The Untold History of the United States of America

[Cardinal]

@Shagnasty

White flight refers to the mass mass migration of the white population from the city centers to the suburbs starting in the 1950’s.

Orange County, CA, is such a Republican stronghold that it was the setting for Rob Lowes’ character’s impossible congressional campaign on The West Wing.

But if you actually GO to OC, you find that the center of it is pretty Hispanic. I suspect that part of the poulation has a very poor voting turnout. But then Loretta Sanchez took back her Hispanic maiden name to run for congress, and unseated Bill Dornan (who admittedly was a kook).

Anyway, eastern and mid and southern OC is the target destination of white flight. It seems almost like a law in some towns that under 5% of the population only can be minority. Really, it’s the housing prices and cultural differences, but I offer this as an example.

[Frank]

@MLS

Adams Vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (Pivotal Moments in American History)

I’ve just ordered The Failure of the Founding Fathers from the History Book Club, which also covers the election of 1800. I’ll have to get your recommendation as well to compare.

[MLS]

@Frank

I’ve just ordered The Failure of the Founding Fathers from the History Book Club, which also covers the election of 1800. I’ll have to get your recommendation as well to compare.

I had not seen this one before and have placed it on my list. Thanks.

The history book I’m currently reading is Team of Rivals : The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Topic: Lincoln appointed five political rivals to his cabinet – and made the combination work.

I’m only a couple of chapters into it. Interesting so far. I’ve also noticed that this is only the second book on my list that is about the Civil War. I think it’s time that I move on to the second half of the 19th century!

Another book on Thomas Jefferson that is fairly well known and that I didn’t list before is Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Fawn Brodie. The author attempts to address TJ’s thoughts and feelings about religion, power, race, and love. She also puts forward a case that many found convincing that TJ was the biological father of Sally Hemings’s children.

[FriarTed]

I did my part in high school to enlighten my fellow students about the influences of the Bavarian Illuminati, the Round Table, the Fabian Socialists, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bildeberg Conferences. Alas, my Establishment-lackey teachers scoffed at my fight against the New World Order!

Actually, I got little problem from any of my teachers (they were just happy that a student was passionate about civics & history) and some of my fellow students came to me years later admitting they looked up some of what I had talked about & had come to a partial agreement with me. By that time, I had gotten much more moderate.

[Little_Nemo]

In addition, I never heard it mentioned in high school that the conflict in the colonies was a smaller part of a larger conflict and that had GB not been deeply involved in other conflicts they could surely have defeated the Americans.

What larger conflict? The American rebellion (1775-1783) was the only major war Britain was involved in between the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and joining the First Coaltion against France in 1793.

[Little_Nemo]

I’m currently reading Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 by James Patterson and I can recommend it highly. I plan on reading its sequel Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore next.

[Agnostic_Pagan]

Replies to this and that

@CalMeacham

You want little-known but important events in US history? How about the Great Uprising of 1877:
http://home.earthlink.net/~trolleyfan/image_24.html

Thanks. I had not heard of that event either. A quick Google found this page at Northwestern University. It has a good database of information regarding the labor and social movements in Chicago, and that city’s earlier fights against corruption.

@Rodgers01

…Besides, in general I would disagree with you that racism isn’t addressed in schools. If anything, that’s the one thing that’s addressed over and over.

Actually that probably has changed since I graduated. That was 1988. Martin Luther King’s birthday was only beginning to be adopted, and Black History Month was never noted that I can remember. I also grew up outside Seattle in a community that was noted for being white as snow.

Washington has its own peculiar form of racism, in that since everyone tries a bit too hard not to be racist, it only highlights it, instead of diminishing it. As liberal as Seattle is also, I thought it ironic that its past history is so hush hush. I suppose that it is still within living memory for many, if not their own, then handed down by their parents and family. One aspect I noticed is alot of white guilt/embarrassment over the internment of the Japanese during WWII. Seattle has had a strong Asian community since before the war, and most everyone jumped on the bandwagon pretty quickly. The less scrupilous types cutting out Japanese business partners that they had had for years. No cites off-hand, but from reading various newspaper articles over the years.

