Quick Lesson in History Lessons

     Back in the 1980s I read a book “America Revised” by Frances Fitzgerald. It was a thoroughly researched history of American history textbooks up to 1979.  From this book I first learned that until the civil rights era in the 1960s, slaves were depicted as appearing “magically” at some unspecified time and disappearing after the Civil War. In other words, history texts failed to mention that slaves were forcibly abducted and removed from their homes and families. Slave owners were commonly portrayed as generous, and the KKK as having “a worse reputation than it deserves.”(p.86 if you don’t believe me). Fitzgerald also described how Native Americans were represented favorably in the 1830s and 40s, more negatively after the Civil War (“savages”, “half-civilized”), and then omitted entirely from textbooks between the 1930s and the 1960s. Since reading that book and subsequent research, I have seen more evidence that as a nation we are defined by what we teach our children about our history. Sure, bad memes enter from outside the textbooks, but missing memes can be just as crucial in forming the identity and politics of each generation.