Some History I Think You Should Know
Civil Rights march- Photo by Library of Congress on UnsplashI frequently joke that I got into history in college because it was just gossip, only I didn’t have to feel bad about it because it counted as trivia points or fun footnotes for an essay (I know, “fun footnote” sounds like an oxymoron to a lot of folks) or got me a good grade. Which is true. But I also got into history because I was interested in learning about the heroes who didn’t make it into pop culture, who started revolutions but died before they saw their work come to fruition, who rebelled through art and literature and quiet moments of resistance that laid the groundwork for the larger fights and protests to come.
Most history classes won’t teach you about the rebellions that didn’t succeed, or the ones that didn’t fit the narrative of fairness and meritocracy that the AP US History test wanted to push, and they definitely won’t teach you the stories that run counter to the structured setup of American exceptionalism. But more than that: history books often forget about the peacebuilders. Not because they weren’t important, but because their work was deemed “small” in the context of “the big stuff.” It’s hard to care about the individual academics and the small-scale revolutionaries and the mutual aid workers and the union organizers when you have to fit all of World War I and World War II and the Cold War and also Tammany hall and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the Civil War and Reconstruction and the 7 Years’ War all in two semesters of school, one hour a day, five days a week. And that’s understandable— and probably more of a statement on the over-testing and boring-making of humanities subjects in schools than anything else. But it means that some stories— important stories— get left out.
So here are some histories that I didn’t learn until college. Some lessons I’ve leaned on in these past few months. Sources of strength, of resilience, of backbone. I hope they help you, too.
1894: The Pullman Rail Strike severely disrupted rail traffic in the Midwest in June–July 1894. The federal government’s response to the unrest marked the first time that an injunction was used to break a strike. Amid the crisis, on June 28 Pres. Grover Cleveland declared a national holiday— what we now know as Labor Day— as a conciliatory gesture toward the American labour movement. The Pullman Strike was one of the first examples of successful collective bargaining in American history— and it received almost entirely negative coverage in the news. Indeed, the actual events as they unfolded weren’t even particularly favorable for the rail workers— Cleveland was a strikebreaker, not a peacemaker, and sent soldiers to break up the protests. But the Pullman Strike laid the groundwork for the Coal Strike of 1902, which effectively facilitated the turn of the U.S. Government from strikebreaker to peacemaker in industrial disputes— a first for the post-Civil War United States (arguably a first for the US in general, but that’s a different conversation). Union leader Samuel Gompers later wrote, “Several times I have been asked what in my opinion was the most important single incident in the labor movement in the United States and I have invariably replied: the strike of the anthracite miners in Pennsylvania ... from then on the miners became not merely human machines to produce coal but men and citizens.” Workers became human in the eyes of the government— not just numbers and machines. And the US government became, perhaps for the first time (and we’d like to see it again…) representatives of the common people rather than of the private interests of high-dollar corporations.
1942: Led by five students and one professor at the University of Munich (Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, and Hans and Sophie Scholl), the White Rose distrubuted leaflets and put up graffiti that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Beyond that, they registered what was happening to marginalized communities in Germany, recognized their own relative safety in that they were still students and/or employed, they were considered “desirable” by the government— indeed, Hans Scholl was an active participant in Hitler Youth as a kid— and they had freedom of movement. Sophie Scholl, his sister, was more actively outspoken— she was arrested for the first time for anti-Nazi activities at age 16— but recognized that as a privileged woman, she was less likely to be stopped or arrested for anything short of treason. By mid-July 1942, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell had written the first four of many leaflets. Quoting extensively from the Bible as well as Goethe and Schiller, the iconic poets of the German bourgeoisie, the White Rose appealed to what they considered the German intelligensia, believing that such people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that motivated the authors themselves. The leaflets were left in the telephone books in public telephone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for further distribution. The members of the White Rose were eventually arrested and executed for high treason. Sophie Scholl was the only member given a chance to speak up in her own defense. One could say that they failed— but a copy of their final leaflet was smuggled out of Germany through Scandinavia to England, where it was used by the Allied Forces. In mid-1943, the RAF dropped millions of copies of the tract, retitled The Manifesto of the Students of Munich, over Germany as propaganda. Their resistance lived beyond them. They did not look around at Hitler’s rise to power and assume business as usual. They did what they could, and stood by their beliefs, which were rooted in empathy and outreach and concern for peopel who did not look like them. They did not live to see their efforts succeed— but they resisted.
