Over the past few years, there has been much discussion from both sides of the political spectrum about the rewriting of American history.
History is a continuous process of discovery. Expanding the narrative with new information that provides greater, in-depth and comprehensive coverage of historical events does not constitute the “rewriting” of history. The addition of once marginalized perspectives completes rather than rewrites history. Discovering and then adding verifiable new information has always been part of any historian’s job and it always will be.
For the first two hundred years in America’s history, the people leading our nation were mostly white men with a vested interest in presenting America’s story in a manner that seldom presented their own actions or those of their ancestors in any negative light. Their story was one where America was the benevolent protector of freedom and human rights, and any historical narrative that might have painted a different picture remained mostly untold.
Some people label those untold facts as “forgotten history.” In the case of the American story, many of us were never exposed to the less than pleasant incidents that occurred where our forefathers may have looked a little less benevolent than history has generally portrayed them. Instead of calling it forgotten history, I would suggest that much of it might have been simply glossed over or ignored.
Early education in the United States was often quite limited, both in scope and the level of expertise that teachers possessed. In Easton’s own one-room schoolhouses, education was often informal, underfunded, and inconsistent. As I have detailed in previous articles on the subject, even well into the 20th century, many students left school by age 12, equipped with only the barest understanding of American history. Their education was certainly selective, even if it wasn’t sanitized.
I began my journey in education in 1953 – over seventy years ago, so, my early exposure to U.S. history was quite different than that of today’s generation.
As young students, we memorized the opening line in the Declaration of Independence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” What we didn’t learn in that third-grade introduction to history was how our forefathers defined the term “all men.”
In 1956, there was never any mention of just how many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave holders at the beginning of the Revolution. Perhaps that would have tainted our view of some of the very men our teacher was touting as valiant proponents of freedom; but in fact, thirty-four of the fifty-six men who signed that document owned slaves – including Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and Benjamin Franklin.
Like most men of his era, Franklin had been a slave owner. Slavery had been an accepted institution for centuries, so it was natural that men of means were also slave holders. But many men, including Franklin, gradually began to question the practice, and by the time the American Revolution came to an end, Franklin had become a voice for abolition. Attitudes and beliefs evolve over time and the history of that evolution is often more complex than it may initially appear. Depending on one’s agenda, it can be said that Franklin was either a proponent of slavery or an abolitionist, when in fact he was both at different times during his lifetime. A responsible historian should always make a good faith effort to tell the entire story, not just part of it.
While the word “slavery” seems to have been conveniently omitted from our Constitution, it becomes evident in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of that document that “all men” didn’t include those who were not of white European heritage: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” The phrase, “all other persons” was a thinly veiled reference to those people of African heritage who remained enslaved. So, it is evident in our Constitution, that the framers considered neither Indians (indigenous people) nor enslaved blacks as being equal. While that information wasn’t withheld from us, I can guarantee that it was never adequately explained to us as ten-year-old students.
Abraham Lincoln has long been dubbed “The Great Emancipator.” His January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was one of the highlights of our 5th grade study of the Civil War. The 13th Amendment that formally abolished the institution of slavery wouldn’t become law until late 1865 – a few months after Lincoln’s death, but that didn’t matter. Lincoln effectively freed the slaves in 1863. Or did he?
The answer is that he did not. Lincoln never freed the approximately 4 million men, women, and children held in slavery in the United States when he signed the formal Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. The document applied only to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and not to those in the border states that remained loyal to the Union. There were half a million slaves in those states that the proclamation didn’t apply to, and the 3.5 million he technically freed remained enslaved until the states in which they toiled were defeated by the Union Army. Those facts were somehow omitted from our studies.
As elementary school scholars, we learned about the 1886 French gift to the United States of the Statue of Liberty. Like with the Declaration of Independence earlier in our scholastic career, we memorized the first line of the inscription that had been added to its base in 1903, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…” Inspiring words indeed.
What we were not taught was that after the immigration acts of 1917, 1921, and 1924 that those words would only apply to healthy, literate people coming from Europe and other nations in the Americas. Asians were completely barred from emigrating to the United States, and Africans and Middle Eastern counties were so limited by quotas that there was virtually no immigration from those parts of the world. So much for the benevolent words on that inscription. Evidently, xenophobia was very much alive and well in the early 20th century United States. Those laws remained in effect until 1952.
