What A History Enthusiast Might Think About On The Fourth of July
A thoughtful piece for the Fourth of July
I think about how we got here a lot. Like, we as in the country of the United States of America. The same could be said of the world, but that’s a lot of answers and not even half of it is the fault of modern day imperialism— ti’s really an interesting question with far tooo many answers, so. Keep it local. To the nation I live in.
I was a fan of History class in school, and still enjoy the subject . . . so I think about it often.
How Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand stripped Christopher Columbus of his titles, not because they really cared about the people he enslaved, but because of his mismanagement of their money1 and one fortuitous hater2. I think about how a bunch of starving, hurting, paranoid, and ultimately greedy people came to this land, and manifested a false destiny allowing them to slaughter millions of people, laying claim to their lands and lives and customs. I don’t think you need a footnote about The Mayflower, now do you?
I think about the Salem Witch Trials and how many of the women targeted were first women of little means to be helped, and then women of influence3. I think about how many congregations saw Smallpox and its fatal consequences as a sort of natural edict from God, and the idea of vaccinating against it as an affront to God’s will4. I think about the Trail of Tears and all the people that died, the bodies left without traditional rites5. I think about all the buffalo that were killed to make room for cattle farmers and to break the spirits of the indigenous6.
I think about all the inventions that so few know were made by Black people. Traffic lights7, paramedics in the US8, and so on. I think about how, in some parts due to religious differences and in others just due to plain old fear and distrust and discrimination, Irish immigrants were treated unfairly by United States citizens— calling them lazy, uncivilised, disease-ridden, taking white men’s jobs9 . . . and doesn’t it all sound so familiar? I think about how racists are some of the most unimaginative and boring people out there. I think about how the Know-Nothing party10 is alive and well and deeply, deeply interwoven into our two major political parties because damn they sure don’t act like the know anything.
And, you know, I don’t think about the Civil War so much as I think about the period of time between its end and the beginning of Jim Crow in the South. Reconstruction, in other words. I think about how Black people were once proud legislative figures11, becoming senators and representatives in government. I think about how, during Reconstruction, Congress came through and did the largest and most thorough investigation of a domestic terrorist force ever seen before or since12, and how that kind of investigative power surely isn’t seen today. I think about how, when people say “slavery was over 400 years ago!” they don’t know a thing about how white Southerners largely worked (violently and swiftly) for years after their loss in the Civil War to ensure African-Americans weren’t their equals, and they won with the Compromise of 187713. It would be 86 years before we saw another Black person in Senate, but maybe some might say that’s alright since it only took 26 years for another Black person to enter the House of Representatives. Couldn’t have been that bad. I think about Dalip Singh Saund14, the first Indian and Asian American to become a representative! I just know he faced some hellacious racism and opposition, despite a track record of working for Californian farmers. It’s thanks to him that Indian immigrants can become American citizens. I think about him now, especially in light of the boring ass, got-it-from-my-grandaddy-and-didn’t-even-change-it-up-a-little racism these white politicians are heaving at Mamdani in NYC right now. I wonder if he knows about Saund, if he’s thinking about him now.
I think about our long history of labor strikes and for most of them, the violent suppression of them by law enforcement— specifically I think about the Lattimer Massacre15 and the Ludlow Massacre. Did you know the cops in the Lattimer Massacre got away with it because the defense described the mostly European strikers as, uh, provacateurs from Hungary.
I think about the Great Depression, and how Zora Nealse Hurston wrote in her letters that many wealthy Black families were affected. So much so, you’d see previously affluent wives waiting in long lines to acquire work16. I think about how, in the South, it was law that Black women had to work.
I think about the Roanoke Colony constantly17, not just July 4th . . . it’s one of my favorite U.S. mysteries.
I think about The Cotton Club18, and about Esther Jones19!
I think about the USS Liberty20. I think about the fact that goverment did experiments on people21, and on the fact that in the 402 and 50s, diseases like polio ravaged generations22.
