AP
Minorities seek history class changes

By ERIN TEXEIRA, AP National Writer 1 hour, 54 minutes ago

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.
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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.'"

8/20/2006 6:56:04 PM

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0895260476/sr=8-1/qid=1156114740/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6793226-1409643?ie=UTF8

8/20/2006 6:59:40 PM

^That book is the exact opposite of what the people in the article want.

More like,

8/20/2006 7:47:26 PM

^ i had to read that for AP US history

8/20/2006 7:56:49 PM

lies? like the one about "the new world" being discovered by colombus? not so, it was the vikings in the east and the chinese in the west.



[Edited on August 20, 2006 at 8:39 PM. Reason : .]

8/20/2006 8:27:14 PM

Yeah, that type of thing.

But it would argue that the concept of "discovering" the Americas is already so ridiculously ethnocentric that arguing over which Eurasian ethnicity bumped into the continent first is silly.



[Edited on August 20, 2006 at 8:59 PM. Reason : .]

8/20/2006 8:58:16 PM

i discovered capital boulevard

8/20/2006 9:05:48 PM

LESS WORDS MORE PICTURES

8/20/2006 9:16:45 PM

Quote :

"American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling Jamestown, Va., in 1607. "

no

they're taught that Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement

whether they comprehend what that means in the whole scope of things is a whole other story

8/20/2006 9:18:36 PM

Yeah, for real.

As if we're doing Hispanic culture a disfavor by not fully emphasizing the conquistadors.

8/20/2006 9:30:07 PM

And your average adult remembers how much US History anyways?

8/20/2006 9:50:13 PM

Every last bit of it!

8/20/2006 9:55:01 PM

Quote :

"no they're taught that Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement"

Thats exactly what I was thinking. I even remember being asked that on a test back in middle school/early high school

8/21/2006 8:19:48 AM

There was some HBO special about a comedian (I think) went to a classroom and tried to teach students the truth and how they were lied to.

8/21/2006 8:45:48 AM

I took several history classes and remember many times being told and tested on the fact that St. Aug. is the oldest established town in the USA, not fucking Jamestown.

And since we need the National Museum of the tarbaby, redman, spic, and chink, when we gonna get one for us crackas?

8/21/2006 8:45:55 AM

8/21/2006 12:10:26 PM

well, Zinn takes it to the other extreme.

8/21/2006 12:33:25 PM

Quote :

"When Menendez arrived off the coast of Florida, it was August 28, 1565, the Feast Day of St. Augustine. Eleven days later, he and his 600 soldiers and settlers came ashore at the site of the Timucuan Indian village of Seloy with banners flying and trumpets sounding. He hastily fortified the fledgling village and named it St. Augustine."

so they pretty much took over a indian village... ok

yeah, too much of history class is politics and too little is actual history

imho history should be taught as a skeleton of facts (dates, events, inventions, wars etc.) then flesh them out with impact and such.

'whole' history would focus on the US as a whole, not bits and pieces.... as the US expanded something contracted.... most kids don't know the 'what' part at all...

(spainish, french and british claims mostly, Indian populations in reality)


there really doesn't seem to be any room for a good solid moderate (correct) voice in the whole deal, you either have super-liberals that ignore traditional history events (civil war, presidents) or super conservatives that focus on only one thing and supercede it over everything else at all stages.

8/21/2006 1:10:57 PM

Quote :

"But it would argue that the concept of "discovering" the Americas is already so ridiculously ethnocentric that arguing over which Eurasian ethnicity bumped into the continent first is silly."

It is important in the since of it becoming known to the vast majority of the world population. Simply because people already inhabit a place does not mean that it can't be "discovered" in the practical sense. Hell, its not like the Native Americans knew about Europe, Asia, and Africa either.

The one thing I do like is the mention of how things change at historical sites. Journal entries and letters home give such great detail on how different groups viewed the same incidents. Its also nice to see the Native, Asian, and Latino cultures getting more recognition instead of simply traditional American history and African-American history dominating the fold.

I also don't remember the vanilla Euro-centric teaching when I was in highschool (94-97). They were already doing a good job of offering the more worldly perspective then. Of course I don't think any of these changes are going to make much difference when something like 11% of American young adults can't even identify their own country on a map.

8/21/2006 1:11:50 PM

thats so pathetic

8/21/2006 1:30:51 PM

My high school taught us that black babies came from Crows' eggs

[Edited on August 21, 2006 at 2:17 PM. Reason : .]

8/21/2006 2:15:22 PM

Quote :

"there really doesn't seem to be any room for a good solid moderate (correct) voice in the whole deal, you either have super-liberals that ignore traditional history events (civil war, presidents) or super conservatives that focus on only one thing and supercede it over everything else at all stages."

That really hasn't been my experience at all.

The majority of my teachers taught all aspects. I do my best to give a balanced view of history, too.

8/21/2006 5:57:35 PM

Quote :

"At least several thousand Latinos"

Not even worth noting.

8/21/2006 6:06:23 PM