The nation was founded and dedicated, to use Lincoln's language in the Gettysburg Address, to equality as a self-evident truth. But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln also noted, was a proposition. To make it a reality remained the unfinished work of Americans.

How can diverse Americans become one people? I believe that one path is for us to pursue the study of the past that includes all of us, making all of us feel connected to one another as we the people, working and living in a nation, founded and dedicated (to use Lincoln's language) to the proposition that all men are created equa