West Virginia coal miner strike, 1921

We all rely on experience to understand the world and to make good decisions.

History is just experience written down and passed on.

If your coal miner great-grandfather tells you about how the mining companies once made virtual slaves of entire communities, and that the miners went out on strike, he is sharing his experiences.

When he tells you how the mining companies ganged up with law enforcement, private agencies, and the federal government to break strikes with violence, intimidation, and outright murder, he is sharing his experiences.

When you decide to write down his exact words, those words become “history” – or at the very least, an important historical record.

If your great-grandfather’s personal history receives the attention of academics and professional historians, who then use it to help tell the story of America in books and academic papers, then your grandfather’s stories become part of “official history”.

If someone deems this official history to be important, your grandfather’s stories might even end up in school history textbooks.

Or not.

After all of the aforementioned steps have been taken, there is still the not-so-small matter of WHO DECIDES WHAT SHOULD BE IN SCHOOL HISTORY BOOKS, AND WHICH BOOKS TO BUY.

In some USA states, a book review panel might be comprised of educators selected by the state board of education – people who are then appointed by the state governor to examine potential history textbook candidates.

This review panel then makes its recommendations.

All eminently sensible, yes?

But wait.

Some state boards of education do not select their book review panels only from teachers and educators.

Their book review panels often include parents, business representatives, politicians, and Christian religious leaders.

In other words, some states leave the content of their history books to people who have studied and taught history.

“Experts”, God forbid.

But many other states believe Christian church pastors or affluent business persons (for example) should have an equal say in what constitutes “history” in their state.

I don’t want to underestimate the intelligence of my readers by being a bit too on the nose here, but I’m going to say it anyway.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that a school history textbook review panel is appointed in a state with Big Mining interests, and the board decides to “invite” the head of the biggest local employer to make recommendations.

Let’s say the biggest local employer is Burn More Coal, Inc.

What are the chances that your coal mining great-grandfather’s personal recollections – his lived experience of violence and rank exploitation – made it from your keyboard into an academic paper?

What are the chances that one or two academic papers mentioning your great-grandfather’s experiences came to inform and influence the content of “serious” history books?

What are the chances that any serious history books mentioning your great-grandfather’s life and experiences might actually end-up as secondary source material for a school history book?

And finally, what are the chances (if your great-grandfather’s life and experiences DID end up being included as part of the American story in a school history textbook), what are the chances of this version of history making it past the CEO of Burn More Coal, Inc.?

All of this doesn’t even mention that book publishing companies are in the business of selling books.

Does anyone truly believe that a company publishing school history textbooks will include chapters on land theft, broken treaties, resource wars, ethnic cleansing, and brutal racial injustice in their texts?

Especially when they are submitting texts for review in states where many politicians and officials are openly hostile to any history which portrays the USA as anything less than “a shining city on a hill”?

*****

It would be easy at this point to become disheartened, and ask “What’s the point?”.

It would be understandable if we simply said “There are too many odds stacked against us.  There are too many opposing forces arrayed in the field”.

But truth is like the tiniest seed which forces its way up through cracks in the concrete and asphalt.

This is precisely why rich people, authoritarians, and creepy, dangerous ideologues are EXTREMELY interested in controlling the historical narrative in a death vise-grip – through the mass media, through data mining and control of social media, and yes, through school textbooks.

This is precisely why rich people and authoritarians are currently attempting to bring colleges, universities, and museums to heel.

A huge part of resistance is saying and writing what is true in our own life, in our own space.

When we tell our stories, everyday, everywhere – to the girl in the coffee shop, to the mailman, to the hairdresser, to the garage mechanic, to our social media friends – we are adding to the historical narrative.

And history is nothing more, nothing less, than our lived experience being written down and passed on.

As the estimable James Baldwin once wrote, “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it”.

It is our job, our duty, to keep telling our stories, and to say all of the things unsaid.

When we give up our right to tell the truth openly, we become little more than slaves – tiny, silent cogs in a vast whirring machine constructed to manufacture wealth for masters and overlords.

Writing and learning real history is sand in the gears of the machine.