THIS PART OF U.S. HISTORY IS STILL UNDISCOVERED
This article is an adaptation of our weekly History newsletter that was originally sent out on February 1, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Subscribe here.
By Debra Adams Simmons, HISTORY Executive Editor
Black History Month is a designated time to celebrate the accomplishments of African Americans. Yet a far greater year-round movement is underway to recover erased stories, reclaim Black history, and publicly recognize the contributions that have been made to the United States since its founding.
Even before the pandemic, protests and political upheaval, Black historians, scholars, writers, artists, and others have been curating a more inclusive version of the African American story. From the Mellon Foundation’s investment of $250 million to reframe how people are honored in public spaces to the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, and the U.S. National Archives working with volunteers to transcribe thousands of records, people are working feverishly to unearth lost stories and to archive a more complete African American history. (Pictured above, in Richmond, artist Kehinde Wiley’s equestrian statue of a young African-American man in street clothes.)
Smithsonian Transcription Center volunteers have transcribed 1,300 projects to make Black stories more accessible to people around the world. Volunteers already have transcribed more than 100,000 documents from a government bureau created in 1865 that had supported more than four million newly freed African Americans and oversaw the political and social Reconstruction of the South. Those duties included reuniting loved ones, settling labor and land disputes, and establishing schools.
How can you help recover history? On Feb. 12-14, the Library of Congress is hosting a transcribe-a-thon, where the papers of women’s advocate Mary Church Terrell honoring Frederick Douglass will be transcribed. Today, we are featuring author Martha S. Jones on our Twitter feed to outline America’s hidden history.
This is necessary work. These stories have been left out of textbooks. These statues have yet to be erected. There’s a deeper purpose here, writes Rachel Lance in Time: “Until we recover and replace the stories of the people who were deleted, we will, even without knowing it, continue to carry forward the deliberate bigotry of the past.”
For more on the beginnings of Black History Week, check out Erin Blakemore’s profile of historian Carter G. Woodson, who fought for decades against the world’s silence on Black achievement. His hope for a day or a week of celebration has extended to a month. Last month, Disney’s ESPN launched “Black History Always,” an effort led by ESPN The Undefeated to highlight Black stories beyond February. (The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Partners.)
(Pictured below, visitors to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, walk beneath dangling steel monuments. Each represents one of the 800 U.S. counties where racial lynching occurred and is inscribed with the names of victims in that county.)
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TODAY IN A MINUTE
Mystery solved? For 62 years, Russia had puzzled how nine experienced hikers died during an adventure in Russia’s Ural Mountains in the winter of 1959. Back then, the Communist state squelched speculation, and there was little explanation for the mangled state of their strewn corpses, discovered weeks later in the snowmelt at Russia’s Dyatlov Pass. Yetis? A serial killer? A new study posits that a small avalanche—perhaps a 16-foot slab of icy snow—hit the campsite with great force, wrecking their shelter and forcing some to flee in bare feet or socks. Some died of hypothermia, Robin George Andrews reports.
R.I.P. Cicely Tyson: She refused to take parts that demeaned Black people. Yes, that meant she lost work, but Cicely Tyson also took home three Emmys, a Tony (at 88), and an Oscar (at 93) in a career that portrayed characters with dignity. “Our whole Black heritage is that of struggle, pride and dignity,” Tyson said after her star turn in the 1972 film Sounder. She stunned Americans in playing a 110-year-old former enslaved person in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, followed by a critical role in the path-breaking mini-series Roots. “She’s our Meryl Streep,” Vanessa Williams told Essence in 2013. Tyson died Thursday at age 96, the New York Times reports.