On that note also, I remember reading Farewell to Manzanar for English class, not history. (We also read Flowers for Algernon that same semester.)

Another book I that I recommend is the Gangs of America : The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. It gives a good account of the legal cases that established the legal status corporations now enjoy, particularly in how they twisted the 14th amendment and the doctrine of ‘substantial due process’ for their own ends.

@MLS

…I had a history minor in college, and have read numerous books about specific events, times and people in American history. The best college course I had was taught by a man who taught us about original research.

I have to credit debate class for those skills. I wonder if that should not be the preferred method of teaching. As Shagnasty noted, there is too much history to cover for even a year-long survey. So rather than teach (and reteach, and reteach) the memorization stuff, teach students how to do their own research and discern the quality of sources. I imagine that skill can only grow in importance with the rise of the Internet. Assign each student a particular era to present to class at the end of the term. (Which we did for English class also, but not history.)

@FriarTed

… Alas, my Establishment-lackey teachers scoffed at my fight against the New World Order!

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!!

[MLS]

@Little Nemo

What larger conflict? The American rebellion (1775-1783) was the only major war Britain was involved in between the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and joining the First Coaltion against France in 1793.

Aw, shucks. Now I’m going to have to go find my book. I’ll get back to you later.

[Agnostic_Pagan]

@Agnostic Pagan

So rather than teach (and reteach, and reteach) the memorization stuff, teach students how to do their own research and discern the quality of sources. I imagine that skill can only grow in importance with the rise of the Internet. Assign each student a particular era to present to class at the end of the term.

@Manda JO

AP U.S. History is a rigorous course when taught properly, and while no 9 month survey can really get into complexity, it does demand that there is at least a recognition that there are complex issues to be explored. Furthermore, to pass the exam you have to be able to use 6-8 primary source documents that you have never seen before to construct an arguement for a particular historical position. So students in well-taught AP programs do get a sense of where history comes from, and recognize that there is always an element of interpretation.

Yeah, like that. :smack:

[betenoir]

How about this:

http://www.umwa.org/history/ludlow.shtml

Despite never getting as far as Korea let alone Vietnam in High School, I knew about Kent State. And belived, as I think a lot of people do, that this was a high point of government violence against the people, that the '60s (ok Kent State was 70’s I know) were an unprecedented time of civil unrest…

Then I learned about the Labor Movement.

I think if you’re going to talk about untold, forgotten history that’s right up there. We take for granted the things that give us some sort of quality of life…child labor laws, work hour laws, minimum wage, health and safty standards…and on and on, basically the idea that a worker has any rights in the workplace…and somehow have come to think they’ve come about by some natural benevolence on the part of the employers. When they actually came about with a lot of blood and struggle.

And we’ve regulated to labor agitators to the role of failed Communists…ok, a lot of them were, but if they failed at the revolution they might have wanted they still made the world we’re taking for granted (and which we may be losing once we put all our faith in benevolence).

The interesting thing for me is I only learned all this due to one good teacher (seems like a common story). Interesting because he was a staunch Reagan Republican. Now I would give him a more nuance argument as to how Reagan was dismantling the very things the Labor Movement fought for…at the time I just came at him with soicalism :D. We still had some good arguments though.

[rjung]

@Shagnasty

One common trait of American History taught in high school is that it simply stops at some arbitrary time like the late 1960’s.

My experience is that it ends after WWII. Which is a pity, because it means a lot of folks end up ignorant about the Kennedy years, Vietnam, and the Nixon Administration.

[ColonelDax]

Just putting in a good word for John Barry’s Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, which I’ve just finished reading. Unadulterated good stuff, as my AP U.S. history teacher would have put it.