I think about the people forever altered by lobotomies (according to reports, anywhere from fifty to sixty fucking thousand)23, and the cruelty that dripped from the mouths of people who insisted that this would make someone a better functioning member of society. According to Britannica24, its believed that many were not even aware the “surgery” was performed on them. So imagine all these people— and it was mostly women and children, let’s be clear— who have lost something integral to them, not even knowing it. And that affecting their lives, their families as they continue living. Because don’t doubt for a second that having a part of your brain pierced by an ICE PICK, doesn’t do something bad to you.
I think about the neighborhood bombed in Philadelphia25, on the order of the city itself because they considered Black radicals terrorists, and they’ll accept some civilian deaths if it means the end of resistance to the United States government.
Oh, before I forget, HUGE shout out to Min Cheuh Chung for co-creating the birth control pill. Excellent W. Also kickstarted IVF, like that’s crazy26.
I don’t know, man, I think about a lot of stuff. And that’s not even couting all the events that happened in this 21st century! That barely scratches the surface of everything that started from the conception of this Country through the ninetennth century. But those are just some of my thoughts.
But you know what, I’m really thinking about how we really need to encourage people to study outside of school. History is so, so cool and they don’t even cover an eigth of the important stuff in school. I didn’t learn about the first Black senator until 2018, like a year after graduating college. That’s also when I found out about things like the Tulsa Massacre, Central Park lake and Lake Lenier and the tragedy of their sunken history. And I’m sure that this lack of learning is by design. Especially in the past 10 years, we’ve seen concentrated efforts to bury history underneath layers and layers of politically charged rhetoric and scare tactics in the form of book bans, legislation, and so on.
But history is vast and it can be scary to just dive in. So hopefully you’ve been curious enough to actually go to the links in the footnotes, or try to Google it yourself, and learn something new. We all have a part to play in creating a better future, and I want a role in helping to guide you on a path of some interesting study material.
We NEED to inform ourselves of our country’s history, and the world’s too. Nothing good is produced by a society that is limited in its scope of knowledge. And nothing good is gained from it either. But the more we seek knowledge, the more we expand our minds, the more we can achieve. So, share this with some friends and then start a historical scavenger hunt. Get curious! Look up the Molasses Disaster in the 30s, or the first Olympics— which happened here in the U.S. and was kind of a shit show— or the fact had it not been for legislative laziness, we may very well have had hippos in the Delta!
Find a jumping point, any one, and start there. Read, learn, be curious and be aware. Because history is cyclical in its trends more often than not, and its better to be aware of the trends than to be taken off guard by them. Consider it a civic duty that, thankfully, is way more entertaining than jury duty!
Editors, History.com. “Christopher Columbus.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, 28 May 2025, www.history.com/articles/christopher-columbus.
Carle, Robert. “Remembering Columbus: Blinded by Politics by Robert Carle.” NAS, Beck & Stone, Inc., 20 Mar. 2019, www.nas.org/academic-questions/32/1/rembering_columbus_blinded_by_politics.
Scanlan, Nora Wolff. “The Salem Witch Trials According To The Historical Records.” Humanities, National Endowment For The Humanities. 2022. https://www.neh.gov/article/records-salem-witch-trials
Hasselgren, Per-Olof. “The Smallpox Epidemics in America in the 1700s and the Role of the Surgeons: Lessons to Be Learned during the Global Outbreak of Covid-19.” World Journal of Surgery, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 4 July 2020, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7335227/#Sec3.
“What Happened on the Trail of Tears?” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 23 Apr. 2025, www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/what-happened-on-the-trail-of-tears.htm.
Clark, Carol. “Buffalo Slaughter Left Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples: Emory University: Atlanta Ga.” Emory News Center, Emory University, 23 Aug. 2023, news.emory.edu/stories/2023/08/esc_bison_impact_24-08-2023/story.html.
staff writer, FHWA. “Safer Stop and Go: Garrett Morgan’s Traffic Signal Legacy.” U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, United States Department of Transportation, 11 July 2024, highways.dot.gov/highway-history/general-highway-history/safer-stop-and-go-garrett-morgans-traffic-signal-legacy.