The story behind The Dig: She was a widow who was fascinated by mysterious mounds on her land near England’s Suffolk coast. She hired an amateur archeologist, who found a 1,400-year-old burial site for an Anglo-Saxon royal—with an entombed 80-foot boat filled with valuables. That’s the plot line of the just-released Carey Mulligan-Ralph Fiennes Netflix movie The Dig, which covers the true-life 1939 discovery on a property known as Sutton Hoo. The spectacular find changed historians’ understanding of early medieval Britain, Erin Blakemorewrites in this article for Nat Geo. (Side note: A half-century ago, the National Geographic Society helped fund archaeologist and writer Rupert Bruce-Mitford'ssubsequent Sutton Hoo dig and his research, which grew into a multivolume study.)
Harriet Tubman, again: The U.S. Treasury Department has revived attempts to place the 19th-century abolitionist and political activist on the $20 bill, the Guardianreports. The move, planned under the Obama administration, had been shelved by the previous government. Tubman saved 300 people from slavery, ferrying many of them out of the pre-Civil War south via an Underground Railroad of abolitionists. “It’s important,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “that our money reflect the history and diversity of our country.”
Protecting public lands: How would America go about doing its bit to fight climate change and protect an estimated one million species at risk of extinction? An executive order issued last week reflects one tactic: Seeking to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and coastal seas by 2030. The U.S. is currently conserving around 26 percent of its coastal waters but only about 12 percent of its land in a largely natural state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Getting to 30 percent goal conserving an additional area twice the size of Texas, within the next 10 years, Nat Geo’s Sarah Gibbens reports.
Learn more about the Campaign for Nature, a partnership of the National Geographic Society and the Wyss Foundation, and its ambitious goal of protecting at least 30 percent of Earth’s land and water by 2030 at CampaignForNature.org.
INSTAGRAM PHOTO OF THE DAY
Not a painting: Like an Escher drawing, visitors climb up and down the Toorji Ka Jhalra step well in Jodhpur, India. This intricate step well was built in the early 1740s by the wife of Maharaja Abhay Singh using the area’s famous rose red sandstone. The step wells, many of which survive today, saved the monsoon rainwater for the rest of the year. Neglected, submerged, and filled with garbage for many years, the Toorji Ka Jhalra was recently restored.
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Photos: Wild architecture around the world
THE BIG TAKEAWAY
For their daughter: Even before the pandemic, times have been tough for most in Cuba. Nonetheless, the González family had scraped and saved hundreds of dollars over three years for their only daughter’s quinceañera. A girl’s 15th birthday party is monumental—often a blowout, with a lengthy photo session and frequent clothing changes. “For Cuban people, it’s like a religion,” says Eliana Aponte, a Havana-based photographer who spent a week documenting the González family’s quest. Despite food shortages and a two-month delay because of a COVID-19 lockdown, Karla González Toro had her 10-hour photo session—and a party at home. Her verdict? Turning 15 “is the best thing that can happen to you in Cuba.” (Pictured above, Karla rests against a friend at her 15th birthday celebration.)
IN A FEW WORDS
Beauty is fleeting, but knowledge is the only thing that remains.
Jorge Luis Ruiz, Havana photographer, From: Her quinceañera was going to be the biggest day of her life. Then came lockdown.
DID A FRIEND FORWARD THIS TO YOU?
On Tuesday, George Stone covers travel. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up here to also get Victoria Jaggard on science, Rachael Bale on animal news, and Whitney Johnson on photography.
LAST GLIMPSE
How they rolled: Roller skating outside has boomed in this pandemic year, but we’ve seen big booms before, including the decades after a technological innovation in 1863, Nat Geo’s History magazine reports. Back then, skating rinks became so popular that they competed with ballrooms (shown above). Some had live orchestras and just-developed electric lights. Predictably, “older generations grew concerned about roller-skating’s effects on young people’s morality,” writes Annalisa Palumbo.
Somersaulting pandas: If you haven’t seen this, it’s a delight. Giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian made the most of their snow day in Washington, D.C. See it!
This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, and Jen Tse has selected the photos. Kimberly Pecoraro and Gretchen Ortega helped produce this. Have an idea, a link, a roller skating story? We'd love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading, and happy trails.