[Johanna]

@Manda JO

AP U.S. History is a rigorous course when taught properly, and while no 9 month survey can really get into complexity, it does demand that there is at least a recognition that there are complex issues to be explored. Furthermore, to pass the exam you have to be able to use 6-8 primary source documents that you have never seen before to construct an arguement for a particular historical position. So students in well-taught AP programs do get a sense of where history comes from, and recognize that there is always an element of interpretation.

I took that test in 1976. I was handed data on demographics, property ownership, election returns, and so on for a town in New England during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I was told to use the data to show that democracy either increased or decreased in the town during that period. Unfortunately, the teacher had never once mentioned how to evaluate the level of democracy from such data. I did the best I could with it and sat there for 2 or 3 hours until I’d gone through all the material and made a case based on it. I scored 4 out of a possible 5, and tested out of American history in college. But I scored 5 out of 5 on my AP English test! I got to write about D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Piano” for that. Yummy.

So how do you evaluate the level of democracy, anyway?

[Frank]

@Johanna

So how do you evaluate the level of democracy, anyway?

I think I’d first look at the number of candidates for the various offices. A healthy democracy should have loads of people saying, “I can do that better!” That would lead to turnover - do the incumbents actually lose from time to time? That might lead to things like voter registration, registered voter turnout, and stuff like that. Then maybe look at stuff like are the office holders always the landed gentry, do the same last names tend to appear, and so on.

Shrug. Just my WAG.

[brianjedi]

It won’t be released until July, but my Media Law professor just wrote a book for Oxford University Press’s “Pivotal Moments in American History” series about James Madison and the Bill of Rights.

Obviously, I haven’t read it, but just based on what he discussed in class and some of the research he showed us, I have a feeling it’s going to be extremely in-depth.

Here’s a link to the OUP summary: http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-518105-0

As far as what history classes teach these days, I agree that there needs to be more focus on post-1900 history, because every class I had in high school never got much further than Teddy Roosevelt before the end of the schoolyear.

[elelle]

@lonesome loser

http://www.mith.umd.edu/courses/amvirtual/wilmington/wilmington.html

A city government was tossed out violently because of race.

Thank You so much for that link! In the 70’s, I had first moved down to the South, Wilmington, NC. In High School, I did a paper on that event for history class, really getting into the research at local libraries, thought it was such an amazing event. I was still a Yankee, then, and had no idea how to navigate the still raw nerves of racial tension of the time. It was not, shall we say, well-received, with teachers or students…

So very glad to see this truth come to good light again. As I hope all events must come to have the dustbroom of incisive thought sweep out the ashes and cobwebs of whatever status quos being measured at a particular time.

[Gfactor]

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

Something significant has been left out of the broad history of race in America as it is usually taught,"the establishment between 1890 and 1968 of thousands of “sundown towns” that systematically excluded African-Americans from living within their borders. Located mostly outside the traditional South, these towns employed legal formalities, race riots, policemen, bricks, fires and guns to produce homogeneously Caucasian communities—and some of them continue such unsavory practices to this day.

Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (this book raises, and attempts to answer many of the questions in the OP. Sometimes he overstates the case. And his tone is very preachy at points. Overall, a good read though.)

He’s got a quiz here: http://www.summitassociatesinc.com/cgi-bin/quiz.pl/ask/quest.html

[Zoe]

Agnostic Pagan: The burning of the black churches in the South during the 90’s being a prime example, which has seemed to have dropped off everyones radar.

Rogers01: The church burning thing has largely dropped off the radar because it was shown to be pretty much a non-story. It was fairly widely reported that there was no great statistical increase in the burning of black churches in the '90s, and that at any rate there were many more white churches burned in that same period.

I don’t wish to turn the information about the burning of Black churches into a debate, but:

According to this presentation on PBS, 32 African American churches in the South burned in the South in an 18 month period about ten years ago. One of them that is mentioned near the beginning of the transcript was in a rural community that was ten miles up the highway from the house where I grew up. The fires continue from time to time. This includes Hispanic churches, mixed congregations, and all white churches.

