History is a double-edged sword
History is a double-edged sword.
It can bring light to darkness by telling the story of the past with honesty, integrity, and good scholarship.
Conversely, it can be used as a weapon to further political and social agendas when those who write it choose to deliberately exclude some people from the text or, worse, spread falsehoods about them.
If you don't think that's true ask yourself why most Americans have never heard of the “Triple Nickels,” the first African-American paratroop battalion in World War II.
Or why, as another example, very few people know that the last Confederate general to surrender at the end of the Civil War was a Cherokee chief.
I was a victim of that poor scholarship when I was much younger. The history books that I was assigned to read in public school and, later, at a state university in Ohio were written to perpetuate the myth that the United States was the domain of white Christian men. As students, my classmates and I were led to believe that white men, and only white men, were responsible for the great achievements in science and industry; that they, and only they, were responsible for elevating civilization.
Did my teachers come out and say that directly.
No, they did not.
They didn’t have to do so.
Instead, the message we received as we sat in alphabetical rows in our elementary school, junior high, and senior high classrooms was clear in just about everything we were taught and everything we read. We learned that George Washington was the “Father of Our Country” and that he once prayed at Valley Forge, for example. We did not learn that he owned slaves, however.
And we certainly did not learn about Mathias Bush, the first man to sign his name to an agreement not to import British goods as a means of protesting the much-reviled Stamp Tax just prior to the Revolutionary War. Nor did we learn about Aaron Solomon, who fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Why?
Because they were Jews, not Christians.
And we were never taught about the thousands of African-Americans who fought alongside white soldiers in the war for independence. The only African-American we ever learned about in those days was Crispus Attucks, who died in the Boston Massacre.
He, however, rated only a sentence or two.
My textbooks also contained no mention of the famous Tuskeegee Airmen or the Japanese-American regimental combat team that fought the Nazis in Europe and emerged as the most highly decorated unit in that theater of war. It would be, literally, years before I even heard about them.
Likewise, very few women of any race or creed were ever mentioned. Marie Curie got a nod, of course, because she did win two Nobel Prizes for her achievements in science.
There was, however, no mention of other pioneering females such as mathematician Ada King-Noel, the Countess of Lovelace, who laid the foundations for computer science in the 1830s and is credited with writing the world's very first algorithm.
Thankfully, that seems to be changing because there is a new generation of historians abroad in the United States; men and women who are determined to write articles and books that tell the stories of ALL Americans, not just those approved by increasingly jingoistic and - sadly - racist boards of education. Not surprisingly, many of these new historians are homegrown, street-level writers who have chosen to tell the stories of local people, places, and events that shed a whole new light on the American experience.
Darrell Laurant is among them and while he might chafe a bit at being called an historian he is one nonetheless. A novelist and a retired newspaper columnist, his book "Inspiration Street: Two City Blocks That Helped Change America" is a shining example of how history could be - and should be - written.
Focusing his attention on two city blocks in Lynchburg, Virginia populated primarily by African-American families, he shines a much-needed spotlight on the achievements of some of the men and women who lived there and who have - despite their accomplishments - largely been ignored in standard history textbooks.
They include Dr. R. Walter Johnson, a pioneering physician and tennis coach who helped develop the skills that Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson would later use to become world famous; Harlem Renaissance poet Annie Spencer; and Frank Trigg, who was born a slave but overcame that and the loss of an arm to become a college president.
Laurant writes in the same easy, very accessible style that he used as a newspaper columnist. Thus, "Inspiration Street" is not a weighty tome destined to gather dust on a library shelf somewhere but a fairly short book, one that I carried around in my backpack and read while having coffee at my favorite cafe. He has a journalist's knack for putting the reader "in the moment" and a reporter's eye for detail. Reading about the remarkable men and women that grace the pages of this short history of two city blocks is, not to put too fine a point on it, "inspiring."
It’s my opinion that we desperately need some inspiration in these troubled times.
As evidence for that claim you need only look at the upsurge in attacks on Jewish synagogues, Muslim mosques, and churches of various denominations by men and women who cannot see beyond their own prejudices.
I would submit that one of the reasons they cannot do so is because they were never taught about the contributions people of different faiths and races made to this country. They have, instead, been taught that it was white Christian men who made America the land of the free, the home of the brave, and a worldwide leader in science, technology, and industry.
The result: Now that some of them are struggling, they feel disenfranchised by a system they wrongly believe was solely created by and for them and they are lashing out.
It is not just white Christians who are lashing out, however. Men and women of other races and religious traditions who have been taught the same lesson are also resorting to violence against a system they believe is rigged against them. Like their counterparts, they have not been taught about the non-white, non-Christian men and women who helped to build the United States into a world leader. As a result, they have an equally skewed version of what made America a great nation; one in which they do not feel they have a stake.
History is truly a double-edged sword.
But it shouldn’t be.
That said, perhaps it’s time that we beat that sword into a plowshare and use it to till the rich soil that is American history and unearth the contributions of all of its people.
Perhaps it’s time to, as Darrell Laurant has done, start telling the whole story of America.