Kellermann, Arthur L. “America’s First Paramedics Were Black. Their Achievements Were Overlooked for Decades.” Healthforce Center at UCSF, University of California San Francisco, 26 Feb. 2024, healthforce.ucsf.edu/news/americas-first-paramedics-were-black-their-achievements-were-overlooked-decades.
O’Leary, Rachel. “Nativism against the Irish in America: A Historical Perspective.” Irish Famine Exhibition, Irish Famine Exhibition, 11 Jan. 2024, www.theirishpotatofamine.com/blogs/blog-1/nativism-against-the-irish-in-america-a-historical-perspective?srsltid=AfmBOopYUdf5AAX9xMexC6i60jdC5npXv_LjvNQwr51W7zPPBPvs74d6.
The Editors of, Encyclopedia Britannica. “Know-Nothing Party.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 10 Apr. 2025, www.britannica.com/topic/Know-Nothing-party.
Historical Office, Senate. “Senate Stories: Reconstruction Louisiana and the Case of PBS Pinchback.” U.S. Senate: Reconstruction Louisiana and the Case of PBS Pinchback, United States Senate, 26 Feb. 2025, www.senate.gov/artandhistory/senate-stories/reconstruction-louisiana-and-the-case-of-pbs-pinchback.htm.
for Oversight and Democracy, Levin Center. “Congress Investigates KKK Violence during Reconstruction.” Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, Wayne State Law School, 29 Oct. 2024, levin-center.org/congress-investigates-kkk-violence-during-reconstruction/.
Editors, History.com. “Compromise of 1877.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, 17 Mar. 2011, www.history.com/articles/compromise-of-1877.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Dalip Singh Saund". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Apr. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dalip-Singh-Saund. Accessed 3 July 2025.
Shackel, Paul A. “How a 1897 Massacre of Pennsylvania Coal Miners Morphed from a Galvanizing Crisis to Forgotten History.” Smithsonian.Com, Smithsonian Institution, 13 Mar. 2019, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-1897-massacre-pennsylvania-coal-miners-morphed-galvanizing-crisis-forgotten-history-180971695/.
Kaplan, Carla. “The Thirties.” Zora Neale Hurston: A Life In Letters, First Anchor Books ed., Knopff Doubelday Publishing, New York, New York, 2007, pp. 161–210.
“The Lost Colony.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 5 Sept. 2024, www.nps.gov/fora/learn/historyculture/the-lost-colony.htm.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Cotton Club". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Sep. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cotton-Club. Accessed 3 July 2025.
“Celebrating the Life & Legacy of Esther Lee Jones ‘Baby Esther.’” Fleischer Studios, Fleischer Studios, 2023, www.fleischerstudios.com/babyesther.html.
CIA. “The Israeli Attack On The USS Liberty.” Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d284. Accessed 3 July 2025.
Gross, Terry. “The CIA’s Secret Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a ‘Poisoner in Chief.’” NPR, NPR, 9 Sept. 2019, www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief.
“History of Polio: Outbreaks and Vaccine Timeline.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/history-disease-outbreaks-vaccine-timeline/polio. Accessed 3 July 2025.
Dibdin, Emma. “The History of Lobotomy.” Psych Central, Psych Central, 6 May 2022, psychcentral.com/blog/the-surprising-history-of-the-lobotomy#purpose.
Matthias, Meg. "How Many People Actually Got Lobotomized?". Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Jun. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/story/how-many-people-actually-got-lobotomized. Accessed 3 July 2025.
Puckett, John L. “MOVE on Osage Avenue.” West Philadelphia Collaborative History - MOVE on Osage Avenue, West Philadelphia Collaborative History, 12 May 2015, collaborativehistory.gse.upenn.edu/stories/move-osage-avenue.
Puckett, John L. “MOVE on Osage Avenue.” West Philadelphia Collaborative History - MOVE on Osage Avenue, West Philadelphia Collaborative History, 12 May 2015, collaborativehistory.gse.upenn.edu/stories/move-osage-avenue.
Remember, JAWS is a Fourth of July movie!!
Free Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, and all oppressed peoples.
If you’re able or find this whole thing worthy of reward, perhaps you could buy me an icee! It’s very hot.