Like Dr. Bezio says in the podcast, sometimes history can feel like a laundry list of names and dates to memorize. But I find the odd things, the little narratives of history are far more compelling, and actually, help me remember the big events better.  Adding more context to an event or person can make them feel more like fallible, complicated, regular people, which I find also makes them easier to remember. 

I feel like history likes to paint in all one color, you’re either a terrible person, country, movement, or you are a victor. It brushes over the nuances and complexities and forgets that you can be both a terrible person and do good things, and vice versa. One thing that came up for me while listening to the podcast was the intersections of the feminist movements and the civil rights movement. While they were originally in lockstep for the abolition movement, they eventually separated as the white feminists distanced themselves from the abolition movement in order to curry favor with white southerners. White feminists used racist arguments to justify why white women should have the vote. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement had a history of disenfranchising women within the movement. This separation had a lasting impact that pitted the civil rights movement and the feminist movement against each other, as Black women found themselves at an intersection where they had to choose to prioritize their racial identity or their gender identity. But these identities of race and gender collide in such ways that create a unique experience of the world. Now, we use the term intersectionality to talk about how these identities come together, but according to history, all civil rights leaders were men (except for Rosa Parks) and all feminists were white. Black women are erased from the narrative since they don’t completely fit into the boxes provided. And some people who made great changes in civil rights and feminists movements were extremely sexist or racist. But we ignore the less favorable perspective in order to glorify the work they did. This is simply an incomplete history. The other thing Dr. Bezio mentioned was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s role in the civil rights movement. In addition to the fact that he could only be successful due to ordinary people, his role in the movement was white-washed. After his assassination, the public history painted him as this great unifier, someone who championed peace, and was loved by everyone, both white and black. This is simply incorrect. MLK was a democratic socialist, warned against the white moderate, and the FBI tried to get him to kill himself. A lot of people hated him, even as he preached non-violent resistance. He was sexist, and a womanizer, and if the recent FBI memos are to be believed, he allowed and encouraged a rape in his presence. His moral shortcomings do not detract from the work he accomplished, but they do require a closer look at his ‘Great Man’ history. This proves not only that ‘great men’ are often more than history portrays them as, but also that they are not so great in the first place.