History

Women’s history is American history. Black history is American history. Asian history is American history. Native American history is the original American story. So what is this crap they are teaching in schools as American history? Read more here. What should be taught? Read what the American Historical Association has to say about teaching history with integrity here.

Women in the US Military: Timeline

A few historical events that might not be taught today:

Maj. Gen. Joseph McNeil of the legendary A&T Four dies at 83.

Army restores Confederate-linked names to 7 bases. They found other folks with the same last names and changed the names back. The bases are Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Pickett, and Fort Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Polk in Louisiana, and Fort Rucker in Alabama.

Do you know what Manifest Destiny is? You need to know, especially if you don’t remember learning about it in your middle or high school history class. Why is it important now? Because we are hearing manifest destiny language in our 21st-century political discourse!

What should be taught in American high school history classes? See what the American Historical Association thinks here.

1. Secondary US history teachers are professionals who are concerned mostly with helping their students learn central elements of our nation’s history. Teachers want students to read and understand founding documents to prepare them for informed civic engagement. They also want students to grapple with the complex history and legacies of racism and slavery. These goals are entirely compatible. We did not find indoctrination, politicization, or deliberate classroom malpractice.

2. Teachers make important curricular decisions with direct influence over what students are expected to learn. Despite legislative interference, the localized influence of state-mandated assessment, and efforts to standardize instruction, history teachers retain substantial discretion over what they use in their daily work.

3. Free online resources outweigh traditional textbooks, which are unlikely to stand at the center of history instruction. While publishers pitch digital licenses and tech tools to districts, teachers instead make prolific use of a decentralized universe of no-cost or low-cost online resources. US history teachers rely on a short list of trusted sites led by federal institutions including the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and Smithsonian museums.

American Lesson Plan distills insights gathered during a two-year exploration of secondary history education, combining a 50-state appraisal of standards and legislation with a close examination of local contexts in nine states. What did we learn? Secondary US history teachers are professionals who are concerned mostly with helping their students learn central elements of our nation’s history. Teachers want students to read and understand the founding documents to prepare them for informed civic engagement. (more)

Yale Announces 2025 Launch of the Yale and Slavery Teachers Institute

1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

During the Tulsa Race Massacre, which occurred over 18 hours from May 31 to June 1, 1921, a white mob attacked residents, homes, and businesses in the predominantly Black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. (more)

Did you know that…

Here are some sites for more information about black history:

Harriet Tubman Becomes First Woman to Lead a Major US Military Operation

Jenny Ashcraft

Harriet Tubman was an iconic freedom fighter known for her work as an abolitionist and conductor on the Underground Railroad. But did you know that Tubman was also the first woman to lead a major military operation when she helped execute the Combahee Ferry Raid during the Civil War? This South Carolina raid led to the rescue of more than 700 enslaved people and the destruction of several large rice plantations and Confederate military infrastructure. (MORE)

Do you know what the “Lost Cause” interpretation of Civil War history is?

Lost Cause is an interpretation of the American Civil War viewed by most historians as a myth that attempts to preserve the honor of the South by casting the Confederate defeat in the best possible light. It attributes the loss to the overwhelming Union advantage in manpower and resources, nostalgically celebrates an antebellum South of supposedly benevolent slave owners and contented enslaved people, and downplays or altogether ignores slavery as the cause of war (more). The National Park Service has numerous resources available to help people learn more about the Civil War.

In an address at Franklin Female College in Holly Springs, Judge Jeremiah Watkins Clapp, a former plantation owner and Mississippi state senator, urged the students “to see to it that our children shall not, at school or at home, shape their ideas or acquire their information and impressions from books or other sources of character calculated to poison their minds and their hearts and teach them lessons of humiliation and shame.” (more) Sounds a lot like the issues being raised over teaching history in 2023 to me!  Many … writings are contained in the fourteen-volume series Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (1898-1914).

A few historical events that might not be taught today:

I love crosswords and usually do the Times puzzle most days. Then I found the Black Crossword.

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