are some things that were lost by integration.

Um, in that scenario where you had role models of African American leaders who were your teachers, who were in professions, those images often went away, um, and the economic opportunity where the neighborhood, uh, you lived in had the Black lawyers, had the Black physicians.

With integration, those well-to-do African Americans could live anywhere sometimes, and you never saw them, uh, thereafter.

So I think both the combination of the integration process, uh, that had positive but also some challenging impacts and I think the process of economic empowerment that has been slow for many African Americans has been somewhat of a delay of being the advancement that people wanted to see in that time period.

RUBENSTEIN: So you would argue perhaps that, uh, we are in a new era of Reconstruction, probably starting with, uh, the George Floyd murder.

VICKERS: Yeah, I think many would argue 2017, uh, George-George Floyd's murder, the Charlottesville rally really brought to attention, and I've had the privilege to grow up, you know, live in Birmingham but also live in Minneapolis, and, uh, George Floyd's, the saddened story and the incident of his untimely and wrong death obviously made America very aware that our problem regarding race has not been completely resolved.

Um, and, uh, Minneapolis and Minnesota often thought to be one of the most liberal parts of our country, and yet you saw that bias and those acts that were really driven by as many of us believe, whether it's George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, um, and others who suffered the, uh, untimely deaths or wrongful deaths reflected on the challenge that we still struggle with.

And as historians much more seasoned than I am, Eric Foner has said, and maybe even here, that the struggle still relates to the fact that America is still trying to address and deal with the abolition of three million Black slaves.

RUBENSTEIN: And, uh, do you think if Lincoln had lived, it would've made a difference?

VICKERS: I would like to hope so, and I think that was one of the really major drivers for me is to imagine had a Lincoln lived out his second term, what might have been America's plight and opportunity when you allow these individuals who started at about a 10% literacy rate that quickly went to somewhere north of 50%, the ability to read, worked hard to serve in government, had a chance to own property and created economic opportunities for themselves, and actually see their own ability to have the American dream.

Um, and have that thwarted, uh, around, after Reconstruction ended and putting them in a position where everything was in the concept of them being second-class citizens and white supremacy being the dominant thread of that day, I, I certainly envision what might have been the case had African Americans or Blacks been allowed to flourish fully throughout Reconstruction.

RUBENSTEIN: So you're now, as we've mentioned, the CEO and President of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, very distinguished position, and uh, you've done a great job, uh, of being a role model for many people, White and Black, and I congratulate you on what you've done at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

And, uh, I hope you'll continue to do a great job there and also continue your interest in American history.

Thank you for a great conversation.

VICKERS: Thank you, David.

RUBENSTEIN: Thank you.

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