Today, Friday, April 18, 2025 will mark 250 years since the first lighting of Boston’s Old North Church’s iconic lanterns. “One if by land, two if by sea” was used to alert colonists of the arrival of British troops the day before the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the start of the American Revolution. The colonists met the British troops at the docks in Cambridge after Paul Revere and his fellow riders spread the word that the British were arriving by sea, thanks to the two lanterns lit in Old North’s steeple. Without those lanterns, who knows what the outcome of the American Revolution would’ve been.
To kick off the celebration Old North Church awarded Third Lantern on Wednesday to legendary American documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns. The award coincides with the two lanterns in Old North’s steeple is awarded to “an individual who embodies the values symbolized in Old North Church’s iconic signal lanterns: leadership, courage, hope, tenacity, and active citizenship” as stated on Old North’s website. Angela Johnson, Co-Chair of Lanterns and Luminaries and Board Chair of Old North Illuminated, said that “the third Lantern Award honors those who are working to fulfill the promise reflected in those lanterns一future that delivers on the promise of liberty and justice for all.” The award was given to Burns ahead of his long anticipated documentary series titled The American Revolution, set to premiere on November 16, 2025 on PBS.
Ken Burns, born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953, is critically acclaimed for his storytelling of American history and culture throughout our nation’s 250-year story. Some of his most famous documentaries include The Civil War, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, Baseball, and Jazz. Throughout his career, his films have received two Academy Award nominations, two Grammy Awards, and 17 Emmy Awards. In The American Revolution, Burns and his team of incredible historians and filmmakers dive into the birth of our nation, telling stories from all different walks of life before, during, and after the war, including detailed retellings of the events during the American Revolution.
The ceremony on Wednesday began at 11:00 with a fife and drum and National Lancers procession that led Burns down the aisle of the historic church. The co-chairs of Lanterns and Luminaries, Jared Brown and Angela Johnson (mentioned above) succeeded the procession and introduced the audience to the ceremony. Speaking on the history of the Revolution, Brown remarked that Boston had “the conviction…the audacity to launch a revolution” 250 years ago. When addressing Burns, Johnson stated that “few have done more to help us understand our nation’s past.” Ken Burns has done nothing short of helping Americans understand the country’s history outside of the classroom.
Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai is a Civil War historian who serves as the Director of Research at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. At the ceremony, he read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride, a poem whom all New Englanders are familiar with. This reading, however, was unlike any other. Wongsrichanalai said that reading aloud Longfellow’s work “was really a moving experience” after admiring Burns’ work. In our brief interview, he used words like “magical” and “mysticism” when describing the poem, and the atmosphere in the church was nothing short of that.
United States Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey spoke after, declaring that Burns “so richly” deserves the Third Lantern Award, “there could be no better recipient…” The honoree introduction speaker was the president of Boston Light & Sound, Inc., C. Chapin Cutler Jr. He believed that Burns opened the door for discovery and history. “Thank you, Ken, for opening many doors in our own history, where either to go through to the next door with you, the story of the birth of our government, our Revolutionary War for independence seems vitally important now…” Cutler introduced the man of the hour, “our national treasure,” Mr. Ken Burns. After receiving a 40-second standing ovation, Burns voiced the honor and compassion he felt as he stood before his audience standing from the pulpit. He thanked Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS who shared some remarks about Burns’ work, for helping him and his team showcase his work to the nation. “As we gather today to start the commemoration of our war of independence, I’d like to suggest not a date or a place, but an idea,” Mr. Burns said. “We’re meeting, of course, in one of the oldest standing churches in the country and the oldest in Boston, and religious faith is important to the story of our founding.” He spoke of “faith in a cause”, the kind of faith that would spark a movement, a revolution, one could say.
“[Civic faith is] the recognition that compromise doesn’t mean you’ve lost, but rather that you’ve agreed to an outcome you and your fellow patriots can both get behind.”
– Ken Burns
Of course, Burns spoke of his upcoming project, The American Revolution. Considering his documentaries in the past had archival footage made up of images, real-life depictions, and videos, Burns and his team of historians filtered through rough drawing and pages and pages of documents to get the series just right. The history of the “American landscape revealed that it, our land, was the real star of our series,” Burns reflected. He transported his audience back to the aftermath of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, after “the shot heard round the world” started it all, where a woman held a funeral for three fallen men, one of them being her husband. A story that had gone unnoticed by the history books and overlooked in classrooms. Burns brought the audience back to that moment that would’ve otherwise been lost. That is the power of storytelling. “Old North Illuminated, through the preservation and interpretation of Old North Church, continues to teach us that history must be willing to tell all the stories.” After his speech, Bowen, Johnson, and Nikki Stewart, Executive Director of Old North Illuminated presented Burns with the Lantern Award, an award that will go down in history, in a historic place, for a history storyteller.
Burns’ upcoming projects include Emancipation to Exodus, which will follow the lives of African Americans following the Emancipation Proclamation, and LBJ & the Great Society, telling the story of President Johnson’s “accidental” presidency after the assassination of President Kennedy. For more information about upcoming projects, follow this link: https://kenburns.com/the-films/.
Ken Burns’ career is legendary and revered. What sets him different from every other documentary filmmaker was clearly stated by Chapin Cutler, “Ken does possess one of the most important qualities of a human being… curiosity is real talent. This curiosity ignites a healthy hunger in all of us. We are curious too, and we want to know more because we want to understand our country, our history, and ourselves…” Burns will no doubt continue this passion of history and curiosity for many years to come. We will stand at his beckoning call, awaiting to learn more about our nation’s history and hear stories from a storyteller that have been long-overlooked.
