Helen Keller
Helen Keller was a young girl who was born both blind and deaf, but with the help of Annie Sullivan, her teacher, she managed to join society, learn to communicate, and live a full life.
The part that the history books leave out is that Keller grew up to be a radical Socialist who praised the Russian Revolution and rejoiced in it. She also championed labor unions and women's suffrage.
A large part of her radicalism stemmed from her realization that there was a correlation between being poor and being blind. Many people went blind due to receiving inadequate treatment for an illness, or due to accidents at unregulated and dangerous workplaces such as sweatshops.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States during World War I.
Yet the history books often gloss over the fact that he segregated the federal government, as well as his repeated invasions of Latin American countries, which have had long-lasting consequences.
Wilson seemed to believe in self-determination for countries in Europe, but not for the rest of the world, like Latin America. There, it was perfectly fine to invade and impose the will of a larger country on a smaller group of people.
Christoper Columbus
The explorer who "discovered" America in 1492 was actually a perpetrator of genocide against the Native Americans he found in the New World. He was also responsible for the start of the African slave trade.
Columbus relied heavily on the kindness of the Natives in the early part of his explorations, but afterwards, he betrayed them. Finally, it's not even correct to say that Columbus "discovered" the Americas, since people were already living here and peoples had been traveling between the Americas and other continents in small groups for centuries before Columbus' expedition.
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was a famous American writer, and one of Columbus' biographers. He was responsible for popularizing many false legends around Columbus, including that people thought the earth was flat until Columbus sailed around to the Americas, proving that it wasn't. In fact, the idea that the earth was round was not new, and Columbus' journey did not revolutionize the field of geography.
Squanto
One of the most important translators between the Pilgrims and the Native American tribes, Squanto is shortchanged in history books. His life summed up quickly, and the explanation for his fluent English is that he learned in from fishermen.
In reality, Squanto was stolen by a British captain in 1605, taken to England for 9 years of servitude, and then sold into slavery in Malaga, Spain. Squanto eventually made his way back to England and then to Massachusetts, his home.
Upon returning, he found that he was the only survivor of his village, which had been wiped out in a epidemic two years before his return. Thus, the history textbooks choose not to tell his story, since it would beg the question of how and why epidemics devastated native populations, and how settlers even intentionally spread these epidemics to their advantage.
Stephen Douglas
Douglas was a senator who championed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
He is often celebrated as an accomplished orator, while his racism is swept under the rug. Douglas was "opposed to taking any step that recognizes the Negro man or the Indian as the equal of the white man," believing that the U.S. was "founded on the white basis" (147).
John Brown
John Brown is often painted as the villain of American history, someone who was violent and aggressive to the detriment of the larger community around him. Brown was blamed for raids and had his actions described in great, gory detail. As the author says, he was treated as insane in history books from 1890 to 1970.
However, Brown was in fact an anti-slavery advocate and did as much good as he did bad. He was a hero to African Americans and for that reason, swept from the history books in any positive sense. His contemporaries did not consider him insane at all, and in fact saw his abolitionism as brave and forward-thinking.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln was the president of the United States who brought about an end to slavery. However, his views on the matter were far from cut and dry. In fact, Lincoln's only arrived at his anti-slavery views late in his life, after much observation and experience. At varying times, Lincoln was anti- and pro-slavery, sometimes making racist remarks, while later arguing passionately for the basic humanity of African Americans. However, textbooks eschew this more fleshed-out account for the simple one, depicting him as always having been against slavery and never having wavered. It is important to recognize that Lincoln was human, and therefore could change, just as we can.
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover was a director of the FBI in the 20th century, who continued to perpetrate antagonism towards African-Americans. Hoover was in power from Woodrow Wilson's presidency to the 1960s. Under his rule, the FBI blamed antiblack race riots on African-Americans, weeded out the few African American FBI agents there were, and opposed the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The FBI under Hoover also tried to sabotage Martin Luther King Jr., attempting to blackmail the leader into abandoning the civil rights movement (225).
John F. Kennedy
Progress in civil rights is largely ascribed to the results of good government, namely under JFK and LBJ. However, JFK was not the champion of civil rights that he has been made out—he was initially against the civil rights march that took place in August 1963. JFK felt that LBJ was too pro-civil rights and so he sent him away to Norway. As one supporter noted: "the best spirit of Kennedy was largely absent from the racial deliberations of his presidency" (229).
