Curator's note: The Grateful American™ Foundation is dedicated to restoring enthusiasm in American history for kids and adults. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from George Washington University, and a master’s in Journalism from New York University. During the past 20 years he has been a real estate executive and the editor-in-chief/publisher of Crystal City Magazine. He is the author of 11 books, including his most recent title, American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. The Grateful American Book Series for children, featuring historic couples that were partnerships, debuts in the fall with Abigail and John—a joint biography of the Adams's.
]]>Author, educational advocate, and entrepreneur David Bruce Smith discusses a transformational moment in his education, during which a high school teacher showed him the revelatory truth that history, at its core, is a collection of stories and gossip. Smith believes strongly that by presenting history to students as a series of exciting and illuminating stories, we can cultivate a more widespread appreciation for—and understanding of—history’s importance in the next generation of learners.
Curator's note: The Grateful American™ Foundation is dedicated to restoring enthusiasm in American history for kids and adults. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from George Washington University, and a master’s in Journalism from New York University. During the past 20 years he has been a real estate executive and the editor-in-chief/publisher of Crystal City Magazine. He is the author of 11 books, including his most recent title, American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. The Grateful American Book Series for children, featuring historic couples that were partnerships, debuts in the fall with Abigail and John—a joint biography of the Adams's.
U.S. Representative David Price: I wouldn’t exactly describe it as a moment but I can tell you about an intellectual experience that really did transform my way of thinking and influences me to this day. It has to do with when I first went to Yale Divinity School. I never became a clergyman, obviously, but I certainly got a good liberal arts education at Yale Divinity School and feel that was a time of great intellectual development for me.
One important part of that was being introduced to the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, who at that point was a very influential theologian, but he had a wide influence way beyond theological circles. He used his theological understanding—essentially understanding of human nature—to elaborate the way “small-d” democratic politics can and should work.
There’s an aphorism—which I can’t quote exactly—that’s associated with him but it sums this up rather neatly. He said once that our positive understanding of human nature makes democracy possible. Our negative understanding of human nature makes democracy necessary.
In other words, our understanding of human nature has a lot to do both with the positive possibilities we strive for in our society, the kind of aspirations that we have for a more perfect union, for expanding opportunity, for a just society. At the same time we understand that even the best intentions in politics can become distorted, can go astray by virtue of self-interest and the will to power. Therefore, it’s important that no one’s power be absolute and that we have the kind of checks and balances that, of course, we aspire to anyway in our American system.
He also understands power in this vein. In other words, we’ve always had a preoccupation in American political thought with power, and that comes partly from the Calvinist tradition, from some of the theological roots of our culture, but that, too, can lead us astray because we’ve tended to concentrate on political power as the most potent danger. Of course it can be extremely dangerous but sometimes we’re oblivious to other kinds of power. Economic power, let’s say. We don’t have a full appreciation for just how oppressive and how limiting that can be.
Moreover, we don’t always appreciate how political power can check other forms of power—as it goes back to the Antifederalist position we were discussing earlier. You don’t ever suppose that you can do away with, or have the luxury of, a totally libertarian society. Power is going to be exercised. There are going to be disparities in power. Power is going to be organized in some way, and the way we do our politics is going to have a profound influence on this. It’s much better to be intentional about that, deliberate about it, than it is to make glib assumptions about power being benign or, for that matter, power being completely dangerous.
There has to be a balance between a notion of using power, utilizing power, and checking power. Niebuhr argued very, very persuasively that our understanding of human nature, particularly coming out of our religious traditions, was an important resource. Not just Enlightenment optimism about human nature. Not just the classical liberal assumptions about natural harmonies in society. No, no. There are real conflicts and there are real abuses that are possible. At the same time, sometimes coercion is necessary. So, it’s that understanding of power, theologically rooted, that just transformed my way of thinking about politics.
A high school math teacher discusses the documentary Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII. Beyond the awe for these women who took part in American military operations as human computers during World War II, this contributor is inspired by a statement made by one of the women in the movie, crediting her high school math teacher for her interest and advanced skills in mathematics.
In 1942, soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a secret military program was launched to recruit female mathematicians to be human computers. These women were pulled from high schools and universities, and their work computing the trajectories of U.S. ballistics was critical to the success of our military operations.
A handful of these women are interviewed in the documentary Top Secret Rosies and I was drawn in when one of the Rosies said that she credits her high school math teacher, Miss Clark, for her interest in advanced skills in mathematics.
As a lateral-entry high school math teacher, who’s been in the classroom only two years, I’ve thought a lot about Miss Clark. I wonder who I would have been in 1942, and would I have had the strength and confidence to be one of these young women? Would I have had the spirit to encourage young women to accept these jobs if I had been their math teacher? My mind then brings me to today. Am I doing everything in my power to engage and energize my students, so that they are open to their own potential and any opportunities that may come their way?
To appease my ever-growing alienation, I plunged into literature, film, and music, anything that I could hold onto to calm my disquietude. Yet, I did not know at the time that I yearned to better understand who I was by seeing myself through the worlds of others. This unconscious search led me to study English and Portuguese language and literature at the Federal University of Bahia. However, as an undergrad, I did not search for myself as much. I still maintained this unbreakable connection between my subjectivity and literature, but, at the same time, I read more as an observer than a participant. Throughout most of my formal education, white authors, both from Brazil and Europe, represented the standard in literary studies, while Black authors, albeit abundant, were rarely mentioned.
