It’s a brilliant article. I like to look at the details that were analyzed comparatively about textbooks, to see how narratives are altered when details are erased. But one critical thing that was erased was the divisional truth the nation was founded on. While many in power in the South never intended to grant or recognize equality embedded in the idea of inalienable right (Unalienable is the expression back then as point out), the North did not have that intent. In fact, the opposite.
Those in Massachusetts did recognize the inalienable rights of black Americans, and the black female slave, Mum Betts, took her master to trial in 1781 and won her freedom based on her inalienable rights being suppressed by slavery. The governor and a couple dozen prominent whites wrote and signed an eloquent assertion that Phyllis Wheatley, America’s first black female published poet and former slave, did write this poetry and support her, in order to recognize the innate talent of all human’s by recognizing that of a girl of 7 brought to America as a slave. These leaders had a deep intent to show inalienable rights were embedded in all humans through showing the “delicate sensibilities” inherent in poetry, a sublime human art, and that even the “lowest” among us, a slave girl, had the same intellectual and emotion potential as the richest aristocrat. Many black American fought in the Revolutionary for freedom.
But these critical historical moments that showed America for these “Northern Yankees” was founded indeed for the good all humans to make a perception of one race was eliminated historically, just like Rosa Parks story was, until it vanished from history. Instead, the narrative that replaced it, because of relentless Southern bullying as we still see now, forced the narrative that “America was founded by white men” upon us in the early 20th century, replacing the truths that had existed before. That process of rewriting history had been constant by them. The Rosa Parks example expertly pointed out here is just one example to all countless times it has been done where liberals have lost, until most Americans, especially black Americans and white Americans in the South believe “American was found by white men”. The black “Brahman class” existed in small numbers before and after the revolution around Boston until today. Let’s not forget the fight of dignity by liberal looks far different than the fight violence and lies by supremacists who tend toward autocracy.
The piece is excellent and inspiring. I’m just “quibbling” to look at the larger process and how this has happened through our history, but especially after the Civil War, a battle the Ralph Ellison said the South won because of the Compromise of 1877, not lost. I agree with him. This narrative fight over Rosa Parks and other so astutely examined here show a “braveness” of DeSantis from the Supremacist perspective, a sign of moral depravity and “cheating” from the liberal perspective at the expense of black Americans as usual. We cannot accept this outcome DeSantis and his other “allies” push in continually altering the historical narrative of America in their favor. This type of analysis is critical in calling out what they are doing and who they are attacking and degrading.
Rosa Parks was an unstoppable force who risked her life to investigate white rape of black women in the South for the NAACP starting the 1940s and a true justice warrior. Her bravery against the white supremacist rulers of those states was deep and heroic. That true story needs to restored and included in that bus story. She did not arrive at that point on accident but from a carefully planned execution by leaders and her to create a lasting image that indeed has endured. That genius of planning that moment took years of deep realization about how to get national attention using the most powerful image. Let us remember that and put that back in our psyche and back in the real history books.

Thanks again to this author for relentless spirit and writing that inspires.