Class Today

Before class today, it had never occurred to me that historians would warp stories in history so readers would see it their way. In my American Literature class we had studied the story of Amistad (the slave ship on which the slaves rebelled) we talked about in class today. When we discussed it in my American Lit class, it was made out to be this story of bravery and courage, and I never thought that years before people could have been teaching it in a completely different perspective. This also became apparent to me earlier in the semester when we were talking about Thomas Jefferson. He is always made out to be this upstanding man and great leader and president. While that may be true, it is also true that he strongly opposed having slave in his political campaign, but he owned slaves. This is extremely contradictory and not the president I had studied in middle and high school. This is a bizarre comparison, but it is like the game telephone. One person says a sentence and whispers it to the person beside them, and they whisper it to the person, etc. until it goes all the way around the circle and usually, the last person says a completely different sentence from the original. Historical stories are similar. As they are passed down, they become different depending on the view of the person telling them. It makes me think twice about what historical stories I am reading...