The American Revolution was one of the most significant events in world history because it created a “new thing called a citizen,” iconic filmmaker Ken Burns told CBS News, as the nation celebrates the Fourth of July exactly one year before its 250 birthday.
“I think the American Revolution is the most important event since the birth of Christ in all of world history. … I mean, it turned the world upside down,” Burns told CBS News’ John Dickerson in an interview set to air on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday.
Before the war that secured the American colonies’ independence from Great Britain, “everyone was a subject, essentially under the rule of somebody else,” Burns said.
The colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
“We had created in this moment a very brand new thing called a citizen, and this has had powerful effects,” he said. “It’s going to set in motion revolutions for the next two plus centuries, all around the world, all attempting to sort of give a new expression to this idea that all men are created equal, that they’re endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that’s a big, big deal in world history.”
Burns — whose upcoming film “The American Revolution” is expected to air on PBS on Nov. 16 — also reflected on some of the “complicated stories” in America’s short history.
“The greatness of the American people comes from telling these complicated stories, and that’s a good story,” he said. “We want to feel that we know who Thomas Jefferson is. We need to understand the internal struggles that Abraham Lincoln had. We have to understand what was going through Rosa Parks’ mind when she, you know, refused to give up her seat on the bus.”
Trying to understand these stories “in no way takes away from the glory,” Burns added.
“It just makes the story fuller and richer and permits purchase for everyone,” he said. “You want a history to be complicated because it gives everybody a chance to own or have access to it.”
Citing scholar Maggie Blackhawk, an NYU law professor who appears in his upcoming film, Burns said the Declaration of Independence is “deeply significant to people at the margins” even though the words of the original document don’t include them.
“They do not include women, they do not include the poor, they do not include any enslaved or free African Americans. They do not include Native Americans,” he said. “But the words themselves are so inspirational that they begin to suggest a much larger and more, what we would say, kind of American polity. That a bunch of us all together, of different varieties, doing lots of different things and pursuing happiness, this idea of virtue and lifelong learning.”
Watch more of Dickerson’s interview with Burns on “CBS Evening News” Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET and on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” Sunday at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Nicole Brown Chau is a deputy managing editor for CBSNews.com. She writes and edits national news, health stories, explainers and more.
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