"Great Men"

I was floored hearing Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the head of Schomburg Center of research on black culture at New York Public Library, on Bill Moyer and company show. He seemed to have a thorough knowledge and understanding of history of black culture. The man is eloquent, coherent and he does not once lose the thread of his argument. He responded to Moyer's questions to the point without digressing. In view of upcoming Fourth of July celebration the discussion was geared towards verbiage used in The Declaration of Independence.  The great minds, particularly of Thomas Jefferson's, who  helped write a dictum here that  
" all men are created equal"  and an another dictum there that blacks are "inferior to whites in the endowments of both body and mind" were at  the center of discussion. Also, when they wrote about "all men" they meant only white men;  not even white women or native Indians were considered in the definition. Jefferson talked/wrote about abolition of slavery, yet he kept hundreds of slaves who toiled in his five thousand acres of land. The children that he sired with a black woman of his staff, Sally Hemmings, remained with him as slaves.

One wonders how can authors of such great document be so flawed and conflicted; say one thing and behave just the opposite.

At the conclusion, I said, there are no "great men"; only men with random acts and words of greatness. Bhupen said, no; the great acts and words make them "great men".