The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement - Hardcover

McMahon, Sharon

 
9780593541678: The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593541677 ISBN 13: 9780593541678
Verlag: Thesis, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

From America’s favorite government teacher, a heartfelt, inspiring portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.

In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.  

You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.

This is a book about what really made America – and Americans – great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

After years of serving as a high school government and law teacher, Sharon McMahon took her passion for education to Instagram, where more than a million people rely on her for non-partisan, fact-based information as "America's Government Teacher." In a time where flashy headlines and false information often take the spotlight, Sharon is a reliable source for truth and logic. 

Sharon is also the host of the award-winning podcast, Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, where, each week, she provides entertaining yet factual accounts of America’s most fascinating moments and people. In all that she does, Sharon encourages others to be world-changing humans. She has led her community in various philanthropic initiatives that have raised more than $9 million for teachers, domestic violence survivors, terminally ill children, medical debt forgiveness programs, refugees, and more.

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One

Clara Brown

Kentucky, 1830s

The marketplace buzzed with activity on a sizzling Kentucky day. And just up ahead, to the right, near the wooden platform in the center of town, a heartrending scene was unfolding.

Clara Brown clutched her youngest child close, Eliza Jane's tear-sodden face disappearing into the fabric of Clara's dress. Eliza was prone to "fits" of behavior she had difficulty controlling, and she was now sobbing.

"Shhhhhh," Clara whispered to her. "You have to be a brave girl now."

She tried to dry Eliza's face. To wipe her nose. To imbue her with her motherly strength so Eliza could take her turn on the auction block and be sold to a "decent" family, one that would not punish her too harshly. A family that would give her somewhere warm to sleep, and enough food to sustain her and help her grow tall and strong. If Eliza stood there looking like a blubbering mess, she might fetch a bad price and go to a family that couldn't-or wouldn't-care for her.

When Clara was born around 1800, she was born enslaved to enslaved parents. As a child, she was sold to a man in another state, a fate that would soon befall her own offspring. Kentucky wasn't home to the vast plantations of Virginia, where she came from; the land here was more mountainous, the farms were more compact. It's likely that Clara had many jobs as she grew up, learning to cook, clean, garden, wash, and iron alongside the other enslaved women she lived with.

Unusually for a woman in her circumstances, Clara married for love. Because so little has been recorded about the lives of enslaved people, and what was recorded was often from the perspective of the people who owned them, diaries and letters from the time tell us that Clara's owners were very happy that she married Richard, and that they threw the new couple a wedding feast to celebrate the union.

It's difficult today not to be cynical about these accounts-if the enslavers felt genuine affection for Clara and Richard, why didn't they free them? What were they actually happy about? Was it that they had a family of strong workers living on their farm now, a family that would soon bear children they could sell or enslave as well? Was the marriage for love anything more than dollar signs in the eyes of the people who owned Clara and Richard?

Clara and Richard welcomed a son, Richard Jr., daughter Margaret, and twin baby girls, Paulina Ann and Eliza Jane. Unlike many enslaved people, the family was allowed to live together and to tend to their own garden plot. In the evenings, the children could play in the creek that ran through the property.

Clara's life changed forever one summer day. In the distance, she heard the unmistakable sound of her eight-year-old daughter screaming, "MAMAAAAAAAAA!" Clara felt a punch in her gut and a weight on her chest that made it hard to breathe. She took off in the direction of her daughter's voice, her legs moving her six-foot frame at a speed they had never carried her before. She found Eliza creekside, pointing downstream.

"What! What happened? What is it?" Clara cried, the panic rising in her throat.

"PAULINA!" Eliza cried. "PAULINA!"

Eliza had tried in vain to reach her twin, Paulina, who was tangled in the branches that swirled at the edge of the creek. Eliza had watched as her wombmate disappeared under the surface.

Paulina's body was recovered a short time later. But Eliza's mind was not. Clara worried desperately about her, worried how she would be treated the rest of her life if she couldn't snap out of her episodes of staring blankly off into the distance and the crying jags that lasted for hours unabated. Eliza barely slept, which meant Clara barely had a chance to close her eyes.

Today we would recognize the PTSD that Eliza was experiencing, the flashbacks of trying to rescue her entangled sister that seized her at night. The crippling feelings of guilt that it was her fault, the regret she felt because they shouldn't have been in the creek to begin with.

When the family's current owner, Ambrose Smith-the one who had thrown them the wedding feast-, died in 1835 the family had to be separated and sold, one by one, to settle his estate. Each member of Clara's family, her husband and four beloved children, took turns stepping up onto the auction block, hoping against hope for some kind of miracle that might allow them to stay together. But none came.

The sight of fragile little Eliza with her tearstained face, eyes swollen from crying, being wrenched from her arms and hoisted atop the platform, caused a pain unlike any Clara had known. When Paulina died, Clara grieved. But delivering her dead baby girl into the arms of the Lord-Clara was a woman of great faith-was far different than delivering her sobbing, living daughter into the arms of an unknown enslaver. She knew there was a good chance they would never meet again outside of heaven. It was a grief she shared with many thousands of mothers whose babies were taken and who never again had the chance to kiss the tops of their heads, to remark on how much they were growing, or to marvel in pride at who they were becoming.

"SOLD!" the auctioneer yelled, pointing at the man who had just purchased her flesh and blood. Eliza was carted away, nestled in the back of a wagon among sacks of feed and bolts of fabric. Clara watched her disappear, praying that Eliza would not be afraid, that she would find the strength to be a good girl, and that she would always know that she was loved.

She vowed to find her again someday, even if it took the rest of her life.

When it was Clara's turn to step on the auction block, she was sober, her eyes fixed on the horizon. She couldn't allow herself to look into the faces of the people who stared her up and down. She didn't allow herself to cry for Eliza, or for her husband, or her two older children, all sold to different enslavers. She held her head high, turning on command so the auction attendees could see her from all angles, silent in her rage and despair.

Clara was sturdy. Experienced enough to take to most jobs quickly, but young enough to still have many decades of work left in her. Her buyer was a man named George Brown. He motioned to a spot for Clara to sit in his wagon. The auction block, and Clara's life as she knew it, slowly disappeared from view as she rolled toward a new, unknown life.

George Brown was a merchant-a hatter-and instead of working outdoors, Clara now had a job inside the Brown home. Over the years, as she helped raise the Browns' three daughters, she thought endlessly of her own three girls. Her Margaret, was she happy? Did she marry? Her Eliza, did she grow out of the crying spells? How tall was she now? Her Paulina, was she watching from above? Could she hear how often Clara talked to her as she folded laundry and stirred the supper bubbling on the stove? She hoped her son and husband remembered her, as she did them.

Clara spent the next twenty years cooking, cleaning, and washing for the Browns. She couldn't read or write, but with their help, she tried to keep track of what happened to her children and husband.

Margaret, she heard, had died of a respiratory condition. Clara's husband, Richard, sold down the river to one of the deadly plantations in the Deep South, was also gone. Her son, Richard Jr., was presumed dead, because the Browns had not been able to find a trace of him for many years. Eliza had initially been sold to an enslaver in Kentucky, but by 1852, she was twenty-six years old, and the only thing Clara had been able to turn up was a rumor that Eliza had headed west.

When George Brown died and his relatives freed Clara, as stipulated in his will, Kentucky law gave her one year to leave the state. Stay any longer, and she risked re-enslavement. The Brown daughters found a job for...

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Verlag
Thesis
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593541677
ISBN 13 
9780593541678
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchbär
info@buchbaer.de

Weberstr. 67
Osnabrück
49084
Deutschland

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