I was scrolling through Instagram, trying to take a break from the news, when I saw
(@ risingfromthered) ask if I knew that George Washington’s teeth weren’t wood, but were instead taken from his enslaved population. If you’ve been reading or listening to me, you know that I think the way we remember history is a function of our present, and the myths we understand and perpetuate about our past have been created to flatten and simplify our stories for purposes of events in the present. and I had a similar conversation last week about the Trump regime attempting to sanitize the past through the Smithsonian and National Park Service way markers, and I thought Lindsay, an elementary school teacher, had a great idea of giving snippets of information. When she started, she went from zero to more than 30k followers on instagram and 16k on Tiktok in a heartbeat, and even a dormant FB account sprang to life.Here’s a brief clip of our convo. Scroll down for the entire conversation below, or download the audio to your podcast app.
So, as we speak about the unspeakable present, which of course I also talk about, it’s important to take a look at the historical rabbit holes in our past. The more we can learn about what our founders did, and why, the more we can understand our present and gather our imagination for the future United States we’re going to need to build.
➡️ You’ll also find me live on Mon Sept 29 at 11 am ET on with to talk about chronic illness and invisible disabilities.
Looking forward to your comments on this and anything else!