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KCABGK
It can bring light to darkness by telling the story of the past with honesty, integrity, and good scholarship.
Conversely, it can be used as a weapon to further political and social agendas when those who write it choose to deliberately exclude some people from the text or, worse, spread falsehoods about them.
If you don't think that's true ask yourself why most Americans have never heard of the “Triple Nickels,” the first African-American paratroop battalion in World War II.
Or why, as another example, very few people know that the last Confederate general to surrender at the end of the Civil War was a Cherokee chief.
I was a victim of that poor scholarship when I was much younger. The history books that I was assigned to read in public school and, later, at a state university in Ohio were written to perpetuate the myth that the United States was the domain of white Christian men. As students, my classmates and I were led to believe that white men, and only white men, were responsible for the great achievements in science and industry; that they, and only they, were responsible for elevating civilization.
Did my teachers come out and say that directly.
No, they did not.
They didn’t have to do so.
Instead, the message we received as we sat in alphabetical rows in our elementary school, junior high, and senior high classrooms was clear in just about everything we were taught and everything we read. We learned that George Washington was the “Father of Our Country” and that he once prayed at Valley Forge, for example. We did not learn that he owned slaves, however.
And we certainly did not learn about Mathias Bush, the first man to sign his name to an agreement not to import British goods as a means of protesting the much-reviled Stamp Tax just prior to the Revolutionary War. Nor did we learn about Aaron Solomon, who fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Why?
Because they were Jews, not Christians.
And we were never taught about the thousands of African-Americans who fought alongside white soldiers in the war for independence. The only African-American we ever learned about in those days was Crispus Attucks, who died in the Boston Massacre.
He, however, rated only a sentence or two.
My textbooks also contained no mention of the famous Tuskeegee Airmen or the Japanese-American regimental combat team that fought the Nazis in Europe and emerged as the most highly decorated unit in that theater of war. It would be, literally, years before I even heard about them.
Likewise, very few women of any race or creed were ever mentioned. Marie Curie got a nod, of course, because she did win two Nobel Prizes for her achievements in science.
There was, however, no mention of other pioneering females such as mathematician Ada King-Noel, the Countess of Lovelace, who laid the foundations for computer science in the 1830s and is credited with writing the world's very first algorithm.
Thankfully, that seems to be changing because there is a new generation of historians abroad in the United States; men and women who are determined to write articles and books that tell the stories of ALL Americans, not just those approved by increasingly jingoistic and - sadly - racist boards of education. Not surprisingly, many of these new historians are homegrown, street-level writers who have chosen to tell the stories of local people, places, and events that shed a whole new light on the American experience.
Darrell Laurant is among them and while he might chafe a bit at being called an historian he is one nonetheless. A novelist and a retired newspaper columnist, his book "Inspiration Street: Two City Blocks That Helped Change America" is a shining example of how history could be - and should be - written.
Focusing his attention on two city blocks in Lynchburg, Virginia populated primarily by African-American families, he shines a much-needed spotlight on the achievements of some of the men and women who lived there and who have - despite their accomplishments - largely been ignored in standard history textbooks.
They include Dr. R. Walter Johnson, a pioneering physician and tennis coach who helped develop the skills that Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson would later use to become world famous; Harlem Renaissance poet Annie Spencer; and Frank Trigg, who was born a slave but overcame that and the loss of an arm to become a college president.
Laurant writes in the same easy, very accessible style that he used as a newspaper columnist. Thus, "Inspiration Street" is not a weighty tome destined to gather dust on a library shelf somewhere but a fairly short book, one that I carried around in my backpack and read while having coffee at my favorite cafe. He has a journalist's knack for putting the reader "in the moment" and a reporter's eye for detail. Reading about the remarkable men and women that grace the pages of this short history of two city blocks is, not to put too fine a point on it, "inspiring."
It’s my opinion that we desperately need some inspiration in these troubled times.
As evidence for that claim you need only look at the upsurge in attacks on Jewish synagogues, Muslim mosques, and churches of various denominations by men and women who cannot see beyond their own prejudices.
I would submit that one of the reasons they cannot do so is because they were never taught about the contributions people of different faiths and races made to this country. They have, instead, been taught that it was white Christian men who made America the land of the free, the home of the brave, and a worldwide leader in science, technology, and industry.
The result: Now that some of them are struggling, they feel disenfranchised by a system they wrongly believe was solely created by and for them and they are lashing out.
It is not just white Christians who are lashing out, however. Men and women of other races and religious traditions who have been taught the same lesson are also resorting to violence against a system they believe is rigged against them. Like their counterparts, they have not been taught about the non-white, non-Christian men and women who helped to build the United States into a world leader. As a result, they have an equally skewed version of what made America a great nation; one in which they do not feel they have a stake.
History is truly a double-edged sword.
But it shouldn’t be.
That said, perhaps it’s time that we beat that sword into a plowshare and use it to till the rich soil that is American history and unearth the contributions of all of its people.
Perhaps it’s time to, as Darrell Laurant has done, start telling the whole story of America.
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KCABGK
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