Passing from one era to another

Photo credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA

The beginning of the 20th century could be marked on a calendar as beginning on the same day that marked the beginning of the 19th, 18th and 17th centuries — January 1st.

Eras in history begin asymmetrically against the turn of the decades. The 1970s, for example, are an era of time that can be measured in days, but also against broader political and cultural trends. Those trends begin and end proximate to the passages that we denote as significant milestones. We tend to attach eras of time to culture and political movements that come to also include the music, literature, art, philosophy and counterculture of the time. For example, the 1960s of protest, Haight-Ashbury, Woodstock and Chicago took place at the end of the decade. The zeitgeist of the era splashed into the 1970s at Kent State, but that decade was more remembered for Watergate than Vietnam.

Such is the basis for claiming the 20th century truly began on a horse and carriage ride that careened through the New York countryside on dirt roads at full gallop in the middle of the night on September 14, 1901.  The vice president of the United States sat up top on the buck board. He had been pacing and impatient when he gave the order to go shortly after midnight. He was racing towards Buffalo where the president of the United States lay dying. He had been shot twice by an anarchist at the Pan-American Exposition, but had been recovering.

The horses raced for 10 miles and needed to be changed out, and then raced 10 more miles before needing to be changed again. A journey of 40 miles was a distance that could be measured by half a day’s hard travel in horse carriage.

William McKinley of Niles, Ohio, had enlisted in the United States Army as a private and left service as a major. He was the last combat veteran of the Civil War and the last enlisted soldier to become commander-in-chief.

His vice president was 42 years old and had held the office for six months. He had been the governor of New York for a short time and assistant secretary of the Navy. He spent part of the 1880s in the Dakota Territory ranching, and led one of the most unique military units in American history. It became immortalized with a charge in Cuba. They were called the Rough Riders. It made Teddy Roosevelt famous. The vice president wasn’t addressed by his office, but rather his preferred Colonel Roosevelt.

The 40-mile midnight ride ended and the colonel took a train to Buffalo and swore the 35-word oath that made him the 26th president of the United States. Teddy Roosevelt led the American charge into the 20th century. Two of his sons, the Medal of Honor recipient, Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt Jr, who led American troops ashore on Utah Beach on June 6th, 1944, D-Day, and Quentin Roosevelt, are at eternal rest next to one another on a small slice of American territory in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to fly in an airplane, which was an invention that didn’t exist as his buckboard wagon thundered through the evening of September 14, 1901, without headlights and high beams. Horses were in the lead, but not for much longer. The hinges of history were swinging open the portal through which nations pass into new epochs of history. So it was true then, and so it is true now.

Is it not stupefying to think that once mankind took to the air in powered flight for the first time in all of human history that it took less than one lifetime — 66 years —for the nation where it was invented to land men on the moon? This was the century during which man reached for the stars, while inventing the weapons of mass extinction that gave presidents the power of gods. This was the century during which the world became connected by fiber optics, electricity, telephones, internet and airplanes. This was the century of the totalitarians who killed human beings at an industrial scale. It was the time of the Holocaust, Gestapo, Hitler, fascism, communism, Maoism and the Khmer Rouge. This was the century of the Titanic and the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and the Great Migration of black Americans. It was also the time of the greatest level of population movement from one place to another in the annals of human history as tens of millions came to America between 1900 and 1920 when the door swung shut.

It is likely another 40 years will pass before America is led by someone who was born in the 21st century. That means this century is being sculpted by the humans who were born in and proximate to the era during which America achieved its maximum power and maximum triumph. Is it not difficult to explain the collapse of the Berlin Wall and fall of the Soviet Empire in a shocking instant that utterly changed the world to people who were born into the new one, where things such as walls in Europe to keep people penned in, seem like the relics of another dimension not the recent past?

It is a good thing that Teddy Roosevelt was unable to realize the full ambitions of his vision of American imperialism. The warrior became a Nobel Peace Prize winner and projected American power across the globe when he sent the Great White Fleet on a circumnavigation of the Earth. He was a young president with a vision for the future who understood what was happening around him.

The Rough Riders were made up of men from every facet of American life. It was filled with cowboys and bankers and American Indians. It was an eclectic mix of every type of American who would be called to pick up a weapon for their country. The role of the “Buffalo Soldiers” — so named by the Lakota for their “wooly hair” — is often omitted from the story of Roosevelt’s charge because he attracted more newspaperman and photographers at the top. Access journalism was alive and well in the Hearst era. In fact, the media was more responsible for stoking the war than the politicians who launched it. The Rough Riders and Buffalo Soldiers stormed to the top of San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill with the Rough Riders being the white knights of history and the black troops omitted from memory.

Yet early in his presidency, Teddy Roosevelt did something that would have been unimaginable 100 years earlier even though it caused great rage in his present. What did he do?

He became the first president to sit down and have dinner with a black man in the White House. The man’s name was Booker T Washington. There are many debates that take place these days over history in schools. We should all agree on something. Ignorance around who Booker Washington was is a travesty.

When Roosevelt did this, the South went nuts and he did not do it again. After that moment, he met with Washington in his office, not in the dining room. Roosevelt left the presidency in 1908. One hundred years later, President Barack Obama would be dining in the White House. His father was Kenyan. He was a black man. He rose to an office imagined by slave owners as they rejected the divine right of kings in favor of a republic. He lived in a mansion built by slaves that was burned by the British.  

The 20th century was the time of women’s rights, civil rights and gay rights. It was a century during which genocide was repudiated by a universal declaration of human rights, largely authored by one of the century’s greatest leaders: Eleanor Roosevelt.

The first 20 years of the 21st century have been authored by a generation of political leaders who were largely born in the 1930s and 1940s. They came of age in the 1950s and 1960s.

Much time has passed. Their service must end because the visible horizon and boundaries of the future lie outside both their imagination and lifespans.

The 20th century began with a journey in a carriage that ended the 19th century in America. The modern president had taken command. There must be a season of renewal, reform, reconciliation and national reinvigoration. The hour is approaching when the beginning of the 21st century can no longer be delayed.

There is something wonderful about to happen in America. Every one of us is about to see something incredible. Something that hasn’t been seen in 50 years.

At this moment, an uncrewed space capsule is on a journey. It is an Orion spacecraft and it is heading to the moon. Soon it will return American astronauts to the moon, and begin an era of interplanetary space travel as NASA plans its Mars missions.

The Orion space craft was lifted on an Artemis Rocket, the most powerful ever built. Artemis is a woman. She was Apollo’s twin sister, and it is Artemis who will put the first woman and first black Americans on the moon. The Artemis astronauts are the explorers of a new age. They are Americans who truly have the “right stuff.” They are brilliant, brave, unique and a demonstration of the incandescent power of this land when all are given a chance. Personally, I can’t wait to see Jonny Kim walk on the moon. I can’t wait to see Jasmin Moghbeli walk on Mars.

But before that, we will all see an old picture again although this one will be much clearer and more vivid. The Orion spacecraft will come around the backside of the moon and take a photo of Earth set against the blackness of space. Upon that Earth, we will see the familiar contours of our home, the United States of America. We should be grateful. Let us be reminded that we are a nation of explorers and dreamers. We are a nation of idealists and believers. We are a nation of the people, by the people and for the people.

We are at the edge of a new American age. It should be met with optimism. Our great national challenges should be occasions to see opportunities for new greatness steeped in new justice.

The ride will be wild. It always is. We are passing from one era to another just like Teddy Roosevelt on September 14, 1901.