The 240th anniversary of our nation's birth is the perfect day for paying editorial homage to Phillip M. Hoose's 2001 account of the contributions of the young to American Society over a period of 500 years.
Beginning with the story of 12-year-old Diego Bermudez, the youngest member of Columbus' crew, and ending with the story of environmental activist Kory Johnson, Hoose recounts the less-well-known stories of Proto-Native, and modern Americans of all eras to shed light on those often ignored corners of history that are not taught in class.
Many of these young people dealt with harsh social conditions, and we learn what they did to reform them.
Interestingly, we also learn of the troublemakers, such as the Salem Village, "Mean Girls", Betty Parris and Abigail Williams(the latter of whom was memorably portrayed by Winona Ryder in "The Crucible") whose actions and accusations were largely responsible for the persecutions and executions of many during the Salem Witch Hunt.
By and large we, read about young people who were driven to make the best of adverse circumstances, and expand upon them.
Among the early young Americans who did this are South Carolina plantation owner, Eliza Lucas, who chose to forgo a life of upper class frivolity to learn the business of running the plantation on which her father, Colonel George Lucas, a naval commander of British forces, moved his family from Antigua and Barbuda for the sake of his wife's health, and ran a successful business of planting indigo, and to her credit, presiding over the education of two black girls even though she had slaves,and in contrast the Beninese native Olaudah Equiano, a son of a tribal chief who was kidnapped along with his sister and sold into slavery,where he was initially taken to Barbados, and then to Virginia, in 1756, and later wrote about his ordeal.Other notable slaves of that era are poet Phillis Wheatley,Onesiumus a slave owned by Cotton Mather who helped find an inoculation against smallpox, and a blind slave from Georgia named "Blind Tom" Molineux.
The young heroes and heroines of the Revolutionary War include Christopher Seider, whose death at the hands of British soldiers precludes the Boston Massacre and Samuel Maverick , and actual casualty of that event, Anna Green Winslow, who, in her own short life used her spinning wheel for the cause of liberty, young John Quincy Adams, son of our second President, who would later become the sixth President, and Sybil Ludington, whose ride to warn the colonists about approaching British regulars was longer and more dangerous than Paul Revere's( or more accurately, Williams Dawes').
Early 19th century stories include those of sisters, Rebecca and Abigail Bates, who devised a plan to keep British ships at bay near their lighthouse home during the War of 1812, mill workers, Lucy Larcom and Harriet Hanson ( the latter of whom bears a striking resemblance to Demi Moore), who led a strike to improve their working conditions,Anyokah, a Cherokee, who helped her father give a written language to his people,and Majiro, a Japanese peasant boy who helped put a crack in Japanese isolationism a decade before Perry's arrival.
Whaler George Fred Tilton of Massachusetts, a young Frederick Douglass, and Northern Army soldiers, Elisha Stockwell and Johnny Clem give insight to the eras in which they lived as well.
Young Vinnie A. Ream is shown posing with the bust she sculpted of Lincoln in 1865.
Tales of Westward expansion include those of Sacajawea, eight-year -old Alamo survivor, Enrique Esparza, and Chinese immigrants, Ng Poon Chew, and Lee Chew, who panned for gold during the gold rush, and the young, Hopi, Chuka, who was forced to attend a Christian school which demanded the assimilation of Native American children .
Gener Schemerhorn and Rose Cohen 's stories usher in a new century in which industrialized workers battle for their rights,we revisit the 1899 strike my New York city's "newsies" that was portrayed in a musical, recount John Thayer's ordeal as a Titanic survivor, Edna Purtell's work as a suffragist,and African American Charles Denby's northward trek, along with other Black migrants, we learn about 1930s child actor Jackie Cooper's campaign to improve the rights of child actors, just like one Jackie Coogan was doing around the same time, Margaret Davis' record of harassment of German American immigrants in her town in Iowa during World War I, an under aged Calvin Graham's naval service in World War II, Terry Grimmersey's time in an internment camp, also during the Second World War, as well as how John Nuxhall and Anna Meyer contributed to baseball during that era.
Claudette Colvin's protest against seating arrangements on buses in the Jim Crow South prior to Rosa Park's more famous protest is noted,as is Elizabeth Eckford's member ship in the famed "Little Rock Nine" that desegregated Central High School in 1957.
John and Mary Beth Tinker of Des Moines, Iowa are noted for their court case supporting their right to wear anti-war protest bands during the Vietnam War, Jessica Govea joins Cesar Chavez in the fight for the rights of Union Workers, a young Bill Gates begins a revolution of a different kind in 1968 Seattle, Cambodian Khmer Rouge fighter Arn Chorn comes to America to begin a new life after overcoming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and basketball player Judi Warren successfully puts Title IX to the test.
About the only story I recall firsthand that is featured in this book is that of teen AIDS activist Ryan White, a hemophiliac who contacted the disease via a transfusion of tainted blood products in the days before supplies of donated blood were being checked for that disease, and then, due to lack of knowledge about how the disease was spread, had to fight to attend school when authorities barred him from doing so, and he and his family endured threats before another school finally accepted him.
This is a reverent account of how the wit, strength, persistence, and courage of young people has shaped and changed the course of history, which can inspire the young people of today, or of any generation to do what they can to change the world right where they are with whatever they have!
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