I tell Mike that I’d recently been browsing through my old high school U.S. history textbook to see if Philo Farnsworth was mentioned. He wasn’t. Nor was fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin (from the Civil Rights Movement) or nineteen-year-old Ridgely Whiteman, who discovered the Clovis archaeological site. “It’s amazing when you think of how many young people have had an impact on history,” I say to Mike, “and yet in textbooks meant for the very same age group, they’re ignored.”
