The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History

by Sharon McMahon

The best Americans are not the critics, they are the doers. They are the people who went for broke when everyone else yelled to turn back. They are those who know that one becomes great because of who they lift up, not who they put down. I have learned that no one reaches their final moments of mortal existence and whispers to their loved ones, “I wish I had gotten in some more sick burns in the comments section on Facebook.”

The text of the Preamble imagined America at its finest: Just. Peaceful. Good. And free.

America has been just, and it has perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been—and are—good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn’t deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression.

Sometimes we surprise ourselves in our capacity for greatness, and sometimes the weight of regret wraps around us like a chain.

If anyone tries to tell you the Civil War was a war for “state’s rights,” calmly look them in the eye, and ask, politely and inquisitively, what exactly the states wanted the “right” to do? You can follow up with, “Make their own rules about what?” The answer is, of course, that they wanted to make their own rules about whether they had the right to enslave people. All the “way of life” and “self-determination” and “economic conditions” roads lead right back to slavery.

So no, America is not “the worst it’s ever been” today, despite what some news anchors might be trying to convince you of, because if they can make you afraid, they can gain your attention and your money. Has anyone been beaten half to death on the floor of the Senate over the topic of whether it’s cool to enslave people this week? No? Okay.

“She took Christianity to mean for someone to be Christ-like if they were a Christian. And I joke with my students that there are people who go to the church, to the mosque, to the temple, and there are those that follow their religion. And those are not necessarily the same people.”

The women did not try to conceal their identities, didn’t come armed, didn’t break any glass or invade any private offices. They weren’t there to kidnap members of Congress; no faux gallows waited outside the building. They came peacefully, stayed in the section designated for visitors, and left peacefully, confident that they had made their point. Suffrage leader Alice Paul smiled happily at reporters and remarked, “It was a most excellent demonstration. Certainly we may in the future adopt various methods not dissimilar from the one we used today to keep Congress reminded of our cause.”[4]

What does the phrase with all deliberate speed mean to you? You might hear it and think quickly and deliberately speed things along, right? Be speedy about your integration. Deliberately be speedy. That’s absolutely what I thought, and what I was taught as a high school student. But that’s not what with all deliberate speed meant to segregationists. Deliberate in this context meant slowly and carefully. To them, “With all deliberate speed” meant integrate schools at a snail’s pace. As they were creating plans for the legally required school integration, civil rights activists and lawyers made various proposals, which were rejected time after time. One lawyer, exasperated, basically asked school officials, “Well, what do you think would be a reasonable timeframe?” The other lawyers came back with: “2020.” This was in 1955. Segregationists proposed integrating schools in 2020. That’s what with all deliberate speed meant to them.

But to some segregationists, there was no distant future in which integration would occur, because they decided to close schools entirely. Led by Virginia senator Harry Byrd, some states engaged in a movement they deemed “Massive Resistance.” They started by passing state laws that penalized schools that integrated, removed their funding, and closed public schools that dared a desegregation attempt. Some states gave out private school tuition vouchers so white parents who opposed integration could send their child to a private religious school. They established “pupil placement boards” that had the power to force students to attend the school the board decided upon. And they were just getting started.

The high schools in Little Rock would be closed altogether the following school year. Rather than having troops at the school every day, Faubus decided that they just wouldn’t have school. Closing school for everyone was better than sharing the white schools with Black children, he reasoned. (Except football—that was allowed.) Other private religious schools for whites only popped up—locals called them “segregation academies.” Many of the United States’ private religious schools in the South were founded during this time, for exactly this purpose: providing a haven for white parents to protect their children from students of other races. (For real, though…if your southern religious school was founded in the 1950s, chances are extremely high it was a segregation academy. They may have failed to mention that in the brochure.) The “Mothers’ League” was also instrumental and active in working against school integration. They educated voters on which school-board members supported their segregationist beliefs and which didn’t. Their fliers read: “Do you want negroes in our schools? If you do not, then go to the polls this coming Monday and VOTE. PLEASE VOTE RIGHT!!!! Join hands with us in this fight—send your contributions to THE MOTHERS’ LEAGUE.”[12]

The school closures lasted until the 1960s, when Attorney General Robert Kennedy got involved. “We may observe with much sadness and irony that, outside of Africa, south of the Sahara, where education is still a difficult challenge, the only places on earth known not to provide free public education are Communist China, North Vietnam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras—and Prince Edward County, Virginia,” he said.[22] In 1963, Prince Edward County schools had still not integrated, nine years after Brown v. Board of Education.

What is done in darkness must come to light. Seeds of resistance, seeds of momentum, were planted not just in the hearts of men and women all over the South, they were planted in the hearts of their children and their relatives.

The civil rights movement would be nowhere without the courage of people with the least amount of political, social, and economic power. Those whose very lives breathed oxygen into justice and freedom, whose cumulative actions worked to unfasten the padlocks of centuries of oppression. None of them could do it all, but they all could do something. These are the small and the mighty. And we can be too.

I’d want you to know that the weight of the world does not rest on your shoulders alone. Our unique skills, talents, and abilities are meant to be used in ways that only we can.

They were willing to let other people watch them fail. They just did the next right thing. I’d want you to know that you should keep going. That often the biggest breakthroughs happen after the darkest nights.

America at her best is just. She is peaceful. She is good. And she is free. And it is us, the small and the mighty, who make America great. Not again, but always.

I’d want you to know that there will come a moment in your life, a moment when you will be asked to choose: will I retreat, or will I move forward with courage?

The character that you’ve been cultivating will be called upon, and when that moment comes, whenever it is, I hope you’ll rise to it. I’d want you to know that for some of you, that moment is today. I’d want you to know that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. The small. And the mighty.