1955: Claudette Colvin, at age 15, refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus. She spoke to civil rights leaders about her experience, especially as Rosa Parks gained prominence in the civil rights movement for a similar act of protest. But Colvin’s skin was darker than Parks’s, and she was a teenager— a pregnant one, at that, by the time she began speaking publicly about her experiences. Parks was already a prominent figure in civil rights and church circles alike. Colvin’s act of protest was small, and benefitted few— at the time, it wasn’t part of the larger bus strikes, nor the broader protest movements. But it laid the groundwork for the domestic labor strikes, and for the bus boyotts, and eventually, desegregation. Claudette Colvin, by the way, is 85 years old. The Civil Rights movement isn’t ancient history— it’s this lifetime. If you’ve only ever seen photos of its primary actors in black-and-white, or in tiny thumbnails and reproductions, it might be time to consider why schools and publishers have tried to make it seem like this history was longer ago than it was.
1962: Fannie Lou Hamer travelled with 17 other civil rights activists to the courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi. They were told they had to pass a literacy test before they could register to vote— a common method of voter suppression. After nervously completing the test, the group boarded their bus to return home. When Hamer got home that night, the white owner of the plantation on which she lived with her husband threatened to kick them out of their home if she didn’t return to the courthouse and withdraw her registration. Several days later, white supremacists shot 16 bullets into the home where Hamer was staying. She was undettered. A year later, Hamer was traveling home to Mississippi after attending a voter’s workshop in South Carolina. She was traveling with other activists, and the group decided to stop and eat. After they were refused service from the restaurant owner, police circled their bus and began making arrests. Over the next four days, Hamer was brutally beaten in the Winona jailhouse as she was interrogated about her involvement with voter-registration workshops. The beatings left Hamer with permanent kidney damage and a blood clot behind her eye. She went on to co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and attended the Democratic National Convention to challenge the all-white Democratic delegation to represent the state of Mississippi. Hamer made a passionate speech that described the systematic disenfranchisement and oppressive conditions under which Black Mississippians lived their daily lives. The televised speech generated public outcry and set in motion the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act which banned, among other things, local laws like literacy tests that blocked African Americans from the ballot box. Again, voting access isn’t ancient history. Neither is sharecropping. And neither is the resistance that allowed Black people— and women, and other minorities— to get the vote after all.
1969: The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising) were a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in Lower Manhattan. Although the demonstrations were not the first time that the American queer community fought back against government-sponsored persecution of LGBTQ+ people, the Stonewall riots marked a new beginning for the gay rights movement. Very few establishments welcomed openly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s. Those that did were often bars and hotels, although bar owners and managers were rarely gay— and police raids were frequent and often violent. The Stonewall riots were largely led by Black, trans women like Marsha P Johnson— who, along with Zazu Nova and Jackie Hormona, stood up to push back the police during the riots, and became central organizers during the early days of Pride parades— which were considered illegal uprisings for many years before becoming the expressions of joy and freedom we recognize today. Following the Stonewall riots, the LGBTQIA+ population continued to face gender, class, and generational obstacles to becoming a cohesive community. Over the following weeks and months, they initiated politically active social organizations and launched publications that spoke openly about rights for gay people. The first anniversary of the riots was marked by peaceful demonstrations in several American cities that have since grown to become what we know as Pride.
All of this is to say: imperialism, fascism, racism, voter suppression, class oppression, misogyny— none of that is ancient history. It never was. And it wasn’t the government, or the military, or the professional activists who saved the general population from the supremacists and the fascists. It was the regular people. Women trying to get to work. Individuals trying to live their lives, undefined by who they chose to love. Workers who wanted better lives for their children. That resistance isn’t ancient history either— it’s people who are still alive. Movements that have learned with age. Young people who have grown up with the stories of their grandparents’ and parents’ actions during these periods and who know to stand up for freedom— for themselves (ourselves) and others.
History can teach us plenty, if we let it. It’s not just the fascists who are able to tap into decades of mythology and symbolism and revolts. It’s the regular people, too— including the ones who didn’t end up in your history books.
Recommended listening, by the way (written in 1931— again, not ancient history at all, unless we let it be):
And, in more recent history (if you know, you know):
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