Scott Ellsworth > Quotes

“Because the decimation of the second, reborn Greenwood can also be laid at the feet of men and women who sat in air-conditioned offices and did their work with pencils and calculators, blue-line maps, real estate estimates, and government statistics. For the efforts to carve up the city's historic African American district had not ended with the attempted land grab for a new railroad terminal back in 1921. Now they had new names. Urban renewal. Redlining. Slum clearance. Model Cities. Opportunity. Progress.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice

“This was an unprecedented moment in American history as well. For the dead of the Tulsa massacre were hardly alone. Over the course of four centuries, thousands of African Americans had been the victims of murderous racism. Slaves had been shot, stabbed, and tortured to death, their bodies tossed in unmarked graves. Lynchings had claimed hundreds more, as Black men and women had their life force stolen from them beneath railroad trestles, telephone poles, and ancient oak and elm trees, their limbs creaking and swaying beneath the extra weight. And then there were the one who simply disappeared, into labor camps and county jail cells, or patches of wood and swamp, lit only by the pine knobs and kerosene lamps of their executioners. The victims of racism weren't few. They were legion.

But here, in this aging cemetery in the heart of the country, was the first time than an American government -- federal, state, or local -- had ever actively set out to locate the remains of victims of American racism.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice

“Because history isn't just a chronicle of events. Rather, it is a mirror of both who we are and who we want to be. For us to learn from the past, we have to look at and wrestle with all of it -- the sad and the ugly as well as the good and the great. And while we can't take credit for the accomplishments of previous generations, we can learn from their mistakes.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice

“But what George [Monroe] really gave me was a model of how to live. Though he had experienced a lifetime of tragedy, including burying his wife and two of his sons, that went far beyond the events of the riot, he was not consumed by hate, crippled by rage, or burdened by slf-pity. He had no shortage of strong opinions, but he also knew how to smile, how to laugh, and how not to take himself too seriously. He had worked hard all his life, yet had never found work to be a burden. His secret? 'Find out what you like to do,' he'd tell me, 'and do that. It's that simple.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice

“But what George [Monroe] really gave me was a model of how to live. Though he had experienced a lifetime of tragedy, including burying his wife and two of his sons, that went far beyond the events of the riot, he was not consumed by hate, crippled by rage, or burdened by self-pity. He had no shortage of strong opinions, but he also knew how to smile, how to laugh, and how not to take himself too seriously. He had worked hard all his life, yet had never found work to be a burden. His secret? 'Find out what you like to do,' he'd tell me, 'and do that. It's that simple.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice

“On the highest mountains on the planet, where every additional ounce might determine the difference between victory and defeat, they brought along dog-eared copies of Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in their rucksacks. Two thousand feet below the summit of Mount Everest, inside a tiny tent pitched along a murderous ridge, a British climber named Eric Shipton tried to read, by flickering candlelight, Thorton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey , a novel which questioned the meaning of life in the face of the sudden and deadly collapse of an ancient rope bridge in eighteenth century Peru.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas

“An outer door to the department swung open. Light spilled onto the icy walkway, and, indistinctly, he could hear voices. Two men then emerged. One was short and heavy. The other, wearing a top hat and with a shawl draped about his shoulders, was lean and tall. They lingered for a minute in the light of the doorway, chatting. Then they said goodbye to the guards, who pulled the door closed behind them, and started on their way across the ice-covered snow toward the White House. Here was his chance. A well-aimed shot, even from behind the bushes, might work. That, or a quick dash for one at close range. But he had not counted on the second man. Probably a bodyguard, and more than likely armed. And then there was the ground itself. Could he even run on it at all? What if he fell? Powell hesitated. The two men walked away. The moment was lost.”
― Scott Ellsworth, Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America

“Slavery had always been the underlying cause of the war, but by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln had turned the cause of the loyal citizens of the North and West into a war both to preserve the Union and to end slavery. There was another major change as well. Black soldiers had joined the Union army.”
― Scott Ellsworth, Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America

“Lady Houston, as she was now called, was reputedly the wealthiest woman in Great Britain, a dedicated nudist who, when appearing at social functions, draped herself in diamonds and furs. Once, in a squabble over back taxes, she personally presented Winston Churchill, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a check for one and a half million pounds. “Do I get a kiss?” she asked. “No,” he growled back. “You get a cup of tea.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas

“If we want to understand the Black experience of the race massacre, we have to start and end with how Black survivors narrated the terror of what occurred.” – Scott Ellsworth, Historian”
― Scott Ellsworth

“But there was some surprising tenderness as well. Forbidden from shooting any birds or animals while in Tibet, the climbers were as amazed by the different kinds of avian life—magpies, linnets, and finches, Brahminy ducks, bar-headed geese, and crazily crowned hoopoes—as they were by the birds’ curiosity and lack of fear of humans. “It is an never-ending joy to find the birds of Tibet so tame,” Hugh Ruttledge wrote. “The place is a paradise for the ornithologist.” Even wild goats would approach them without fear. And on many of the high passes, they found “a little forest of prayer flags,” Frank Smythe recalled, “with their stiff, dry rustling.” Here was a land of harsh but surprising beauty,”
― Scott Ellsworth, The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas

“he took direct aim at the comforts of the modern world: “With a wistfulness, perhaps a little tinged with sentimentality,” he wrote, “I think of the leisurely days of a few hundred years ago, before life was so mad a rush, before the countryside was spoiled by droves of people, and beauty itself exploited as a commercial proposition. We have become so accustomed to having everyday life made easy for us, that our energies are not absorbed in the art of living, but run riot in a craving for sensation.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas

“We choose to go to the moon,” Kennedy answered, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” It was an audacious and dangerous plan. Not only had the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, in 1957, but Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had beaten the first American astronaut into space by three weeks. The Space Race was on and the Americans were losing. Kennedy was undaunted. “It will be done,” he said. Then, in closing his speech, he turned to the past. “Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there,” Kennedy said, “and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Thank you.” The Great Himalayan Race hadn’t ended after all.”
― Scott Ellsworth, The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas