Stuff you were never taught in high school American History courses

[jpgray]

I'll go first: the Indian occupation of Alcatraz.

http://www.nps.gov/alcatraz/indian.html

[JohnOneillsMemory]

1. Geo. Washington didn't free his slaves per law in Philadelphia.

(I read about this last year and remember as follows; I'll look for sources to back up this scurrilous charge against our nation's noble virtue.)

The building that George Washington stayed in as president back when Philadelphia was the nation's capital has been torn down along with the neighboring slave quarters.

The local law provided that slaves became free after six months in non-slavery Philadelphia.

So George Washington, revered 'Founding Father,' rotated his slaves back home to Virginia just in time to keep them in his ownership.

So crimes against humanity and fraud begin with the first president named George, not just the last two. Fitting, isn't it?

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. George Washington ALSO bought his first election.

It was to the Virginia House of Burgesses, in 1758, and Washington provided 160 gallons of rum, beer, and other spirits for the voters (of whom there were 391).

[Historic NY]

44. that seems to have been a common event......

I transcribed some 4000+ pages of our local government papers and found that the local justices (council) ordered more constables to be at the polling places at election time. Seems more than a few taverns were used as polling places....and things got down right ugly.

[TaleWgnDg]

70. Yup. Tis true. And there's more . . .

.
Yup. Tis true. And there's more . . . John Adams was the sole "Founding Father" who never owned slaves. Adams was against slavery as was his wife Abigail Adams.

David McCullough, the historian, has written an excellent book about him entitled "John Adams." It's a great read; however, some say that McCullough doesn't discuss Adams' genius or his high intellect, e.g., his vast knowledge and wealth of legal writings and their impact upon us and our America of today. Although McCullough writes and researches his works as a historian, McCullough presents his writings for all to read. I strongly recommend it (or any of McCullough's books).

You'll note by my sig line that I am a deep admirer of John Adams -- his legal ethics and lawyering skills, his intellect, his service as a foreign diplomat for America, as our nations' first Vice President, our second President, and his prolific writings including his authoring the world's first written constitution (Massachusetts constitution) upon which much of our federal constitution was derived.



.

[Sequoia]

96. Thanks for the recommendation.

[wildbilln864]

115. IIRC he and Jefferson both grew marijuana! nt

[IA_Seth]

2. Thank you!

Very interesting article!

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. Japanese internment camps are usually skipped over.

[Yupster]

45. I taught high school history and had a great

two day lesson on the Japanese internment camps.

I don't agree this is usually left out. The texts we used always had pretty significant coverage of this issue.

My lesson, which was my own, not from a text also covered primary sources, private property rights, and writing an opinion piece for grade.

I loved it.

It was a series of actual letters between a reverand in California and his neighbor, a Mr Yamaguchi who was in a camp in Arizona. The reverand had kindly agreed to watch his stuff while Mr Yamaguchi was detained.

In the first letter, the reverand informed Mr Y that a parishioner was without a refrigerator, and since there were none being made for sale during the war, Reverand X had taken the liberty of renting Mr Y's for $ 1 a week or such until he returned.

The next letter was Mr Y thanking the Reverand for caring for his things and also tring to put them to use, but he kindly requests that the refrigerator be returned to his house and not lent out.

Well they went back and forth getting nastier and nastier until the reverand said he put the fridge back, but warned Mr Y that most of his neighbors would not be as understanding of Mr Y's greed and selfishness as he was and he might want to find a new neighborhood to return to.

It was very interesting, and at the end, the students were asked to write their opinion and defend it.

I was amazed every year at how many students (9th graders) argued that Mr Y was being bitter and selfish and he should have let the reverand put the fridge to good use, especially when he was being paid for it.

It was a good chance to talk about individual rights.

Anyway, it was one of my favorite lessons.

[chena]

87. something not covered regarding japanese internment

was the use (re: theft) of indian lands to accomplish that task.


two birds with one stone for the united states.

[no_hypocrisy]

102. And here's the Supreme Court case that legitimized government internment of citizens.

Beware as the case has not been overturned and is still in force.

Koramatsu v. United States (1944)
http://supreme.justia.com/us/323/214/case.html

[deadparrot]

4. A good book for this kind of stuff

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everthing Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen

All kinds of interesting stuff in there. He analyzes several American History textbooks and breaks down and discusses much of the stuff that they get wrong. Tons of factoids. :)

[RoyGBiv]

5. Problem is ...

He got some things wrong as well.

This is not intended as a harsh criticism, and in general I admire the work for bringing to light many overlooked or intentionally minsterpreted aspects of American history. However, Loewen was in fact guilty of the very same charge he levels at other historians: he started with a point of view and selectively cited evidence to fit that point of view.

Most of this involves little things, but I thought it should be noted.

[WoodrowFan]

9. I agree

it's a good book though.

[dwckabal]

57. For example?

[RoyGBiv]

59. For example ...

As a broad example, the history textbooks he uses as the basis of his criticisms are too limited in number. He asserts they are representative of the content of textbooks used throughout the country, but he provides no quantifiable proof of this. He happens to be right, but the case he makes is weak and needlessly opens an avenue for criticism where one should not exist. IOW, it's sloppy.

As a specific example of improperly used evidence, he mentions, among other things, in support of an argument he is making that a former Confederate general named James Longstreet was a proponent of voting rights and/or civil rights for blacks in the post-war South and that Longstreet was pilloried for advancing such ideas. (My apologies for not quoting a specific passage, but I seem to have misplaced my copy of the book. I think I allowed someone to borrow it, and I need to get it back it seems.) This is superficially correct, but a deeper examination of Longstreet's opinion (an examination of which I have done in exhaustive detail) does not in fact support the larger point he is making. Judging from his references for the fact (that is, assuming he actually read them), Loewen should know this, but he cited it as evidence anyway.

Again I say these are relatively minor details. I would not argue Loewen was wrong in any meaningful way, but the manner in which he builds his argument is sometimes sloppy. The unfortunte result is that those who are inclined to disagree with his opinions can focus on the shoddy research and cast doubt upon the entire thesis.

[dwckabal]

62. I agree

he gives no "proof" that the 12 textbooks he chooses are representative of textbooks throughout the nation, but I think you've missed a crucial point:

In the Afterword, Loewen says,

"Lies My teacher Told Me is itself incomplete, however. It says little about Hispanic history, for example. Yet our textbooks are so Anglocentric that they might be considered Protestant history. What about women's history and the history of gender in America, two different but related topics?...
The answer is not to expand Lies My teacher Told Me to cover every distortion and error in history as traditionally taught, to say nothing of the future lies yet to be developed. That approach would make me the arbitrator—I who still unknowingly accept all manner of hoary legends as historical fact. Despite my sincere effort, this book undoubtedly contains important errors and should not simply be presumed true. Surely the answer is for all of us to become, in Postman and Weingartner's vulgar term, crap detectors—independent learners who can sift through arguments and evidence and make reasoned judgments. then we will have learned how to learn...and neither a one-sided textbook nor a one-sided critique of textbooks will be able to confuse us.

As far as the General Longstreet example you give, Loewen gives it only one brief mention:

Every Southern state boasted Unionists, some of whom had volunteered for the Union army. They now became Republicans. Some former Confederates, incuding even Gen. James Longstreet, second in command under Lee at Gettysburg, became Republicans because they had grown convinced that equality for blacks was morally right.

There isn't a footnote given for that passage, so your larger point may very well hold, i.e. Loewen is only superficially correct. But you have to admit, before, during and after the Cicil War, one's position on the "equality of blacks" was rarely a simple issue of morality or even social justice. Just look at Lincoln's attitude towards slavery over the course of the Civil War to see how conflicted most people were during that period.

[RoyGBiv]

63. I didn't miss the point ...

As I said both originally and in my reply to you, these are relatively minor problems. However, they are errors of which people should be aware. Too often pop-history of this variety is taken as absolute truth, despite even the author's warnings to the contrary.

On that point specifically, admitting that errors may exist doesn't excuse the errors. If it did, I could legitimately build any old theory and not expect to be criticized as long as I append "But I could be wrong" at the end. That's not the way scholarship works, and Loewen knows it.

As for the tidbit about Longstreet, are you sure there is no footnote, like at the end of the paragraph? I seem to recall one, but I suppose I could be wrong. :-) Seriously, I may be misremembering this, but I know I found his reference somewhere because I specifically checked it. (Some references do make this point, and I felt it might be more excusable if he had consulted one of them, but I found he hadn't.) It may have been in something else he wrote.

In any case, the passage about him is more wrong than I remembered it being. Longstreet never once said equal rights for blacks was morally right. At most, he said *voting rights* for blacks as a condition of Reconstruction was to be federal government policy, and the result of the Civil War had determined forcefully that the federal government's policy was authoritative on that point. He believed the only way the South could recover was to accept what he called this "experiment" for the time being until it proved a failure, which he said he believed it would. The stakes at the time were the prospect of open, armed resistance to Reconstruction policies, which Longstreet felt would bring a finality to the destruction of the South, the likes of which certain hot-heads could not possibly fathom.

No doubt Longstreet's view of blacks did modify over time. That would have to be the case for him to lead a company of black men in "battle" against insurgent white Democrats disputing the results of a Louisiana election. But to claim he believed "equal rights" was morally right goes *way* too far. A deeper analysis of this and where it comes from might be pertinent here, but I don't want to bore anyone with my ramblings.

My only point about that is that this is the kind of detail Loewen would call a "lie," which invites unnecessary criticism of his larger thesis. Other examples of this exist, but this is the one with which I am personally most familiar, and so I focus on it. In fact, when I first read the book, I did so relatively uncritically until I ran across this, which caused me to read it a few more times again with an eye to such detail.

Put another way, I think Loewen's thesis is vastly important and correct, and that it deserves to be treated with extreme care so that those who dispute it have little standing in their criticisms and those who use it to support their own arguments are not led astray. Details like this one give critics too much ammunition.

[LWolf]

101. The text my district adopted IS one of those he mentions.

We use it, among many other sources. I also have a copy of "Lies" on the shelf that any student can look at. I occasionally read parts aloud to them. A couple of pages at the very beginning, when I'm introducing them to their 6 pound text book.

[cannabis_flower]

92. Howard Zinn and ...

http://www.historyisaweapon.org talk about his. All history has bias, simply from choosing which facts to emphasize and which to leave out. The question is bias in what favor? Are we biased in favor of heads of states, dictator and kings - or are we biased in favor of workers,slaves, and other common people?

From the front page of History is a Weapon:

History isn't what happened, but a story of what happened. And there are always different versions, different stories, about the same events. One version might revolve mainly around a specific set of facts while another version might minimize them or not include them at all.
Like stories, each of these different versions of history contain different lessons. Some histories tell us that our leaders, at least, have always tried to do right for everyone. Others remark that the emperors don't have the slaves' best interests at heart. Some teach us that this is both what has always been and what always will be. Others counsel that we shouldn't mistake transient dominance for intrinsic superiority. Lastly, some histories paint a picture where only the elites have the power to change the world, while others point out that social change is rarely commanded from the top down.

Regardless of the value of these many lessons, History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. The very selection of which histories to teach in a society shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we understand as possible. This choice of which history to teach can never be "neutral" or "objective." Those who choose, either following a set agenda or guided by hidden prejudices, serve their interests. Their interests could be to continue this world as it now stands or to make a new world.
We cannot simply be passive. We must choose whose interests are best: those who want to keep things going as they are or those who want to work to make a better world. If we choose the latter, we must seek out the tools we will need. History is just one tool to shape our understanding of our world. And every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Five Tribes

Many members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes that settled in Oklahoma held slaves. Further, I was directly lied to and told that the Seminole, who have a larger proportion of black-skinned members than the other tribes, had such members due to its liberal policies about inter-marriage. The truth is that the Federal government mandated that the Seminole give full tribal citizenship, including voting rights, to its slaves after freeing them, post-Civil War. Had I been taught this, it would have been ironic further not to be taught that the citizenship demanded by the US government be given to former slaves of the Five Tribes was a more liberal policy than the US was willing to grant freedmen and women in the nation at large.

[dflprincess]

51. Never mentioned that citizenship was not extended to

to all Native Americans until 1924. Prior to that, I believe there were some conditions that would allow a Native American to have citizenship.

And - my 5th grade history textbook actually said that "most the slave were happy on their plantations." Lucky for me, my dad liked history and was skimming through my textbook, came to that line, and pointed it out to me that it was a good example of not believing everthing I read.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. That's HISTORY now? I remember it happening!

I supported letting them keep it, after all that had been done to their people.

[Bertha Venation]

10. That the Indians were massacred. One teacher said the most insulting thing

--not to do w/ the Native Americans, but just in general. In a course about WWII, he said that the only thing in U.S. history that he was ashamed of was the interment of Japanese Americans.

Even then, although it hadn't been expressly taught, I knew that the white man's sweep across the continent had not been quite right, and that there were many other things to be ashamed of. I bristled at this guy's attitude. But I didn't have the ovaries to speak up at the time. I wish I had.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

11. Ah, but see, all that bad stuff.... it happened in the territores...

and not in the good old USA.

That is what a RW asshole History Prof tried to convince me to believe all semester once.

I never bought it, and since our long discussions, I hear he has backed off his silly POV.

[Bertha Venation]

12. Oh, please. Because it happened before the territories were states,

it's not the United States historical responsibility? What a fool.
Glad to hear you've stood up to him. :yourock:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

14. Yeah, and who set the policies for the territories?

yep... the US Govt

[struggle4progress]

74. The Sand Creek massacre

http://www.lastoftheindependents.com/BlackKettle.html

[Mojambo]

13. Pretty much everything important n/t

[0rganism]

15. The 1927 Columbine Massacre...

...where striking mine workers at the Columbine Mine organized by the IWW were cut down with machine guns by state police and private security goons. Lots of people know about the 1999 massacre at Columbine high school, but very few know that it wasn't the first Columbine massacre. The mine town is long gone now and a landfill has taken its place.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

19. Battle of Blair Mountain

The Homestead strike, the massacre in Colorado, and pretty much any other labor strike in which the U.S. government used force against its citizens (including innocent women and children who had been evicted from their homes) on the behalf of the wealthy.

[intheflow]

28. Rarely taught labor history.

And never anything about Colorado labor history. Very different from New England labor history, which is what I learned.

Never heard of this Columbine Massacre, only Ludlow. Thanks for cluing me in.

[struggle4progress]

75. And the 1914 Ludlow massacre before it.

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

[raccoon]

85. Or the Honea Path massacre (my phrase) after it.

"In September 1934, Honea Path (SC) was the site of one of the most violent supressions of a labor movement in the history of the United States. Seven textile workers were killed by special deputies when 45,000 of the state's 80,000 textile workers went on strike."

http://www.sciway.net/city/honeapath.html

[Sequoia]

98. The Mountian Meadows Massacre on September 11, 1957

This September marks the 150th anniversary of a terrible episode in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On September 11, 1857, some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by American Indian allies, massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. The horrific crime, which spared only 17 children age six and under, occurred in a highland valley called the Mountain Meadows, roughly 35 miles southwest of Cedar City. The victims, most of them from Arkansas, were on their way to California with dreams of a bright future.

For a century and a half the Mountain Meadows Massacre has shocked and distressed those who have learned of it. The tragedy has deeply grieved the victims’ relatives, burdened the perpetrators’ descendants and Church members generally with sorrow and feelings of collective guilt, unleashed criticism on the Church, and raised painful, difficult questions. How could this have happened? How could members of the Church have participated in such a crime?

http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=17bef28172543110VgnVCM100000176f620aRCRD&vgnextchannel=9ae411154963d010VgnVCM1000004e94610aRCRD&gclid=CKmjsdaR344CFQd7UAodBhm7Rw

John D. Lee was made the scapegoat for this and he predicted that Bringham Young would die soon and he did, about a month or so later of ruptured appendix. Apparently he was good at that sort of thing and predicted when the Civil War would take place amoung other things.

[DemBones DemBones]

16. How many of you know today that women were

present at all the winter encampments of the Revolutionary Army? They included both the officers' wives, many of whom had to give birth at the winter camps (not well-planned parenthood, obviously) and camp followers. All I ever heard about was the men, cold and hungry, their feet bleeding in the snow. The officers' wives had to cross enemy lines to join their husbands.

Teachers didn't tell me about the Japanese internment camps, or the draft riots, or the violence against Americans thought to be of German descent in WW I and WW I, or a lot of what was done to Native Americans.

[happyslug]

18. What about the "Washer women".

Washer Women were NOT camp followers, for Washer Women were in the CAMP. By Tradition all military units had one "washer woman" for every 20 men. Now while her title was "Washer women" her role was more of Cook/Seamstress/Washer Woman. As a general rule most Washer Woman were married to the Sargent (Which under Tradition also was one Sergeant to every 20 men).

When do washer women start? No one knows. Washer Women are mentioned at the time of the Crusades. The Classical Romans seems not to have had Washer Women, but given the lack of information on details of the Roman Legion that may not be true. Both the Byzantine and Arab armies had Washer women, the reason we know is that by the time of the Crusades whenever an army's camp is overrun by the enemy, negotiations open over recovery of the Washer Women and this was by then a very ancient custom.

Thus till the late 1800s ALL ARMIES had one woman for every 20 men, or roughly 5% of ALL armies were female. In the late 1800s as part of the "professionalizing" of the armies the duties of the Washer Women were transferred to men, for it was the policy at that time to only send men to schools. Sending men to schools to be cooks, medics etc cut out most of the main functions of the Washer Women and laws were passed abolishing the position. Thus by 1900 women had no roles in the Military for the first time in at least 1500 years and maybe 2000 years.

Also do NOT confuse "Washer Women" with "Camp Followers", Washer Women were IN THE CAMP, not outside the Camp. They had rights as while as duties being Washer Women. Camp Followers followed the camp, i.e. were OUTSIDE the camp and thus generally outside Military rules and Regulation. Given the Reality that most washer women were married to their Sargent it could have been a fatal mistake to treat a washer woman as a camp follower.

One more fact of Washer Woman in 1852 an British Army transport on its way from Britain to India crashed on some rocks. The captain of the Ship yelled "Every man for himself" and jumped Ship, the Commander of the Army unit told his men to stand firm and to leave the Woman and Children board the Life Boats first. These women were the Unit's Washer Women and the men left them board first even as the ship broke apart underneath them.

Thus the role of the Washer Woman has had affect even today, over a Hundred Years after the position was abolished.

For more on the Tradition of Women and Children First see:
http://ne.essortment.com/shiptraditionw_rrqb.htm

[intheflow]

26. Women surrounded the White House 24/7 for the right to vote.

When one was arrested, another took her place. Some staged hunger strikes in prison. Mother Jones started organizing unions for miners. When she was in her 50's! Jane Addams founded the powerful Peace Party in the early 20th century which laid the cultural foundation for the New Deal, imho.

I am woman, hear my roar muffled by history.


Never learned anything about gay rights, ever.

[PittPoliSci]

17. Hellen Keller: Communist Sympathizer.

[JohnKleeb]

20. How Catholics were treated

by the Protestant majority when they first came here in droves from Ireland and Germany.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

21. And then later on

When they started emigrating from Eastern and Southern Europe (Italy, the Balkans).

My mom was telling me over Thanksgiving break that in our WV hometown, when homes were built in the 1950s, the contracts stated that if the buyer ever sold the home, they were prohibited from selling it to an Italian. (Italians are one of the main ethnic groups in the area, originally brought to the area to essentially serve as slave labor in the coal mines.)

[JohnKleeb]

22. right

The Polish, Ukrainians as well. Yeah, my great grandfathers who were Eastern Europeans were miners too.

[Lefty48197]

24. Wasn't Maryland a Catholic refuge at one point?

You get a hint of their past through the use of the fleur de lis on their flag.

[JohnKleeb]

25. Yeah I believe so

The Calvert family started that colony but even today Maryland is a minority state for Catholics, and one of the Maryland Founding Fathers, Charles Carroll even considered moving to French Lousianna because of anti catholicism and he was one of the most wealthiest men in the original colonies.

[HawkerHurricane]

40. It was...

Named for Queen Mary (of Scotland), the last Catholic monarch of England.

Many of the original 13 states were named for people, including Georgia (King George II), Carolina (His wife, Caroline), Virginia (Queen Elizabeth, the 'Virgin Queen'), Maryland, Pennsylvania (William Penn, the Quaker), New York, New Hampshire and New Jersey (named for the Dukes that sponsered them).

To add, something not taught in HS History... Georgia and the Carolinas were used as prison colonies for disaffected Scotsmen... the Rebel Yell is a varient on the Scottish Highland battle cry, and the Confederate flag shows St. Andrew's cross, after the patron saint of Scotland... The Confederacy was organized much as the Scottish Clans were, minus the hereditary titles.

[nealmhughes]

84. The Carolinas were named after King Charles II! Not George II's wife.

Charlotte, NC was named for Queen Charlotte!

My family settled Perquimans County in the late 1600s, and it was Carolina way before there was a German king named George on the throne: there was a Scottish one named Charles (Carolus in Latin)!

[UrbScotty]

55. And Jews (nt)

[Jose Diablo]

23. Interesting note on smallpox in America and use as a weapon

From Laurie Garret's The Coming Plague: Page 625

23. W.M. Denevan, The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).

Smallpox may have been the most useful weapon of biological warfare in world history. European colonialists repeatedly took advantage of the special susceptibility of the Amerindian population, deliberately spreading the deadly virus among Indians who were successfully defending their rights to the lands and resources of the Americas. For example, in 1763 Sir Jeffry Amherst, commander in chief of all British forces in North America, was having great difficulty controlling the Pontiac Indians in the western territories. At Amherst's insistence, blankets inoculated with live smallpox viruses were distributed to the Pontiac, obliterating the tribe. The deliberately induced epidemic quickly spread to the northwest, claiming large number of Sioux and Plains Indians, crossed the Rockies and inflicted huge death tolls among Native Americans from southern California all the way north to the Arctic Circle tribes in Alaska. This devastation was cited in the official WHO history of smallpox: Fenner, Henderson, Arita, et al., (1988), op. cit.

[Warpy]

104. Smallpox is an extremely fragile virus that lives only a short time

outside the human body, which is how we were able to exterminate it. Cultures maintained here and in Russia are carefully grown on human tissue.

Those blankets might have been loaded with all sorts of bacteria and other nasty things, but unless they were stripped right from the bed of a smallpox victim and put directly onto one of the Indians, they didn't infect him with smallpox.

However, I'm sure they sent lots of people who were sick but recovering, still shedding the virus, to visit with the Indians, who would then carry it back and infect the rest of the tribe.

Other, sturdier viruses caused at least as much if not more damage among native people who had no immunity to them: measles, chickenpox, and other "usual childhood diseases," along with diseases of crowding like TB.

Europeans were crawling with diseases native people had never been exposed to. Something like 90% of eastern tribes died within two years of first contact.

[uppityperson]

107. More on smallpox and Native Americans...& about smallpox

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1088/did-whites-ever-give-native-americans-blankets-infected-with-smallpox

Fact is, on at least one occasion a high-ranking European considered infecting the Indians with smallpox as a tactic of war. I'm talking about Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War (1756-'63). Amherst and a subordinate discussed, apparently seriously, sending infected blankets to hostile tribes. What's more, we've got the documents to prove it, thanks to the enterprising research of Peter d'Errico, legal studies professor at the University of Massachusetts at (fittingly) Amherst. D'Errico slogged through hundreds of reels of microfilmed correspondence looking for the smoking gun, and he found it.

The exchange took place during Pontiac's Rebellion, which broke out after the war, in 1763. Forces led by Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawa who had been allied with the French, laid siege to the English at Fort Pitt. According to historian Francis Parkman, Amherst first raised the possibility of giving the Indians infected blankets in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who would lead reinforcements to Fort Pitt. No copy of this letter has come to light, but we do know that Bouquet discussed the matter in a postscript to a letter to Amherst on July 13, 1763:

P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine. ...(much more)

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/smallpox1.html

This reference is from American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492, by Russell Thornton, 1987 (Norman: U. of Oklahoma Pr.) pp.78-79

It is also during the eighteenth century that we find written reports of American Indians being intentionally exposed to smallpox by Europeans. In 1763 in Pennsylvania, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the British forces....wrote in the postscript of a letter to Bouquet the suggestion that smallpox be sent among the disaffected tribes. Bouquet replied, also in a postscript,

"I will try to innoculate the...with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not get the disease myself."

....To Bouquet's postscript, Amherst replied,

"You will do well as to try to innoculate the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this exorable race."

On June 24, Captain Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, noted in his journal:

"Out of our regard for them (i.e. two Indian chiefs) we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."

(quoted from Stearn, E. and Stearn, A. "Smallpox Immunization of the Amerindian.", Bulletin of the History of Medicine 13:601-13.)

Thornton goes on to report that smallpox spread to the tribes along the Ohio river....(more)

About smallpox:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/disease/faq.asp

...How is smallpox spread?
Smallpox normally spreads from contact with infected persons. Generally, direct and fairly prolonged face-to-face contact is required to spread smallpox from one person to another. Smallpox also can be spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated objects such as bedding or clothing. Indirect spread is less common. Rarely, smallpox has been spread by virus carried in the air in enclosed settings such as buildings, buses, and trains. Smallpox is not known to be transmitted by insects or animals. (added Nov 13, 2002)

If smallpox is released in aerosol form, how long does the virus survive?
The smallpox virus is fragile. In laboratory experiments, 90% of aerosolized smallpox virus dies within 24 hours; in the presence of ultraviolet (UV) light, this percentage would be even greater. If an aerosol release of smallpox occurs, 90% of virus matter will be inactivated or dissipated in about 24 hours. (added Nov 13, 2002)...

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/

... The disease, for which no effective treatment was ever developed, killed as many as 30% of those infected. Between 65–80% of survivors were marked with deep pitted scars (pockmarks), most prominent on the face.

Blindness was another complication. In 18th century Europe, a third of all reported cases of blindness was due to smallpox. In a survey conducted in Viet Nam in 1898, 95% of adolescent children were pockmarked and nine-tenths of all blindness was ascribed to smallpox.

As late as the 18th century, smallpox killed every 10th child born in Sweden and France. During the same century, every 7th child born in Russia died from smallpox.
(clip)
Smallpox is transmitted from person to person by infected aerosols and air droplets spread in face-to-face contact with an infected person after fever has begun, especially if symptoms include coughing. The disease can also be transmitted by contaminated clothes and bedding, though the risk of infection from this source is much lower.
(clip)
(in hospitals) Contaminated clothing and bedding, if not incinerated, should be autoclaved or washed in hot water containing hypochlorite bleach.

[Warpy]

112. I'm not saying they didn't try it

I'm telling you it didn't work.

Please research the nature of the virus and the narrow environmental conditions required to keep it intact on surfaces for more than a few hours.

[uppityperson]

113. I know. I was interested since I've heard this forever also. So looked for more info

and found that they were considering it, whether or not they tried it. Hence, I learned something last night. Thank you

[Warpy]

114. Right, old myths die hard

and I've known people to argue that one with a messianic fervor.

[RoyGBiv]

117. Glad you looked those up ...

I was actually going to post one of the links you gave with the comments from Amherst because all of the stories eventually go back to an origination with Amherst specifically, i.e. basically one guy.

Do note the dates on the correspondence. Very often this myth is associated with the Indian Wars or previously during Indian removal in the southern states in the early 19th century.

This myth is like most myths. It is based on a kernel of truth and blown up into something else entirely. Various versions of it have the U.S. government engaging in a deliberate, detailed strategy of germ warfare, during a time before the science behind the spread of disease was even known.

[intheflow]

27. Never taught anything about gay rights.

People with a History

Part of Fordham's Internet History Sourcebooks Project.

[onager]

29. US Army Attacks Veterans--1932

Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton...all famous American military leaders. Schools don't usually teach that in the summer of 1932, using guns, bayonets, clubs and tear gas, they viciously attacked their own former comrades-in-arms--veterans of World War I who had "peaceably assembled" to ask for help from their own government.

After World War I, Congress passed a bill guaranteeing veterans of that war a cash bonus payable in 1945. At the lowest depths of the Great Depression, in 1932, thousands of destitute veterans and their families gathered in Washington, DC, to petitiion Congress for faster payment. They were called "Bonus Marchers."

The veterans established a "Hooverville" of temporary shacks and tents in the swampy terrain of the Anacostia Flats. The sight of ragged, hungry, IMPATIENT veterans, along with their wives and kids, embarassed and horrified President Herbert Hoover.

Hoover ordered MacArthur, then Army Chief of Staff, and his aide Maj. Dwight Eisenhower to clear out the Flats. For help, they called in cavalry from Ft. Myer, commanded by Maj. George Patton.

The troops swooped down on Anacostia Flats, setting fire to the tents and shacks, and driving out the protesters. The toll of dead and injured in the attack is still disputed today.

At least one high-ranking former officer sided with the Bonus Marchers and, in a newsreel from the time, can be seen telling them to "raise hell!"

That was FORCIBLY retired Marine general Smedley Darlington Butler. Still the only officer in Marine Corps history to win the Medal Of Honor twice, Butler was also the youngest Major General in the history of the Corps.

In 1931, for criticisms of Corporate Foreign Policy and other Sins Against The Hoover Administration, he attained another "first." He became the first American general since the Civil War to be relieved of his command and threatened with a court-martial.

A New York lawyer offered to defend Gen. Butler free of charge if the government court-martialed him. The lawyer's name: Franklin D. Roosevelt.

[BrotherBuzz]

32. MacArthur was the real culprit but it contributed to Hoover's downfall

It was this sort of insubordination and manipulation that would lead to MacArthur being summarily relieved of his command of the UN forces in Korea in 1951.

<snip>
Against the advice of his assistant, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, MacArthur had taken personal command of the operation. President Hoover had ordered MacArthur to clear Pennsylvania Avenue only, but MacArthur immediately began to clear all of downtown Washington, herding the Marchers out and torching their huts and tents. Tear gas was used liberally and many bricks were thrown, but no shots were fired during the entire operation. By 8:00 p.m. the downtown area had been cleared and the bridge across the Anacostia River, leading to the Hooverville where most of the Marchers lived, was blocked by several tanks.

That evening Hoover sent duplicate orders via two officers to MacArthur forbidding him to cross the Anacostia to clear the Marchers' camp, but MacArthur flatly ignored the President's orders, saying that he was 'too busy' and could not be bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders.' MacArthur crossed the Anacostia at 11:00 p.m., routed the marchers along with 600 of their wives and children out of the camp, and burned it to the ground. Then, incredibly, he called a press conference at midnight where he praised Hoover for taking the responsibility for giving the order to clear the camp. He said, 'Had the President not acted within 24 hours, he would have been faced with a very grave situation, which would have caused a real battle.... Had he waited another week, I believe the institutions of our government would have been threatened.' Ralph Furley, the Secretary of War, was present at this conference and praised Macarthur for his action in clearing the camp, even though he too was aware that Hoover had given directly contrary orders. It was this sort of insubordination and manipulation that would lead to MacArthur being summarily relieved of his command of the UN forces in Korea in 1951.

The last of the Bonus Army Marchers left Washington by the end of the following day. Hoover could not publicly disagree with his Chief of Staff and Secretary of War, and ended up paying the political cost of this incident. The possibility of widespread civil unrest growing into a popular revolution had been averted, but the forceful eviction of the Bonus Army Marchers, even though not one shot had been fired and only four people killed (the two demonstrators who had been shot by the police and two infants asphyxiated by tear gas), helped to tilt public opinion against Hoover and certainly contributed to his defeat in the 1932 election.

<more>

http://www.islandnet.com/~citizenx/bonus.html

In a twisted sort of way, Ralph Furley, the Secretary of War, could be considered a hero for backing MacArthur's actions and putting Hoover in a bad position. I don't know what his true reasons for supporting MacArthur were, but I like to think that he saw the writing on the wall that Hoover was damaged goods and just helped him out of office. Classic backstabbing in Washington DC! Politics, you know. LOL

[HawkerHurricane]

41. Which explains how MacAurther...

kept his job after the Phillipine fiasco in early 1942: Roosevelt didn't dare relieve the darling of the Republican party. Many Repubs of the day believed that MacAurther's actions 'saved the Republic', and pushed him to 'make a hero of himself' in Korea so he could run for President in 1952... but he went to far, and got himself relieved for cause, leading to the much smarter and more moderate Eisenhower getting the nod.

[BrotherBuzz]

42. The much smarter and more moderate Eisenhower also...

worked under MacArthur for seven long years during the 1930s. Eisenhower slaved away as Douglas MacArthur's aide, enduring humiliation and even betrayal at the hands of his imperious boss. Their tempestuous relationship often boiled over into shouting matches. One of the most enigmatic relationships in modern military history. Their often-turbulent association spanned virtually the entire decade of the 1930s, during which time Eisenhower worked almost exclusively for MacArthur in a multifaceted role of secretary, adviser, staff officer, and, frequently, whipping boy. Theirs was a relationship that began with great promise and ended in a lifelong enmity between the two.

Perhaps Truman did this nation, and Ike, a great service when he canned the old general and let him just fade away prior to Ike's presidency. Hmmm, how do you think MacArthur would have fared under Eisenhower's leadership? LOL, revenge is, indeed, a dish best served cold.

[Bucky]

65. Yeh, Furley's a real hero. Too bad he ended up...

...as a sleazeball disco hustler running a cheapo apartment complex in the San Fernando Valley

[BrotherBuzz]

66. LOL, you bad!!

:spank:

[Yupster]

46. The Bonus March?

If your history teacher left that out, he was a sorry history teacher indeed.

[BigMcLargehuge]

30. House Un-American Activity Commission

wasn't taught about that. The treatment of Chinese laborers and the imigration sanctions put on China following the completion of the Transcontinental railway.

[onager]

31. HUAC...

Every true American, and that includes every Klansman, is behind you and your committee in its effort to turn the country back to the honest, freedom-loving, God-fearing American to whom it belongs.--Telegram from the Ku Klux Klan to Texas Congressman Martin Dies, first Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1937.

Dorothy Parker: The people want democracy - real democracy, Mr. Dies, and they look toward Hollywood to give it to them because they don't get it any more in their newspapers. And that's why you're out here, Mr. Dies - that's why you want to destroy the Hollywood progressive organizations - because you've got to control this medium if you want to bring fascism to this country.

Good link for more info: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdies.htm

[Baja Margie]

33. Italians were treated horrible,

many hangings, never learned that in High School History.

[onager]

34. The biggest strike I never heard of...

And for good reason. I grew up in the Piedmont of South Carolina, and a lot of my family members worked in cotton mills.

It really pisses me off that I never heard a word about this in school:

"Beginning on July 14, 1934 in the northern Alabama community of Guntersville, wildcat strikes rolled across the state, pulling 20,000 workers out of the mills...When millhands in North Carolina threatened to do the same, the United Textile Workers union called a convention at which delegates presented resolutions calling for a general strike. By September 15, an estimated 400,000 textile workers had walked off their jobs, making the General Strike "the largest single labor conflict in American history."

Mill owners across the South responded to the strike by combining "armed self-defense with calls for military intervention." The governor of South Carolina mobilized the National Guard, as did the governors of North Carolina and Georgia. Manufacturers also tried to undercut millhands' unity by paying employees to cross the picket lines.

At the national level, Franklin Roosevelt and his administration were slow to lend support to Southern workers. The President depended on the votes of conservative Southern Democrats in Congress to pass important New Deal legislation, and he could not afford to alienate them by confronting the textile manufacturers, many of whom were leaders of the Democratic party in the South.

Millhands and the United Textile Workers union were no match for those odds. After three weeks, workers began returning to the mills, forced to give up the strike by force and financial necessity. On September 22, the UTW called off the protest. Workers who had participated in the strike were often fired and evicted from mill villages after the General Strike ended. Many found themselves blacklisted and unable to find factory employment anywhere in the region.

Link to more: http://www.theaha.org/tl/LessonPlans/nc/Leloudis/protest.html

[skippysmom]

35. So many things:

Europeans' treatment of native peoples, not to mention the plague that killed so many of them and made it possible for us to take over.

Anti-Catholicism and anti-immigrant movements.

The NY Draft Riots in 1863.

Most history beyond WWII, particularly Vietnam.

Most women's history. We only barely touched on the women's rights movement.

Slavery in the North. Yep, we had it, and we were a seminal part of the slave trade.

Thank God I went and got degrees in history.

[Yupster]

47. I don't think even most history teachers know

that the New England Indian tribes were devastated even before the Pilgrims landed.

For years before the Pilgrims, cod fishermen would land on the shores to salt their catches. Disease spread inland, and before the Pilgrims even landed, some of the New England tribes were already devastated.

[BrotherBuzz]

36. Black soldiers from the US Army fought under French command during WWI

The all-black 93rd division, a rag-tag outfit that was initially issued Civil War uniforms, were assigned to French command by General John Pershing during WWI. The French desperately needed fresh troops and Pershing was able to satisfy France's needs by getting rid of his own problem - black soldiers. The 93d Division turned in their American equipment and were issued French rifles, bayonets, helmets, packs, and other equipment of the French soldier. They were then organized, trained, and commanded as a French unit, the first unit in US history to serve under foreign command.

The 93nd division fought as part of the French army, where, ironically, it found acceptance, respect, and glory, eventually winning the Croix de Guerre, only to return to America and find Jim Crow laws alive and well.

Too bad we didn't have any of these veterans to speak up about the virtues of freedom fries during the run-up to the Bush* war.

[JohnKleeb]

37. Yeah that generation has been gone, btw I didnt know about this, thanks

[BrotherBuzz]

38. John Fremont was a murderer and a coward (Kit Carson, too)

One must be reminded that Fremont was running for president in 1856 on the new fledgling republican party ticket as their first candidate, thus demonstrating that the republicans have a long history of family values . (Damn, I'm still looking for a good sarcasm smilie thingy)


The Murder of Berreyesa and the De Haros Twins

The story of the death of Jose de los Reyes Berreyesa and Francisco and Ramon de Haro has been told in many of the accounts of the Bear Flag war and most of the narrators agree that it was an unprovoked murder. The Los Angeles Star published on September 27, 1856, a signed statement of Jasper O'Farrell, who saw the shooting and also a letter from Jose de los Santos Berreyesa, son of the murdered man. These statements may have been published in other newspapers, but if so the papers have disappeared and there is no record of the statements, so far as I know, save that of the Los Angeles Star, and of that day's issue I have only succeeded in finding one copy. From the fact that the records of this testimony have become so scarce it would seem as if some one had attempted to destroy them. This being the case I have thought it best to put the statements of O'Farrell and Berreyesa on record in this work and am able to do so through the courtesy of Mr. J. M. Guinn of Los Angeles, secretary of the Historical Society of Southern California, whose collection contains this valuable copy of the Star. It has been claimed that the statements were published in the newspapers for their political effect on the presidential campaign of 1856. That is probably true but it cannot in any way alter the facts.

BERREYESA’S ACCOUNT (Son of Jose de los Reyes Berreyesa, and first alcalde of Sonoma)
San Francisco, Sept., 22, 1856.
Hon. P. A. Roach

My dear sir:

"In reply to your question whether it is certain or not that Col. Fremont consented to or permitted his soldiers to commit any crime or outrage on the frontier of Sonoma or San Rafael in the year 1846, to satisfy your inquiry and to prove to you that what is said in relation thereto is true, I believe it will be sufficient to inform you of the following case: Occupying the office of first alcalde of Sonoma in the year 1846, having been taken by surprise and put in prison in said town in company with several of my countrymen, Col. Fremont arrived at Sonoma with his forces from Sacramento. He came, in company of Capt. Gillespie and several soldiers, to the room in which I was confined, and having required from me the tranquillity of my jurisdiction, I answered him that I did not wish to take part in any matters in the neighborhood, as I was a prisoner. After some further remarks he retired, not well satisfied with the tenor of my replies. On the following day accompanied by soldiers he went to San Rafael. At the time that the news of my arrest had reached my parents, at the instance of my mother, that my father should go to Sonoma to see the condition in which myself and brothers were placed, this pacific old man left Santa Clara for San Pablo. After many difficulties he succeded in passing (across the strait), accompanied by two young cousins, Francisco and Ramon Haro, and having disembarked near San Rafael they proceeded towards the mission of that name with the intention of getting horses and return to get their saddles, which remained on the beach. Unfortunately Col. Fremont was walking in the corridor of the mission with some of his soldiers and they perceived the three Californians. They took their arms and mounted—approached towards them, and fired. It is perhaps true that they were scarcely dead when they were stripped of the clothing, which was all they had on their persons; others say that Col. Fremont was asked whether they should be taken prisoners or killed and that he replied that he had no room for prisoners and in consequence of this they were slain.

"On the day following this event Fremont returned to Sonoma and I learned from one of the Americans who accompanied him, and who spoke Spanish, that one of the persons killed at San Rafael was my father. I sought the first opportunity to question him (Fremont) about the matter, and whilst he was standing in front of the room in which I was a prisoner, I and my two brothers spoke to him and questioned him who it was that killed my father, and he answered that it was not certain he was killed, but that it was a Mr. Castro. Shortly afterwards a soldier passed by with a serape belonging to my father and one of my brothers pointed him out. After being satisfied of this fact I requested Col. Fremont to be called and told him that from seeing the serape on one of his men that I believed my father had been killed by his orders and begged that he would do me the favor to have the article restored to me that I might give it to my mother. To this Col. Fremont replied that he could not order its restoration as the serape belonged to the soldier who had it, and then he retired without giving me any further reply. I then endeavored to obtain it from the soldier who asked me $25, for it, which I paid, and in this manner I obtained it. This history, sir, I think will be sufficient to give you an idea of the conduct pursued by Col. Fremont in the year 1846."

I remain your friend
Jose S. Berreyesa.


STATEMENT OF JASPER O'FARRELL, ESQ.,
IN REFERENCE TO THE ABOVE MENTIONED ACT

I was at San Rafael in June 1846 when the then Captain Fremont arrived at that mission with his troops. The second day after his arrival there was a boat landed three men at the mouth of the estero on Point San Pedro. As soon as they were descried by Fremont there were three men (of whom Kit Carson was one) detailed to meet them. They mounted their horses and after advancing about one hundred yards halted and Carson returned to where Fremont was standing on the corridor of the mission, in company with Gillespie, myself, and others, and said: "Captain shall I take these men prisoners?" In response Fremont waved his hand and said: "I have got no room for prisoners." They then advanced to within fifty yards of the three unfortunate and unarmed Californians, alighted from their horses, and deliberately shot them. One of them was an old and respected Californian, Don José R. Berreyesa, whose son was the alcalde of Sonoma. The other two were twin brothers and sons of Don Francisco de Haro, a citizen of the Pueblo of Yerba Buena. I saw Carson some two years ago and spoke to him of this act and he assured me that then and since he regretted to be compelled to shoot those men, but Fremont was blood-thirsty enough to order otherwise, and he further remarked that it was not the only brutal act he was compelled to commit while under his command.

"I should not have taken the trouble of making this public but that the veracity of a pamphlet published by C. E. Pickett, Esq., in which he mentions the circumstance has been questioned—a history which I am compelled to say is, alas, too true—and from having seen a circular addressed to the native Californians by Fremont, or some of his friends, calling on them to rally to his support, I therefore give the above act publicity, so as to exhibit some of that warrior's tender mercies and chivalrous exploits, and must say that I feel degraded in soiling paper with the name of a man whom, for that act, I must always look upon with contempt and consider as a murderer and a coward."

(Signed) Jasper O'Farrell.

Source: Eldredge, Zoeth Skinner. The Beginnings of San Francisco.
1912: San Francisco.

[hedgehog]

81. I can remember my reader written in the 1950's for use in Catholic schools

had a story about Kit Carson emphasizing that he was Catholic. It didn't mention that he was a convert. I just thought that the inclusion of that story as a reminder that Catholics were part of the American West was an interesting artifact of a time (c1955) when many thought Catholics weren't real Americans. I also remember a story about the Donner party that told how a Catholic girl stood up to insist that food be shared equally. Oddly enough, while the reader indicated that the party was snow bound, there was no mention of the cannibalism! I wish I had some of those readers now; I still remember a lot more of the stories.

[hedgehog]

82. We were never taught about lynch mobs.

The version of reconstruction we were given was also far from reality.

[Sequoia]

99. A good book for you: Bear Flag Rising

[jmm]

39. None of my high school teachers had an answer when

I'd ask how the Latin American nations felt about the Monroe Doctrine. I found out in college that we didn't even consult any of them before issuing it. It was always presented to me as this great example of us protecting other nations from colonization, even though we knew we couldn't enforce it, but if we really cared so much about them why didn't we discuss it with them first.

I also didn't realize the US put Italians in internment camps during WWII.

Despite that after reading this thread I think I was lucky because I was taught many of of the things mentioned in this thread.

[Historic NY]

43. Columbus was so innocent is finding the Americas..........n/t

[Yupster]

48. I always had a student tell me that

Columbus discovered America.

I always asked them so who were those guys on the beach waving at him?

[jmm]

49. One of the first times I ever got detention was

in 4th grade for offering to discover my teachers car when she was lecturing on Columbus.

[onager]

50. The US Army's Notorious Incest Trial...

I was rummaging thru a close-out book store recently and came across the great book Ungentlemanly Acts by Louise Barnett.

At the remote outpost of Fort Stockton, Texas in 1879, Captain Andrew Geddes claimed that he had heard his neighbor, First Lieutenant Louis Orleman, having sexual intercourse with his 18-year-old daughter Lillie. Geddes also said that Lillie told him her father had been forcing her to have sex with him since she was 13 years old.

The court-martial that soon convened brought Captain Geddes to trial. The "ungentlemanly acts" of the title were the sensational charges he had levelled at a fellow officer.

As it turned out, Capt. Geddes had his own problems in the morality department. Though decorated for bravery, he was also a liar and womanizer who had once carried on a torrid affair with the wife of his commanding officer.

To modern readers, one of the many fascinating aspects of the book is the entire Court's obsession with virginity in general, and the virginity of Lillie Orleman in particular.

She was examined by the post doctor, who testified unequivocally that she was still a virgin. He went into great detail about trying unsuccessfully to insert his little finger into her vagina, and described her sexual organs as having the "pale coloration" and development of a much younger girl.

Author Louise Barnett notes that the doctor was obviously confusing evidence of past sexual activity with sexual arousal--something poor Miss Orleman wasn't very likely to be feeling, under the circumstances.

How does it end? Don't know, haven't finished it yet. But if you see it in your own local remainder bin, pick it up! This is a real page-turner!

[Stop_the_War]

52. The enslavement of and murder of American Indians by Christopher Columbus

[BrotherBuzz]

53. Conversely, The Indians gave them the clap....

Despite an often repeated claim that Europeans "gave" venereal disease to Indians, the opposite may be true! According to E. Michael Jones: "Syphilis made its first appearance in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century. Its arrival coincided with the discovery of the New World. In fact the latter event was the necessary condition for its arrival in Europe in the loins of Spanish soldiers."

Just desserts?

[leyton]

60. The good news is that many schools do teach this now!

I can't claim that my school is representative of all high schools but we were taught about Columbus's treatment of the natives he encountered; what especially sticks out in my mind is how they gave them blankets infected with syphilis. (I took this class fairly recently).

[RoyGBiv]

61. Infected Blankets

Columbus did not give natives blankets infected with syphilis. Epidemiologists are not even certain where syphilis originated. Some say it may be a mutation of an "Old World" bacterium that thrived in the tropical environment. Others say it may have been pre-existing in the "New World" and was spread between and among populations by explorers who raped or otherwise engaged in sexual activities with indigenous peoples.

[dipsydoodle]

78. The orignal 9/11

Chile 1973 : http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/Story/0,11993,793152,00.html

[dipsydoodle]

79. The banana war

See : http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Guatemala_CIAHits.html

Also check the history of United Fruit Company for further details :
http://www.mayaparadise.com/ufc1e.htm

[Warpy]

105. that's wrong on two counts

The syphilis carried by the Carib Indians was a skin infection, only, not the STD that ravaged so much of Europe. Syphilis had been present there for centuries, as evidenced by exhumations over the last few decades and examination of the skeletal remains. The Indians had nothing to do with giving it to the Europeans.

The blankets were later. Whatever they were carrying, it wasn't smallpox, a virus that dies very quickly outside the human body.

[Radical Activist]

54. Almost anything about unions that made sense

The labor movement was barely talked about at all. When a major union conflict was discussed in a text book it was always in a way that left me confused without explaining the major issues that started the conflict or telling the whole truth about what happened. It appeared that they tried to not make either side look bad, which sometimes means you have to avoid telling the truth, especially considering all the violence that was committed against people who tried to form unions. There are some things the corporations who publish text books don't want kids to know. They don't want the general public getting too many ideas.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

56. I read a lot about American history when I was a young, but

here were some surprises I encountered as an adult:

1) In the 1940s and 1950s, Minneapolis was the most anti-Semitic large city in the U.S. You may recall that Al Franken and the Coen brothers were from the suburb of St. Louis Park. That's because it was the only suburb that allowed Jews to own land.

2) The Lakota were originally a woodland tribe that was pushed westward due to pressure from other tribes being pushed westward by European settlers

3) Only one attendee at the Seneca Falls Conference lived long enough to see women being allowed to vote nationwide. (She was only 19 at the time of the conference.)

4) In the nineteenth century before the Civil War, the U.S. was not a particularly religious nation. Even the Puritans had mostly morphed into Unitarians and Congregationalists. The most influential institution in most northeastern towns was the Masonic temple.

5) In the late nineteenth century, German held the same position in the U.S. that Spanish does now. Bilingual education meant English and German, and every major city had German language newspapers, social clubs, churches, and neighborhoods where people could spend their whole lives without speaking English.

[dwckabal]

58. The US "interventions" in Latin America

and elsewhere in the 40's and 50's.

Also Benjamin Franklin's endorsement of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society's petition to Congress to "take such measures in their wisdom, as the powers with which they are invested will authorize, for promoting the abolition of slavery, and discouraging every species of traffic in slaves," in 1790.

[libnnc]

64. *whew* where to begin?

~Ludlow massacre

~Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire

~the murder of Emmet Till

~Shirley Chisholm's Presidential candidacy

~Harvey Milk's assasination

I can come up with a bunch more

[MountainLaurel]

67. The "Southern Kent State"

Which happened at Jackson State in MS just a couple days before or after the Ohio murders.

There was a thread about it a few weeks ago on the anniversary of KS. I'll see if I can dig it up later.

But in the meantime, here's a relevant link:

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Khistory/60s/webpage.htm

[lenidog]

68. Philippine Insurrection

A nice bloody little guerrilla war we fought right after the Spanish American War. In that war we killed about 20,000 guerrillas and 200,000 civilians

[raccoon]

69. The business plot to overthrow FDR

I'd never heard of this until last Sunday.

"In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100 Days," America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.

The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America's richest and most famous names of the time..."

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm

It all sounds so eerily familiar.

[Rich Hunt]

71. amazing!

I have an interest in the 1930s, so I'll have to add this to my file of things to read about!

Happily, I have little to report - we learned a lot of labor history, immigrant history, even learned some black history....but our classes usually stopped when we got to Vietnam.

[gordianot]

72. Absolutely

Also read the role of General Smedley Butler. He should have been honored as America's greatest hero for stopping the plot.

[Sequoia]

90. The book: "The Plot to Seize the White House" is being republished.

[annabanana]

110. It is? - Do you happen to know who's publishing it?. . . .n/t

[DrGonzoLives]

73. Too many to list

Pretty much anything from 1865-1929

[bobbieinok]

76. Tulsa Race Riot---possibly the worst in American history

never taught in Tulsa schools; not mentioned even in most national histories of African-Americans until recently

I knew about it b/c my grandmother who had a rooming house in Tulsa told me how she told her black woman helper to bring her family to the house until things quieted down

a few years ago I talked with a black woman about my age who also grew up in Tulsa......that was at the time the state was considering some sort of reparations (IMO, shamed into it b/c some national journals had written about the event)......I said no white I knew who grew up in Tulsa knew about this; she said every black in Tulsa knew about it...once again I saw: even in the same town at the same period blacks and whites live in different realities/worlds

http://www.ipoaa.com/tulsa_race_riot_overview.htm

a very good, though discussion by Franklin, an African-American historian whose familiy lived through the riot/massacre, and Ellsworth, who wrote the first scholarly study of the event.....several pictures of the destruction

also a discussion of the cover-up, ie why after less than 10 years afterwards mention of the event disappeared from Tulsa, OK, and the US......

from the article

....

