Missing Pieces

When you pick up a high school text book on the History of America in most cases it will elaborate on the different presidents, government, society, and those who left a great impact on it. In a lot of American text many great people are not recognized for the outstanding achievements and great ideas and inventions made that moved America into a more industrial and more technological state. They acknowledge men like Henry Ford for his model T assembly line, Samuel F.B. Morse for the electric telegraph, Eli Whitney for the Cotton Gin, and Orville and Wilbur Wright who invented the first air plane. But what about those African Americans, who have made as great of contributions, do you hear about them in American History text books? What about Garrett Morgan who created the gas mask and the traffic light, Burridge and Marshman who created the typewriter, Alexander Miles who created the elevator, and Richard Spikes who created the automatic gear shift? These men have made a great contribution to America are not acknowledged in such context for their inventions. In order to even know about this information you would have to find books that contain information about black firsts. Why is that? Are we not all Americans? Have we not all shed blood, sweat and tears for this country for it to be the way it is now. African Americans, Latin Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans all deserve recognition in America’s history. They try to exclude other races accomplishments in subtle ways and think that people can’t tell that they still have that puritan view on society and how it should be. They are able to say what’s important and what’s not. Is that really fair? In so many ways Ralph Ellison was right when he said” White Americans have fantasized Blacks no longer being a party of society and take credit for things that without blacks would have never been created”(Revelations). The question is would they have been able to write all the novels they wrote about the civil war, would they be able to listen to jazz, comb and brush their hair, use elevators, come up with the idea of a cell phone, create a movement of art, music, and literature like the African Americans, I think not. When the Europeans came over to the Americas for the first time they didn’t know what to do, they needed the Native Americans who were intact with nature, to show them how to hunt, and plant crops, and natural herb recipes to stay healthy. They took what use to be the Native Americans culture and their survival tactics and plagued and slaughtered them all and claimed the land theirs. Where is the patriotism in that? They have tried to erase the real history of Native Americans by their stories of thanksgiving and exaggeration of finding the new world, when true history shows the famine and disease they brought to the Native Americans. They needed them and much as they need us. Without the diversity of America, it would not be as advanced and as strong without its history books missing pieces. People like Lewis Latimer, Madame C.J. Walker, Charles Drew, and Fredrick M. Jones fill in those gaps of inventions/ideas they care not to discuss because they didn’t invent them. These missing pieces in history are important and who has the right to say my ancestors ideas or inventions aren’t American enough to be put in a history book?