The

The In recent years, I found myself drawn to William McKinley, America's 25th president, in part because he's one of those presidents who, like many obscure chief executives,

he's far more consequential than most Americans realize. After all, he did preside over the

Spanish-American war, in which the United States won an overwhelming victory over the Spanish

Empire and made its presence felt as a rising world power. He was immensely popular

and even beloved. That seems to be the word people used to describe how the American people felt about

him. He was a devoted husband who cared for his fragile, invalid wife, so he was the picture of

domestic devotion as far as being a family man. I've also been

drawn to him because his decisions affected not just my country of citizenship, the United States,

but also my birth country, the Philippines. It was under McKinley that the United States acquired

the Philippines. So the histories of my countries cannot be taught

without teaching the story of McKinley. And of course, it's a history that is contentious,

with supporters and opponents of American policy and the ideas of colonization to be found in

both America and the Philippines, believe it or not, there's another side to

McKinley, one that virtually no previous historian has explored. It's the side of McKinley

that cared deeply about civil rights, and one could argue, did more to further civil rights

than almost all of his predecessors. Our guest today,

Ben Justison, wrote a book revealing this side of McKinley. It's titled, Forgotten Legacy,

William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggles for Black Equality. Ben, thanks for being on

our show.

It's a pleasure to be here, Richard. So tell us a little bit about your background and what got you interested in McKinley. I became interested in McKinley because of my earlier interest in

George Henry White, which started many years ago when I was a newspaper journalist. As I studied George White's life,

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