The Stories They Want Buried: Why Preserving Black History Is an Act of Resistance
As legislation erases narratives from classrooms, a movement emerges to safeguard the truths that define America's soul—one story at a time.
The Great Erasure: Legislating Historical Amnesia
A quiet revolution is reshaping American education. Across 36 states, legislation now restricts or bans classroom discussions about systemic racism and comprehensive Black history. What's labeled as "critical race theory" prohibitions often functions as historical censorship—removing uncomfortable truths from the nation's origin story.
This legislative movement creates a dangerous paradox: how can we understand America without understanding the experiences of those who built it while enslaved, fought for it while denied citizenship, and transformed it while facing segregation?
The People's Archive: What America Wants to Know
When traditional education fails, communities create their own curricula. The question "What piece of Black history do you wish more people knew?" sparked a grassroots archive of essential narratives:
The Revolutionary Paradox
While Crispus Attucks is memorialized as a patriot martyr, few learn that approximately 20,000 Black Americans fought for the British—not out of loyalty to the Crown, but in pursuit of the freedom the Revolution promised yet denied them. This complex reality reveals how Black people navigated America's founding contradictions, seeking liberty wherever it might be found.
Resistance Before Rosa
Long before 1955, Black Americans organized transportation resistance. In 1854, Elizabeth Jennings Graham successfully challenged segregated New York City streetcars. In 1883, Ida B. Wells was forcibly removed from a "whites only" train car, leading to a landmark lawsuit. These stories demonstrate that organized civil disobedience has centuries-deep roots.
The Architecture of Inequality: Systems That Still Shape America
Redlining: The Ghost in Neighborhoods
Between 1934 and 1968, the Federal Housing Administration systematically denied mortgages to Black Americans through "redlining"—marking Black neighborhoods as "hazardous" for investment. These 80-year-old maps continue influencing property values, school funding, and wealth accumulation today, creating intergenerational disadvantages encoded in city landscapes.
The Henrietta Lacks Precedent
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks' cancer cells were harvested without consent, creating the immortal HeLa cell line that revolutionized medicine. Her story represents thousands of uncompensated medical contributions from Black bodies. The 2023 settlement with her family acknowledges this historical injustice, but the pattern of medical exploitation extended for decades beyond her case.
Buried Violence: The Massacres History Forgot
Beyond Tulsa's 1921 destruction of Black Wall Street lies a pattern of racial violence systematically excluded from mainstream history:
- The New Orleans Massacre (1866): 34-48 Black citizens killed while peacefully advocating for voting rights
- Colfax Massacre (1873): 60-150 Black men murdered in Louisiana's most deadly Reconstruction-era violence
- Atlanta Race Massacre (1906): 25-40 Black residents killed amid false allegations and media incitement
These weren't spontaneous riots but coordinated campaigns of terror designed to suppress Black political and economic advancement during critical junctures in American democracy.
The Uncelebrated Pioneers: Innovation Against Odds
Medical Trailblazers
Before modern EMS systems, Freedom House Ambulance Service (1967-1975) in Pittsburgh trained Black men as the nation's first professional paramedics, developing protocols that became national standards while serving neglected communities.
Inventors of Daily Life
Garrett Morgan's traffic signal (1923) and gas mask (1914) saved countless lives. Lewis Latimer perfected the light bulb filament. Marie Van Brittan Brown invented the home security system (1966). Their creations shaped modern living while their names remained obscure.
Athletic Barriers Broken
Beyond Jackie Robinson: Alice Coachman (first Black woman Olympic gold medalist, 1948), Charlie Sifford (first Black PGA Tour member, 1961), and Althea Gibson (first Black Wimbledon champion, 1957) transformed sports while facing segregation within their professions.
Preserving History as an Act of Citizenship
As Michelle Obama observed, "The legacy of slavery...is part of our history that we have to acknowledge and talk about." In an era of legislative erasure, preservation becomes radical:
Oral History Projects
Recording family stories creates living archives that legislation cannot touch.
Community Teach-Ins
Local gatherings that bypass institutional restrictions on historical discourse.
Digital Archives
Crowdsourced repositories ensuring stories survive beyond textbook revisions.
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." — Maya Angelou
This preservation work isn't about revising history—it's about completing it. Every recovered story, every shared narrative, every taught lesson rebuilds the full American tapestry, one thread at a time. The stories they want buried are precisely the ones we must tell most urgently.