One of the highlights of our study of American history of the second half of the 19th century was the rare defeat of the United States military at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Five of the twelve regiments of Custer’s 7th Cavalry were wiped out, with 268 men perishing on the day of the battle and six more of the fifty-five severely wounded succumbing shortly thereafter. I don’t seem to recall our teacher painting either Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse in a very good light.
What we never heard a word about in that class was the establishment of over 400 Indian boarding schools in the United States during that same period. The aim of the Indian boarding school was cultural assimilation, boiled down in a phrase the Carlisle Indian School’s founder, Brigadier General Richard Pratt, coined as: “Kill the Indian, save the man.” To this end, children were taken from their parents and often moved hundreds of miles from their home where they would live and attend a government funded school run by Jesuit priests. Every ounce of their native culture was stripped of these children. At these schools, they lived difficult lives that consisted of learning English, studying white culture, and Christian prayer. They were forced to work, endure harsh punishment, and often went hungry. Many of those who were beaten died from their injuries and many more were sexually abused. While these atrocities went on for well over 100 years, they weren’t fully exposed until the early 2020’s.
The history we were taught as children in the 1950’s and 60’s was certainly accurate; it just wasn’t complete. There was no attempt to change events, but there was also no attempt to present any additional facts that might somehow tarnish the image of America and its leaders.
Today’s America is certainly quite different than the one I grew up in.
It took many years for the women’s suffrage movement to even get Congress to consider recognizing their right to vote. After all, women were also not included in the original “all men” definition by our founding fathers. It wasn’t until 1919 when passage of the 19th Amendment granted women the right to fully participate in our democratic process.
When I was young, opportunities for women in the workforce were mostly limited to secretarial positions and sales clerks. Teaching and nursing were about the only two occupations of relevance where most educated women could secure employment.
At a 2019 alumni dinner where she was receiving the Distinguished Alumni Award from her college, a colleague of mine recounted her story from the 1960’s. Her male high school guidance counselor advised her to save her father some money by not attending one of the prestigious Seven Sisters colleges where she had been accepted. He informed her that she could attend a less costly university and “still find a good husband.” Thankfully, she ignored his highly misogynistic advice.
Women were often discouraged from pursuing an education in any field that was usually reserved for men. Many young women were indoctrinated with the belief that a female couldn’t compete in a man’s world. Just within the last month, well-known CBS legal analyst Rikki Klieman recalled that when she was in her mid-20’s and unsure about her future, one of her under-graduate professors suggested that she attend law school. She almost automatically replied, “But girls don’t go to law school.” Her professor’s response: “No, but women do!”
Indigenous people were still referred to as Indians, the name given to them by Columbus when he first arrived in the Americas and mistakenly thought he had reached the outlying islands of India in his attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Prior to the enactment of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, indigenous people weren’t even considered citizens of the United States. Despite the provisions of that legislation, many states still denied citizenship and voting rights to those born on reservations, as those reservations were considered sovereign Indian nations, and their inhabitants were not recognized as residents of the states. These denials of rights persisted until the early 1960’s.
Despite being granted citizenship with the adoption of the 14th Amendment and then the right to vote in the 15th Amendment, African Americans were consistently denied their rights in most of the South before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Jim Crow (a pejorative reference to African Americans) laws were state and local ordinances introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that codified and enforced racial segregation.
Lesbian and Gay rights were longer in coming, and most issues were dealt with on the local and state level, rather than by Congress. Members of the LGBTQ community were often relegated to living clandestine lives. Differing levels of acceptance and local laws created a quilt work of enclaves where people with varying sexual preferences might lead a somewhat normal life, relatively free from persecution, but it wasn’t until late in the 20th century that many states finally guaranteed them the equal rights they deserved.
Thankfully, many of those who were once marginalized, disenfranchised or ignored are now afforded better opportunities and more equitable rights. Along with the greater participation in society have come greater demands for a factual historical accounting of the struggles many of these minorities have endured and overcome to earn the very same rights and advantages that many of us were born with and have always taken for granted.
