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

by Sharon McMahon

I’m Sharon McMahon. It’s pronounced like McWoman, except it’s McMan. The ho in the middle is silent.

Perfect

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.

there was no one in the world engaged in chattel slavery like the United States, where people were kidnapped and held permanently, with no hope of escaping the condition. That was not the cultural norm in other parts of the world.

the American South was one of the LAST places in the world to end enslavement. One of the last. Not the first.

After Pierce left office, a new Democratic president moved into the White House in 1857. James Buchanan was the only bachelor president…or was he? Multiple historians believe Buchanan and William Rufus King, Pierce’s dead vice president, were lovers. King and Buchanan lived together for thirteen years. They were frequently teased for their effeminate mannerisms. Andrew Jackson referred to them as “Miss Fancy and Aunt Nancy,” which were nicknames that probably suggested exactly what you think they suggested.[11]

Fancy that...

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.

“People like Clara Brown are rare. She saw her role in the world not as ‘I’ or ‘me’ against ‘them,’ but as ‘us’ and ‘we.’ It was the way that she lived her life that garnered her the amount of respect that she received.”[18]

“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.”

Ding ding ding!

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” Sarah often repeated to her passel of growing daughters. “Just do the next needed thing,” she reminded herself when her feet throbbed and her back refused to straighten. Make sure your children have better than you did.

Virginia stared into the preacher’s eyes and saw into his soul. Hers was a practical, no-nonsense manner, her mouth set in a purse, one eyebrow slightly raised. Her expression said that she did not suffer fools.

Perhaps Miss Randolph quoted Booker T. Washington to her students: “The world cares very little about what you or I know, but it cares a great deal about what you or I do.”[2]

What did they need, right now? To learn to read, so they could get better jobs and raise their standards of living. To have skills that people would pay for. And if she had to act nice to some rich folks in town to get her families what was necessary, then she was not above it.

They say it’s hard to hate someone up close, and so each Sunday, Virginia began showing up at the country churches,

“What is the next needed thing?”