{"id":39841,"date":"2025-11-14T20:20:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/39841\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T20:20:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:20:22","slug":"ken-burns-and-lin-manuel-miranda-offer-history-lesson-to-nyc-students-at-trinity-church-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/39841\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Burns and Lin-Manuel Miranda offer history lesson to NYC students at Trinity Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 On a chilly midweek afternoon, hundreds of New York City high school students gathered in the pews of Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan. The lesson was \u201cWho tells your story?\u201d The teachers, credentialed with prizes both competitive and honorary and with popular acclaim, were filmmaker Ken Burns<\/a> and \u201cHamilton\u201d creator Lin-Manuel Miranda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe there has been a louder sound in this church until today,\u201d Burns said as the kids clapped and screamed for the two featured speakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHamilton\u201d fans know well the origins of \u201cWho tells your story?\u201d The Wednesday event was timed for one of Burns’ most ambitious projects, \u201cThe American Revolution,\u201d a 6-part, 12-hour documentary that premieres Sunday on PBS stations. He has promoted the film everywhere from Monticello to \u201cThe Joe Rogan Experience\u201d and now has shared a stage with Miranda at the centuries-old parish where George Washington once worshiped and Alexander Hamilton and his wife, Eliza, are buried, a draw for \u201cHamilton\u201d fans bearing flowers and other tributes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the business of telling stories,\u201d Burns explained, as he and Miranda sat under the towering vaulted ceiling of Trinity, as if the church itself were a stand-in for history’s might. \u201cI deal in fact. And Lin-Manuel can make things up. This question, though, who tells your story, is the animating question of humanity. It\u2019s this story of great men, capital G, capital M, and rarely do we have an opportunity to widen that lens and tell everyone\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n

An All-Star production<\/p>\n

Burns, co-directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward (co-author with Burns of a companion book) drew upon thousands of books and other historical materials. The film’s narrators comprise what Miranda calls an \u201cAvengers\u201d-worthy cast, from Tom Hanks<\/a> and Meryl Streep<\/a> to Morgan Freeman<\/a> and Laura Linney.<\/a> And dozens of historians, spanning age and perspective, provided on-air commentary: eminences Gordon Wood and Bernard Bailyn<\/a> (who died in 2020), non-academic historians such as Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff and Pulitzer-winning military authority Rick Atkinson, and leading scholars from a range of other fields, including slavery (Vincent Brown), Native American history (Ned Blackhawk) and the British Empire (Maya Jasanoff).<\/p>\n

Students listened to history, watched history \u2014 Burns showed a brief clip from his documentary, about the deadly winter at Valley Forge \u2014 and created their own. If Miranda can make music out of federal debt or the election of 1800, then Shacoy Moodie and Arianna Richards of Equality Charter High School can rap an original piece about a good friend of Hamilton’s, John Laurens, a Southerner who sought in vain to enfranchise enslaved Black people and have them fight the British. \u201cThey deserve it all\/each and every one\/they deserve it all,\u201d the students chanted in homage to the would-be freemen, as Burns smiled and Miranda leaned and nodded in rhythm.<\/p>\n

Interviewed briefly after their joint appearance, Burns and Miranda said that their friendship began around 10 years ago, when the filmmaker visited backstage after a performance of \u201cHamilton.\u201d They are a generation apart \u2014 Burns is 72, Miranda 45 \u2014 but very much in sync on their mission to educate. Burns speaks proudly of his documentaries on the Civil War and other subjects being part of course curricula, and Miranda welcomes the countless school productions of \u201cHamilton,\u201d calling himself a theater kid whose subconscious goal is \u201cto write the best school play possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burns thought it ideal for Miranda to appear with him at Trinity, if only because of all the interest in the revolution \u201cin the wake of \u2018Hamilton.\u2019\u201d Miranda added: \u201cWhen Ken Burns calls, you say \u2018Yes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s complicated<\/p>\n

Burns says he keeps a neon sign in his editing room that reads: \u201cIt’s complicated.\u201d Whether speaking with the AP or with students, Burns emphasized the need to move beyond \u201ctop-down\u201d history, while still appreciating the founders’ achievements. One student asked him about the legacy of George Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s deeply flawed. He owned hundreds of human beings, knew slavery was wrong, and not until the end of his life freed them. He was rash on the battlefield, running out, risking his life, and therefore the future of the United States,\u201d Burns responded. \u201cHaving said this, we don\u2019t have a country without him. He is tall and imposing, and he has a kind of dignity. Dr. Benjamin Rush said that the other monarchs of Europe would look like a \u2018valet de chambre,\u2019 a butler next to George Washington. He’s able to inspire men in the dead of night to fight for a cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Burns documentary arrives less than eight months before the country’s 250th anniversary, a time of deep political and social division that extends to how the founding story should be told. Beyond the will to break from the British, there has never been a consensus over the aims and meaning of the revolution, not even while it was being fought; the upcoming semiquincentennial has only heightened the differences. President Donald Trump h<\/a> as called for a \u201cgrand celebration\u201d in July 2026, and denounced \u201cwoke\u201d history, criticizing the Smithsonian Institution for being preoccupied with \u201chow bad slavery was.\u201d<\/a> The scholarly community \u2014 including some featured in Burns’ film \u2014 aims for a broader narrative, highlighting the contributions of women, the perpetuation of slavery and the uprooting and killing of Native Americans, <\/p>\n

Burns’ aversion to the president is well documented. During a 2016 commencement speech at Stanford University, he called then-candidate Trump an \u201cinsult to our history.\u201d Eight years later, addressing Brandeis University students, he called Trump \u201cthe opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems\u201d and urged attendees not to vote for him in November.<\/p>\n

At Trinity, a student raised an issue Burns has confronted often: \u201cWhat parallels do you see between the politics that led up to the American Revolution and today\u2019s politics?\u201d<\/p>\n

The filmmaker has stressed that \u201cThe American Revolution\u201d takes no sides, and pointed out Wednesday that he began it during the latter part of Barack Obama’s presidency and continued through the administrations of Trump and Joe Biden. Burns dedicates extensive time to stories of suffering and oppression but also shaped a heroic and open-ended message of the country as dynamic and unfinished, inspiring and imperfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best thing to do is to understand the past, our greatest teacher, so that we have a better sense of where we are and more importantly, become,\u201d Burns said. Miranda added that he worked on \u201cHamilton\u201d with a similar \u201canimating\u201d principle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do I, as someone who was born in 1980, understand these people and begin to write from their perspective\u201d?\u201d Miranda said. \u201cAnd what I learned was, and you\u2019ll see this many times in Ken’s movies, is that the contradictions present at the founding are still contradictions, in the same way the fights you have with your siblings are your family fights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013 On a chilly midweek afternoon, hundreds of New York City high school students gathered in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12674,23040,23039,153,157,23031,6638,23042,874,10405,23032,23030,23037,19462,23041,9,24,55,54,56,23038,23036,9111,23033],"class_list":{"0":"post-39841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-benjamin-rush","10":"tag-bernard-bailyn","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-geoffrey-ward","14":"tag-george-washington","15":"tag-gordon-s-wood","16":"tag-joe-biden","17":"tag-ken-burns","18":"tag-laura-linney","19":"tag-lin-manuel-miranda","20":"tag-maya-jasanoff","21":"tag-meryl-streep","22":"tag-morgan-freeman","23":"tag-new-york","24":"tag-new-york-city","25":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","26":"tag-new-york-city-news","27":"tag-ny","28":"tag-rick-atkinson","29":"tag-stacy-schiff","30":"tag-tom-hanks","31":"tag-vincent-brown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}