Posted on 08/21/2006 6:08:12 AM PDT by presidio9
American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling Jamestown, Va., in 1607. They hear about how white Northerners freed the black slaves, how Asians came in the mid-1800s to build Western railroads. The lessons have left out a lot.
Forty-two years before Jamestown, Spaniards and American Indians lived in St. Augustine, Fla. At least several thousand Latinos and nearly 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War. And Asian-Americans had been living in California and Louisiana since the 1700s.
Now, more of these and other lesser-known facts about American minorities are getting more attention. The main reason is the nation's growing diversity.
More than one in four Americans is not white, and many minority groups are gaining strength — in numbers, political clout and resources — to bring their often-overlooked histories to light.
Minority communities "are yelling for inclusion in the national consciousness," said Gary Okihiro, a historian at Columbia University. "One needs to understand what's true about the past to be able to make sound judgments about our present."
There are hundreds of efforts — big and small — under way to tell the untold stories.
Although Hispanics are the nation's largest minority group — 14.5 percent of the population according to Census Bureau figures released last week — there is no national museum dedicated to their history.
Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra (news, bio, voting record) of California is pushing a bill to study building one on the National Mall in Washington. "When you walk the Mall in the capital of the United States, there is no better place to try to understand what Americans are and where we have been," Becerra said. "But it's still an incomplete picture."
The Mall has dozens of sites highlighting American culture and history, including the National Museum of the American Indian that opened in 2004, 20 years after it was authorized. Organizers in June settled on the future site of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but its opening date is still years away. A Latino museum would be even further off.
Other federal agencies are shifting their work to incorporate more minorities' stories. Six years ago, National Park Service historians met to reevaluate how park sites tell the story of the Civil War, said Donald W. Murphy, deputy director of the parks. Old battlefield exhibits mainly discussed who fought and how many died. Now they include personal diaries, including those kept by slaves.
Once considered marginal to American history, those stories are "really important because oftentimes the margins really are the holders of American democracy," said Okihiro, an expert in Asian-American history. "They are those who have fought against their own racial profiling and fought for the freedoms that the majority seem to take for granted."
Asian-Americans are the only immigrants in U.S. history to have faced laws explicitly written to bar their entry — laws that were not overturned until immigration reform in the 1960s, said Dmae Roberts, whose eight-hour public radio program on Asian immigration, "Crossing East," airs on hundreds of stations.
"People know very little of this outside of California," she said.
Some tales have gone untold because, in the less-diverse America of the past, minorities didn't make the decisions on textbooks and other means of passing along history. And in many cases, minorities who had faced blatant discrimination wanted to discard evidence of past horrors.
But some who came of age during the civil rights movement are determined to pass the stories on. "It is so important that children of color are not made to feel that they're asking for anything — they're claiming what's rightfully theirs just like any other child," said Cynthia Morris Lowery, executive director of the African American Experience Fund. "I tell my grandchildren 'Grandpa has earned that spot for you.'"
Sometimes, history is recalled through criminal investigations.
Prosecutors in Jackson, Miss., last year exhumed the remains of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Medical examiners performed a new autopsy, and investigators are poring over thousands of documents.
Florida's attorney general ended an investigation last week into a 1951 house bombing that killed two civil rights activists. The probe found extensive circumstantial evidence pointing to four Ku Klux Klan members, all of whom are dead, Attorney General Charlie Crist said Wednesday.
Technology advances also have fueled new interest in history.
In Connecticut last month, archaeologists excavated the grave of an 18th century slave named Venture Smith in hopes that DNA evidence could verify tales of amazing physical strength and a childhood in Guinea, West Africa. No DNA traces were found, but the graves of his wife and children also will be examined.
Paul Beaty of Dallas turned to DNA testing when, after a decade of genealogical research, he could not trace his roots earlier than the 1830s due to incomplete slavery records. The tests linked him to the Ewondo tribe in Cameroon, West Africa, and when his son was born last month, he was named Evan Ewondo.
"We make the connections in America and make the connections in Africa and now we understand our lives," he said. "Now we can build bigger relationships. We are truly creating history."
The quest to get the stories told is hardly over.
Though there are more than 12 million Asian-Americans, Roberts said it's tough to persuade stations to air her program, which is being broadcast through next May.
"There are stations that haven't quite decided — they say 'We don't have any Asians here,'" Roberts said. "I tell them 'This isn't for Asians. This is for everyone else.'"
Winston Smith's job was to rewrite the past.
Spanish, the language of the conquerors...
I am always amazed that any native americans would consider themselves "latino" which means they not only acknowledge their slave past, but embrace it.
My guess is there will be others ... shortly ... ones who blow things up.
I call BS. When I took American history, it seemed like at least the first month covered various European explorers coming to the new world and kicking the butts of whatever Indians happened to live there. Most of those early explorers and therefore the colonists which followed them were Spanish.
There's a good reason why the Spanish in Florida are not part of American history.
They were the ENEMY.
So what?
It's not a whole lot better with some white families--it can be hard to trace back beyond the ones listed as adults in 1850. Of course with whites you often can find marriage records and land records, whereas slaves' marriages were not legally recognized so were not recorded in the county courthouse, and slaves owned no land.
Florida's attorney general ended an investigation last week into a 1951 house bombing that killed two civil rights activists.
