The Beer Summit (2009)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2021

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s July 25th. This day (July 24th in fact) in 2009, President Obama extended an invitation to Henry Louis Gates, Jr and Sgt James Crowley to discuss an incident in which Crowley arrested Gates on his own doorstep.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the incident that sparked this attempt at reconciliation, and how Obama’s handling of the moment was a turning point for many white Americans in how they viewed his presidency.

Find a transcript of this episode at: https://tinyurl.com/esoterichistory

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Averman.
0:10.0	This day July 25, 2009, was July 24th 2009 President Obama
0:16.8	extended an invitation to the White House to two men to come over to the White House
0:21.2	and well to have a beer.
0:23.6	This was what came to be known as the Beer Summit.
0:26.5	Obama's attempt to intervene and smooth over
0:29.8	an incident involving a Boston police officer and Harvard Professor Henry
0:34.4	Lewis Gates Jr. The officer we should say was white Henry Lewis
0:38.4	Gates Jr. is black. The officer James Crowley had arrested Gates on Gates's own doorstep after neighbors called
0:46.4	the police saying that a man was trying to break into a house in the neighborhood.
0:50.6	That man was Gates, who had basically lost his keys, was trying to get into his own house.
0:56.7	The cops get called Crowley Arrested Gates.
0:59.0	This becomes a major incident after it gets written up in the Harvard Crimson and then the AP picks it up and then
1:04.5	Obama weighs in and then it becomes a big scandal and we get to this beer summit invitation to sit down and talk it out, which I guess is what we're doing
1:15.2	right now.
1:16.2	We are sitting down and talking it out here to do that, as always, no beer, I don't think.
1:20.0	Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.
1:22.6	Hello, Jody.
1:24.8	Hey there.
1:26.7	No judgment, but it is, we record the show listeners
1:29.0	on Friday morning, so I don't think we would have a beer
	...

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