From kindergarten onward, school children across the United States learn about the major figures and conflicts that defined America, from George Washington’s battle against the British to Martin Luther King’s struggle for voting rights. The script is always the same: Slowly but surely, the US citizenry triumphs over moral, political, and scientific backwardness. But what do we find when we dig a bit deeper? Are our most triumphant histories based on fact or myth? And what happens when we cast away mainstream histories and focus on under-the-radar legal battles, film censorship fights, disease outbreaks, fringe ideological movements, and quashed slave rebellions instead?
In Forgotten America: Rediscovering Events that Changed the Nation, turn your attention to the unfamiliar in United States history with historian and author Dr. Rachel Michelle Gunter. Starting with the colonial period, Dr. Gunter will be your guide as you:
- Study the controversies surrounding smallpox and how to prevent its spread in wartime.
- Delve into the brutal quashing of the German Coast Uprising and the zig zag battle to enshrine women’s citizenship rights.
- Investigate efforts to restrict Asian migration as well as the untimely spread of fascism within the United States. Get to know the activists involved in securing key disability accommodations in the 1970s and 1990s.
- Examine how the fight to extinguish tuberculosis shaped fashion, food, and the built environment.
- Look at how soldiers’ dramatic efforts for benefits gave rise to the GI Bill.
- Get to know key movers and shakers from Southern abolitionist sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké to women’s rights crusaders Ruth Bryan Owen and Ethel Mackenzie.
But that’s not all. Throughout this course, Dr. Gunter encourages you to confront what you know about American history. Over the course of these 12 lectures, you will question the assumption that early Hollywood films reflected a more innocent America, examining how films first acquiesced to—and then ultimately circumvented—the infamous Hays Code censors. You’ll dig into the origins of Thanksgiving, from its dubious connection to Plymouth pilgrims to its uneven spread across the United States. You’ll reexamine the fight for woman suffrage, focusing on the links between suffrage and abolition as well as between suffrage and the movement to restrict the rights of immigrants. And you’ll emerge with a more nuanced, complete portrait of the United States.