Things changed when in 2016 I decided to read the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I had already watched her famous Ted Talks “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should All Be Feminists”, and I got curious to read her work. This was the moment. Ifemelu’s journey as a Black Nigerian immigrant in the United States enthralled, moved, and inspired me. Adichie’s intricate and poignant representation of Black people in the U.S., the U.K., and Nigeria veered from the stereotypically negative and dehumanizing portrayals of Black people I was used to seeing in the media. In the novel, Adichie explores several facets of Black experiences, and I still remember that reading it felt like finally arriving home after spending your entire life squinting at the horizon, wondering if you would ever reach your destination. After years searching, I saw myself through the writing of someone who looked like me.
Nonetheless, I was not satisfied. I started reading Chinua Achebe, Sefi Atta, Wole Soyinka, and decided to translate this hunger for self-representation into a research project for graduate school. In 2018, I started following Ifemelu’s path as an immigrant in the U.S. to continue this intellectual and subjective query about the diversity of Black experiences across the world. I had found my home in African literatures and decided to never leave. I wanted to get closer to a mirror that had always been turned the other way, a lack of seeing that confined me to the role of the other. I wanted to stay, to sink “roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil” (Adichie 7).
Eventually, my research and teaching started to overlap. Curiosity prompted me to seek literature and film in which students who were also considered the other could see themselves represented as well. For students who were used to seeing themselves represented in all spheres of life, I also introduced them to works from diverse authors in order for them to move the mirror, look around, and get in contact with different realities and worldviews. These carefully devised choices of the texts I teach have turned my classrooms into safe spaces where diversity is the norm, and all students are heard and included.
Therefore, teaching African narratives about Black immigrants irreversibly converged my teaching philosophy and research. People still ask me nowadays which culture I identify with the most or even suggest that one day I will finally decide which country I consider to be my home. I never know how to answer this question because it is hard to convey what growing up in the diaspora is like. At least for now, I can say that every time I read Americanah again it takes me back to when this journey started, and I am excited to see where it will lead me.
]]>My humanities moment is a novel that changed my life and informed my path as an educator and researcher. But before I expound upon it, I need to tell you my story. I was born in Brazil as the only child of my Nigerian mother, who migrated to complete her undergraduate studies. Because of that, I constantly felt like I was living in-between, bridging the gap between Brazil and Nigeria. As I grew up, I struggled to find a sense of belonging, trying to conflate the Brazilian culture I learned at school with my Nigerian upbringing at home and fully identifying with neither. I was the other, a native foreigner.
To appease my ever-growing alienation, I plunged into literature, film, and music, anything that I could hold onto to calm my disquietude. Yet, I did not know at the time that I yearned to better understand who I was by seeing myself through the worlds of others. This unconscious search led me to study English and Portuguese language and literature at the Federal University of Bahia. However, as an undergrad, I did not search for myself as much. I still maintained this unbreakable connection between my subjectivity and literature, but, at the same time, I read more as an observer than a participant. Throughout most of my formal education, white authors, both from Brazil and Europe, represented the standard in literary studies, while Black authors, albeit abundant, were rarely mentioned.
Things changed when in 2016 I decided to read the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I had already watched her famous Ted Talks “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should All Be Feminists”, and I got curious to read her work. This was the moment. Ifemelu’s journey as a Black Nigerian immigrant in the United States enthralled, moved, and inspired me. Adichie’s intricate and poignant representation of Black people in the U.S., the U.K., and Nigeria veered from the stereotypically negative and dehumanizing portrayals of Black people I was used to seeing in the media. In the novel, Adichie explores several facets of Black experiences, and I still remember that reading it felt like finally arriving home after spending your entire life squinting at the horizon, wondering if you would ever reach your destination. After years searching, I saw myself through the writing of someone who looked like me.
Nonetheless, I was not satisfied. I started reading Chinua Achebe, Sefi Atta, Wole Soyinka, and decided to translate this hunger for self-representation into a research project for graduate school. In 2018, I started following Ifemelu’s path as an immigrant in the U.S. to continue this intellectual and subjective query about the diversity of Black experiences across the world. I had found my home in African literatures and decided to never leave. I wanted to get closer to a mirror that had always been turned the other way, a lack of seeing that confined me to the role of the other. I wanted to stay, to sink “roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil” (Adichie 7).
Eventually, my research and teaching started to overlap. Curiosity prompted me to seek literature and film in which students who were also considered the other could see themselves represented as well. For students who were used to seeing themselves represented in all spheres of life, I also introduced them to works from diverse authors in order for them to move the mirror, look around, and get in contact with different realities and worldviews. These carefully devised choices of the texts I teach have turned my classrooms into safe spaces where diversity is the norm, and all students are heard and included.
Therefore, teaching African narratives about Black immigrants irreversibly converged my teaching philosophy and research. People still ask me nowadays which culture I identify with the most or even suggest that one day I will finally decide which country I consider to be my home. I never know how to answer this question because it is hard to convey what growing up in the diaspora is like. At least for now, I can say that every time I read Americanah again it takes me back to when this journey started, and I am excited to see where it will lead me.
As a graduate student facing an uncertain future, Mackintosh took refuge in her father’s written words, which described his own challenges as a newly married farmer during the Great Depression. His letter concluded with a question posed to his daughter: “Would it help you to know that things usually turn out alright?” Thanks to her father’s words, Mackintosh, herself a scholar of stories, could contextualize her own unfolding narrative in light of her family history.
]]>Esther Mackintosh explains how a single letter from her father offered solace during an especially trying period of her life.
As a graduate student facing an uncertain future, Mackintosh took refuge in her father’s written words, which described his own challenges as a newly married farmer during the Great Depression. His letter concluded with a question posed to his daughter: “Would it help you to know that things usually turn out alright?” Thanks to her father’s words, Mackintosh, herself a scholar of stories, could contextualize her own unfolding narrative in light of her family history.