For those hearing about the 1921 Tulsa race riot for the first time, the event seems almost impossible to believe. During the course of eighteen terrible hours, more than one thousand homes were burned to the ground. Practically overnight, entire neighborhoods where families had raised their children, visited with their neighbors, and hung their wash out on the line to dry, had been suddenly reduced to ashes. And as the homes burned, so did their contents, including furniture and family Bibles, rag dolls and hand-me-down quilts, cribs and photograph albums. In less than twenty-four hours, nearly all of Tulsa's African American residential district -- some forty-square- blocks in all -- had been laid to waste, leaving nearly nine-thousand people homeless.

Gone, too, was the city's African American commercial district, a thriving area located along Greenwood Avenue which boasted some of the finest black-owned businesses in the entire Southwest. The Stradford Hotel, a modern fifty-four room brick establishment which housed a drug store, barber shop, restaurant and banquet hall, had been burned to the ground. So had the Gurley Hotel, the Red Wing Hotel, and the Midway Hotel. Literally dozens of family-run businesses--from cafes and mom-and-pop grocery stores, to the Dreamland Theater, the Y.M.C.A. Cleaners, the East End Feed Store, and Osborne Monroe's roller skating rink -- had also gone up in flames, taking with them the livelihoods, and in many cases the life savings, of literally hundreds of people.

The offices of two newspapers -- the Tulsa Star and the Oklahoma Sun -- had also been destroyed, as were the offices of more than a dozen doctors, dentists, lawyers, realtors, and other professionals. A United States Post Office substation was burned, as was the all-black Frissell Memorial Hospital. The brand new Booker T. Washington High School building escaped the torches of the rioters, but Dunbar Elementary School did not. Neither did more than a half-dozen African American churches, including the newly constructed Mount Zion Baptist Church, an impressive brick tabernacle which had been dedicated only seven weeks earlier.

Harsher still was the human loss. While we will probably never know the exact number of people who lost their lives during the Tulsa race riot, even the most conservative estimates are appalling. While we know that the so-called "official" estimate of nine whites and twenty-six blacks is too low, it is also true that some of the higher estimates are equally dubious. All told, considerable evidence exists to suggest that at least seventy-five to one-hundred people, both black and white, were killed during the riot. It should be added, however, that at least one credible source from the period -- Maurice Willows, who directed the relief operations of the American Red Cross in Tulsa following the riot -- indicated in his official report that the total number of riot fatalities may have ran as high as three-hundred.1

more....

also many of the blacks were put in internment camps......many lived in tents the following winter......there is evidence that some whites wanted to take the land where the buildings and homes had been and 'develop' it; this was blocked......shades of 2005 and NOLA/Katrina!!

[On the Road]

77. The Seattle General Strike

of 1919. Strangely enough, I was talking with a Chinese microbiologist recently in his late 40s. He had learned about the Seattle strike in school. I just found out about it from Loewen's books a few years ago. Shows the impact of different curricula.

Slave revolts are another thing that seems to have escaped textbooks. (Especially middles schools texts in Eastern North Carolina.)

I never learned of the Haymarket Incident in school. Or ever dreamed that those communists marching in May Day parades in Red Square were being joined by others everywhere from Munich to Buenos Aires, all celebrating something that happened in Chicago in 1886.

As a result, I became not only skeptical, but really pissed off at all the things I thought I knew but had been misled about. It's why I changed parties in the early 90's.

[dipsydoodle]

80. Combined ops.

Persia 1953 : http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/l30iran.htm

I mis-linked two others. See the original 9/11 and bananas wars further back up the list.

[TroubleMan]

83. All the bad stuff we did to Haiti and The Philippines.

nt

[Donnachaidh]

86. that link has changed ;-)

to here:

http://www.nps.gov/archive/alcatraz/indian.html

[Bjornsdotter]

88. Women's role in history

.... absent when I was in school, still MIA now that my daughter is finishing high school.

Cheers

[Odin2005]

89. The fact that the vikings were the first Europeans to find the New world, not Columbus.

And not just Leif Erickson. There were Scandinavian settlements in Greenland between 1000 and 1400, and they often sent expeditions to Labrador to get timber and to trade with the Native Americans and Inuit.

[Adsos Letter]

91. The United States record of

Empire building/"couping" around the world, as outlined in Kinzer's "Overthrow"; I would bet many stateside kids would be surprised as to how we attained Hawaii...

[cannabis_flower]

93. How about ...

the genocide of the Arawak Indians of Hispanola and the Caribbean Islands.

[cannabis_flower]

94. I never heard of Emma Goldman ...

until I heard a tape of a lecture by Howard Zinn. It lead me to read a book called "Rebel in Paradise" by Richard Drinnin which is her biography. She was an anarchist that was one of the most outspoken about the right to free speech. She was heavily influenced by the Haymarket affair and was an influence on Roger Baldwin the founder of the ACLU. She was a Russian Jewish immigrant. She left czarist Russia when she was 17 with her sister and was deported under the Sedition Act for speaking out about the war. She was the founder and editor of a magazine called Mother Earth.

[Odin2005]

95. The failed "business plot" coup against FDR.

Was never mentioned in any textbook I've had for any high school or college history class.

[Sequoia]

97. The ousting of Chinese Americans from towns on the west coast.

Lynched, starved, beaten, shot...like the Nazis did to the Jews. After the Trans-Continental Raildroads was built Crocker fired them on the spot.


Here's a very good and detailed book about it.



"Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans", by Jean Pfaelzer

[ashling]

100. Me either ...

that didn't happen til after I graduated.
:rofl:

[tismyself]

103. Tuskegee syphilis experiments.

[Raster]

106. Great thread, Dude!

[byronius]

108. Prescott Bush's bankrolling of Adolf Hitler.

That one's easy.

#2) Henry Ford's book, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, in which he reprinted the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, a complete fabrication by the Czar's Secret Service in an attempt to divorce the Czar from his Jewish advisers. The Protocols purported to be the secret plans of the Jews to take over the world, and described the ritual sacrifice and eating of Gentile babies.

The Protocols were eventually debunked; Winston Churchill apologized for outraged comments he had made, and became a friend to the Jews. Henry Ford?

Ford denied the debunking, and continued to pay for his screed to be published in scores of different languages for worldwide distribution.

Adolf Hitler carried a copy of Ford's book with him throughout World War I. He found it inspiring.

[Political Heretic]

109. The Ludlow Massacre

I've only read one book exclusively on that (though Howard Zinn discusses it in People's History) called Blood Passions, and it was extremely good.

[anansi133]

111. East German Blacklisting and HUAC

I recently watched _The_Lives_of_Others_ again, and I found it interesting that Communists that we were supposedly so worried about infiltrating us, used the same technique of blacklisting politically suspect playwrights. After the 1992 payouts to Japanese internment camp survivors, I found myself wondering if there would ever be redress for the victems of the red scare. I suppose we still lack consensus that HUAC was a bad thing.

[Hannah Bell]

116. Economic history; in the sense of *real* economic history, linking factions together to understand

their effects on political developments.