The history of African Americans in Easton, as well as the rest of nation, is sparse at best. Most of the conditions surrounding slaves and their lives during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have traditionally been depicted in a patriarchal manner by Caucasian writers. While evidence exists that some white slave holders taught their slaves to read and write, there was never an organized effort to educate the enslaved, and nearly one hundred percent remained illiterate during that era. Recording their own thoughts and experiences would have been highly unusual. Only through years of investigative work by modern historians has information not previously exposed come to light.
But, since some people feel a certain discomfort in learning facts that often shine a negative light on those who suppressed the rights of our fellow citizens, those historians who now share some of these newer versions of our past have been accused of rewriting history. Additionally, many of these stories have been labeled as part of the recent Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement. The fact that newly discovered facts of past events are being added to the historical record doesn’t make them a product of any DEI initiative. They complete that narrative, rather than substantively change it.
As one of his first acts as president, on January 20th, President Trump issued an executive order titled: “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” On February 26th, the Pentagon issued a directive to the Department of Defense to remove all DEI-related content from its websites and social media. As a result, thousands of articles and photographs were summarily deleted from online publications, including articles extolling the bravery and virtues of the Tuskegee Airmen, the Native American Code Talkers of WWII, and even some photographs of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan in 1945 (apparently, keywords that might relate to a DEI initiative or related item were used to rapidly carry out the President’s initiative). While public outrage has resulted in a good many of these items being subsequently restored, such rapidly instituted draconian measures remain a cause for concern. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/.
On March 27th, the President issued another executive order, this one titled, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It targeted certain exhibits at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, labeling them as being “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” Apparently, exhibits that don’t fit the current administration’s image of what ideal American history should look like face possible dismantling, and funding for future exhibits at any museum that receives government grants will be carefully reviewed prior to monies being distributed. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/).
So, should we be concerned about government oversight, intervention, or censorship on what versions of history we will be allowed to study and disseminate? The simple answer is “Yes.”
History needs to be told regardless of the political fallout and any embarrassment that may ensue. Mistakes and injustices will be repeated if not exposed and examined by responsible scholars. Ashley Rogers, the executive director of the Whitney Plantation, a living museum that depicts plantation life in 19th century Louisiana, recently stated in an interview for the New York Times, “A wound doesn’t get better if you ignore it. It just festers.”
Museum exhibitions created to depict verified historical events that were once overlooked or downplayed by those who preferred the American story to remain pure and ideologically correct are currently in danger. Ignoring certain viewpoints and perspectives is one thing; but to suggest that they might be a distortion of our shared history is very much something else.
At the Whitney Plantation, there has never been an effort to portray the enslaved people who toiled there as being content with their existence. The museum’s mission has always been to show visitors what life was truly like for the enslaved. Shortly after the president’s March 27th executive order, two of the federal grants previously approved for the Whitney were rescinded. They have been subsequently reinstated, but the plantation’s directors remain fearful of not receiving future government grants.
As part of the Power of Place exhibit in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. there is a section titled Riot and Resilience in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That exhibit covers the 1921 riots in the Greenwood neighborhood where many successful African American families resided. When an African American teenager was falsely accused of assaulting a white woman, the event spawned an attack on this prominent black community. Between May 31st and June 1st, white mobs looted and burned more than 1,000 homes, businesses, and churches, and murdered dozens of African Americans in the deadliest race riot in U.S. history. This event was left out of most history books until the late 1990’s when the state of Oklahoma finally formed a commission to document the incident.
In an alcove on the lower level of the same museum, the casket of Emmett Till remains on display. In August 1955, Till, a 14-year-old Chicago teenager was brutally beaten before he was shot in the head, all because he allegedly whistled at a white woman during a visit with his family in Money, Mississippi. His killers, who were acquitted by an all-white jury, later sold their story and freely admitted their guilt. Till’s mother insisted on having an open casket where members of the community could see what had been done to her son.
There are those politicians who claim that racism is not and never has been systemic in the United States. There are also many historical scholars in our society who disagree. Are the above-mentioned exhibits reflecting a history that has been rewritten with the intent of dividing our nation? Or has that history finally been revealed or added to so that we may better understand our past? I will let the readers of this article decide.
Up to this point, the president’s executive orders only pertain to which photos and narratives will be allowed to be displayed on government funded websites and to the content of exhibits presented in government supported museums. But no matter what your personal viewpoint, think long and hard about the wisdom of allowing our government to decide what we should and shouldn’t be allowed to see and examine.