Rogers, your last cite contradicts the first one in the ratio of Black and white churches burned. The first and second cites have the same sources. Opinions in the first two sources are phrased in such terms as “It is believed that…” which doesn’t provide grounds for solid information about the motivation behind the arsons. Neither do these articles take into consideration how much white churches out-number black churches. The last cite is an opinion piece written by a Black man who is a racist and wrote the following in response to the statement “Racial profiling is racism.”:

Excerpt:

It can be—but just as often isn’t. In some parts of the country, black men are so overrepresented in criminal activities that police officers, white and black, would be shirking their duty not to concentrate on them. Sure, sometimes profiling ends up detaining more blacks than their rate of conviction for the targeted crime justifies, as with drivers recently stopped and searched for drugs in New Jersey. But even here, officers generally have acted less out of race hatred than out of a pragmatic assessment that they can fill their quotas faster by focusing on a group that commits a disproportionate share of crime.

MLS: MLS: I pointed out that before JFK was assassinated, he was not really all that popular…

Cite?

Though elected in a photo finish in 1960, John Kennedy’s popularity started high, in the low to mid-70s, and stayed there, for the most part, during his first two years in office. His 83 percent apex came right after the Bay of Pigs disaster, his greatest policy embarrassment.

Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2519/is_1_23/ai_82757236

I think that most Americans would grant that Ronald Reagan was a popular President. His average approval number throughout his presidency using the major public opinion polls was 53. His highest rating was 63. His lowest rating was 35.

Compare that with John Kennedy’s ratings: His average for his Presidency was 70. His highest rating was 83. His lowest rating was 56 – still three points higher than Ronald Reagan’s average.

Source: http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2003_04-06/conf_intro/conf_intro.html

Things I learned mostly after high school:

1. Early American literature didn’t begin with something written by the Pilgrims or the Puritans.
2. Doctors and hospitals will experiment on people without telling them.
3. A lot of Americans don’t really understand or believe in the Bill of Rights.
4. I understand now how (but not why) Germans could let a cruel dictator take over their country.
5. Women do not need to wait ten days after giving birth before getting out of bed. (We didn’t have a textbook on such things, but Mother’s book said that women should wait that long before sitting in a chair.)

[soulmurk]

I graduated in 93, so I can’t speak for what’s being taught today precisely, but I think it’s about the same, if not worse, now than it was then.

Brief synopsis of my entire 4 years of History classes in a northern New Jersey public school (as taught, fallacies included):

Columbus discovered America, sort of. Puritans settled to avoid religious prosecution in England. (Complete glossing over of the Native Americans). The Founding Fathers were gods among men. The colonies single handedly defeated the British forces (implied, but never stated, that we faced the entire might of the Empire).

(Skip a bit… War of 1812? Whazzat? Lewis and Clark who? Louisiana Purchase, huh? Manifest Destiny? Trail of Tears? Whachoo talkin’ 'bout?)

We lost at the Alamo to the invading Mexicans.

Lincoln was a god among men and ended slavery. He gave a speech at Gettysburg (we spent more time poring over the speech and how he wrote it than the events and effects of the war). The Monitor and the Merrimack fought the first armored boat battle in the world.

(Skip a bit)

WWI sucked. Soldiers got trenchfoot.

(Skip a bit)

WWII sucked more. Nazi’s annihilated Jewish populations. The allies stormed the beach at Normandy and Hitler killed himself. (No mention of Stalin or Mussolini) The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so we dropped the world’s first H bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, ending the war.

(Our text books glossed over the Korean War, completely ignored the Vietnam conflict, and wrapped up with Kennedy’s assassination.)

The History Channel, my own curiosity, my father’s (my entire paternal family for that matter) interest in different eras of American history, the internet, and eventually my taking a few classes at the local community college not only filled in a lot of blanks, but made me realize how much history (both good and bad) was either trivialized or completely ignored.

I learned more about American history taking American Lit classes for two semesters than I did in four years of high school.

[cainxinth]

@Agnostic Pagan

And what did you learn after high school that made you question your textbooks, if anything?

Killing Hope : U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II-Updated Through 2003