In Connecticut last month, archaeologists excavated the grave of an 18th century slave named Venture Smith
And today, in 2006, the race pushers dig up stories that are 50, 100, 150 years old and pick the scabs off to make them bleed afresh. Then ask, with mock puzzlement, why the race problem won't go away.
"Although Hispanics are the nation's largest minority group — 14.5 percent of the population according to Census Bureau figures released last week — there is no national museum dedicated to their history."
I want a museum for Irish-Americans. I'd bet that more than 14.5% of Americans are of Irish descent. The Irish helped the North win the civil war and then built the eastern half of the transcontinental railroad.
Seriously, why not a museum in DC for this. Funded entirely through donations, no taxpayer money. You get as many square feet as you can pay for....
I guess we can do the run down of every nationality in this country then! The hyphenization of "-Americans" needs to stop. Maybe it could be included in the overall history but this is getting out of hand. There is no melting pot with these radicals and they are attempting to kill our country.
"The first US census to list people individually was the 1850 census, but it gives names only of free persons (including "free persons of color")...the 1850 and 1860 censuses have one line for each slave but just give data such as age and sex, not the names, which makes them almost useless for genealogical research."
I have a original copy of the 1850 census book, but it is packed away at this moment.
Actually, most people are ignorant enough about history that I'll bet if you asked them, they'd think the Pilgrims were the first English settlers in 1620. We Virginians beat 'em here by thirteen years, but I guess the Pilgrims had better PR agents. :)
}:-4
Facts that lend to advance the particular advocates agenda. Typical of the writing or rewriting of history to fit ones aims.
Slavery is an example, as taught in the American schools insinuates that the United States was responsible for all Slavery and omits many historical facts. Muslims to this day still practice Slavery. Muslims were the original slave traders, walking Africans East to the Muslim countries. The United States had little to do with transporting and selling slaves. 5% of all the slave eventually landed in what is now the United States (500,000). The balance 12,000,000 were sent to the Caribbean and the other Sugar producing regions. How is it possible for the American ancestors of Slaves to adopt Islam and adopt names such as El this and Al that?
"minorities who had faced blatant discrimination wanted to discard evidence of past horrors. "
This is true and was a good practice. Mucking around in past misdeeds gets you no where. My parents did it, and I'm glad they did.
"African American Experience Fund. "I tell my grandchildren 'Grandpa has earned that spot for you.'"
In the USA, you earn your own way. what grandpa does is irrelevant.
It's perfectly understandable that blacks and latinos would want to trace their geneology and figure out where they came from - so do many others. Census records have their limitations for all Americans, however. As you point out it's necessary to rely on birth, marriage and death records in many cases. Also useful are pension rolls for veterans of the Revolution and War of 1812; I don't think there are equivalents before the Revolution, although their might be British pension rolls for veterans of the Seven Years War (French and Indian War). In Europe, some families (such as mine) had private copies of records that are otherwise unavailable, and beyond that one must rely on church records, and the records of the various cities, duchies, principalities, and kingdoms. The various national (whether they have legal status or not) heraldic institutions can also be helpful.
Congress once declared that the American Indians were 'aliens' of the U.S..
So, in the rewrite, are we finally going to tell the truth about Columbus - that he not only never set foot on North America (in 4 voyages) but had maps showing the position and existence of North and South America and that his goal was to sail UNDER North America between the two continents and thus find a new route to the back side of the Indies? (Which he thought he had, naming the inhabitants he found in what is now called The Indies, Indians>)
Are we finally going to acknowledge the many who sailed to - and settled in - the "new" lands hundreds of years before Columbus-come-lately? - The Vikings, for one, who settled in Greenland over a thousand years ago, had communities of up to 30,000, explored the eastern coast of N.Amer. - and lived in their towns for over 350 years (when the weather in this area was much warmer than it is now - must have been those darn Viking SUVs) until the approaching mini-ice age drove them out in about 350 A.D.?
Are we going to add the accounts of the voyage of Sir Henry Sinclair, Jarl (Earl) of the Orkneys in Northern Scotland, who island hopped to Nova Scotia in the late 1300's - with a considerable fleet and passengers that may have included many Knights Templar - about the foundation ruins found around Nova Scotia that date to that time and type of structures, their subsequent explorations down the New England coast = and the round stone tower in Rhode Island - that was there long before the Mayflower sailed - that is an almost exact copy of like structures built in Scotland in the same period?
Are we going to include, in the rewrites, the fact that the only reason the slave traders had blacks to buy and bring over was because the black tribes in the deep jungles of Africa brought them to the coast and sold them to the traders? ( Are we going to posture the question: "If the slave ancestors of some blacks in this country had NOT been brought here, what kind of life would the blacks here today have has they been born in the lands of their ancestry. Example: Alex Haley tracked down his ancestral cousins in Africa - the American multimillionaire's relatives in the old country were still living in the bush. This is not to say slavery wasn't a inhuman blight on civilization - for thousands of years in most civilizations - but I wonder how many slave descendants would gladly exchange their lives here for one in the old country?)
Are we going to include that the tens of thousands of free blacks who fought in the Civil War, fought for the Confederacy?
Are we ever going to write history through a prism of facts instead of personal/ethnic agendas? (Not in my lifetime...)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't old Andrew Jackson give the Spanish governor of Florida two weeks to pack up and clear out or he would come down there with an army and "hang him from the nearest tree"? Seems to me that pretty much did it for Spanish history in Florida until we received our Cuban guests thanks to the kind ministrations of Fidel Castro.
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