Why It’s Important That We Study History

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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When most of us think back to our childhood school days, we can also remember at least a handful of kids who thought history class was a drag. To them, history just seemed like a jumble of names and dates attached to events long over with and people long dead. What was the point of learning it at all?

They didn’t know then that history was one of the most important subjects they’d ever study. Here we’ll take a closer look at why history is important and explore why everyone should make it a point to study it in depth.

To Develop A Better Understanding Of The World

You can’t build a framework on which to base your life without understanding how things work in the world. History paints us a detailed picture of how society, technology, and government worked way back when so that we can better understand how it works now. It also helps us determine how to approach the future, as it allows us to learn from our past mistakes (and triumphs) as a society.

To Understand Ourselves

To understand who you are, you need to develop a sense of self. A large part of that is learning where you fit into the story of your country or the global community in the grand scheme of things. History tells you the story of how your nation, city, or community came to be everything that it is. It tells you where your ancestors came from and who they were. Most importantly of all, it gives you the ability to spot (and appreciate) the legacies you may have inherited from them.

To Learn To Understand Other People

History isn’t just an essential introduction to your own country, ethnic heritage, and ancestry. It’s also a valuable tool when it comes to understanding those who are different from us. Global, national, and regional history books help us understand how other cultures affect our own.

They encourage us to develop a greater appreciation for multicultural influences within our own communities as well – exactly why everyone should study African American history, immigrant history, and so forth, regardless of their own cultural background.

To Show A Working Understanding Of Change

It goes without saying that change can be a difficult concept to understand. Each of us has a different experience with the rest of the world – an experience shaped by societal norms, cultural differences, personal experiences, and more. We know when we as individuals crave change and why. History helps us better understand how, when, and why change occurs (or should be sought) on a larger scale.

To Give Us The Tools We Need To Be Decent Citizens

Good citizens are always informed citizens, and no one can consider himself to be an informed citizen without a working knowledge of history. This is the case whether we’re talking about our role in our community or in regards to our nation on the whole. History helps us become better voters and more effective members of any type of society. It helps put us in a position to better inform others as well.

To Make Us Better Decision Makers

“Those that do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Those words were first spoken by George Santayana, and they are still very relevant today because of how true they are. History gives us the opportunity to learn from past mistakes. It helps us understand the many reasons why people may behave the way they do. As a result, it helps us become more compassionate as people and more impartial as decision-makers. Our judicial system is a perfect example of this concept at work.

To Develop A New Level Of Appreciation For Just About Everything

History is more than just the living record of nations, leaders, and wars. It’s also the story of us. It’s packed with tales of how someone stood up for what they believed in, or died for love, or worked hard to make their dreams come true. All of those things are concepts we can relate to; it’s enriching to know that so could the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, or Martin Luther King.

Plus, history is just plain interesting. Everything you like about your favorite movies, television shows, and fiction novels is yours to experience right here in reality when you study history. Explore the possibilities today and step into a whole new world that will change who you are forever.

Eager to learn more? Discover more books from Arcadia Publishing.

Podcasts to Explore Intersectional History

Christen Thompson
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Native Historians to follow of Social Media

Christen Thompson
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Three Queer People of Color Who Pushed For Progress

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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Black Historians to Follow on Social Media

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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Around the internet, black historians are offering commentary and insight to things most people have never heard of. Follow these intrepid scholars to learn more about American History and more! This list is by no means exhaustive and will be updated — tell us who you are following that should be on this list, too!

Carol Anderson

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation’s Divide, a New York Times Bestseller, Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner.  She is also the author of Eyes Off the Prize:  The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955; Bourgeois Radicals:  The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, and One Person, No Vote:  How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy, which was long-listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Galbraith Award in non-fiction.

Mary Frances Berry

Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought & History at Penn and the author of 13 books. Since her college years at Howard University, Mary Frances Berry has been one of the most visible activists in the cause of civil rights, gender equality and social justice in our nation. Serving as Chairperson of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Berry demanded equal rights and liberties for all Americans during four Presidential administrations. 

Stephen L. Carter

Stephen L. Carter is a professor of law at Yale University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His novels include The Emperor of Ocean Park and Back Channel, and his nonfiction includes Civility and Integrity.

Dr. Kim Vaz-DeVille

Bio: Kim Vaz-Deville, Ph.D. is professor of education and the associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Xavier University of Louisiana. Her book, The Baby Dolls: Breaking the Race and Gender Barriers of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition was published by Louisiana State University Press in 2013 and was the basis for a major installation, “They Call Baby Doll: A Mardi Gras Tradition” at the Louisiana State Museum’s Presbytere unit in 2013. It is the 2016 selection of the Young Leadership Council of New Orleans’ One Book One New Orleans.

Freddi Williams Evans

Bio: Freddi Williams Evans is an arts education consultant and the author of Come Sunday: A Young Reader’s History of Congo Square and Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans, which received the 2012 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award and has been published in French. Her research and advocacy for Congo Square influenced the New Orleans City Council to pass an ordinance in 2012 that made the popular name, “Congo Square,” the official name of the national landmark. Along with numerous essays, her speaking engagements include presentations in France (Paris, Aulnay and Bordeaux) and Senegal (Dakar and St. Louis) sponsored by the American Embassies in those locations.  She participated in Fulbright Teacher Abroad programs in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Japan and additional study-travels in Ghana, Haiti and Cuba.

Tanisha C. Ford

Tanisha C. Ford is the Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at University of Delaware. She is an award-winning writer, historian, and public speaker who blends a love of fashion, performance, and her commitment to social justice to create an innovative approach to studying the social movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. She is invested in research and grassroots initiatives that bring the often marginalized voices of young women of color around the world to the forefront. She is the author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul, Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful, and Dressed in Dreams:A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion

Kali Gross

Kali Nicole Gross is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. She is also the National Publications Director for the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), 2019-2021, and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians (OAH). Her primary research explores Black women’s experiences in the U.S. criminal justice system and her expertise and opinion pieces have been featured in press outlets such as Vanity Fair, TIME, The Root, BBC News, Ebony, HuffPo, Warscapes, The Washington Post, and Jet. Her award-winning books include, Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910, winner of the 2006 Leticia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize, and, Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America,winner of the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction. Her latest book, co-authored with Daina Ramey Berry, is A Black Women’s History of the United States(Beacon Press, 2020).

Dr. Vanessa M Holden

Dr. Holden received her Ph.D. in African American and Women’s and Gender History from Rutgers University. Her work focuses on the Southampton Rebellion of 1831 (Nat Turner’s Rebellion) and the participation and experiences of women before, during, and after America’s most famous slave rebellion. She is also the co-organizer of the Queering Slavery Working Group (#QSWG) with Jessica M. Johnson (Johns Hopkins). Her research and teaching interests include African-American history, women’s and gender history, the history of the American South, and U.S. history (pre-1865). 

Jessica Marie Johnson

Johnson is a historian of Atlantic slavery and the Atlantic African diaspora. She is the author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2020). She is Founding Curatrix at African Diaspora, Ph.D. or #ADPhD (africandiasporaphd.com), co-organizer of the Queering Slavery Working Group with Dr. Vanessa Holden (University of Kentucky), a member of the LatiNegrxs Project (lati-negros.tumblr.com), and a Digital Alchemist at the Center for Solutions to Online Violence (http://femtechnet.org/csov/). As a historian and Black Studies scholar, Johnson researches black diasporic freedom struggles from slavery to emancipation.

As a digital humanist, Johnson explores ways digital and social media disseminate and create historical narratives, in particular, comparative histories of slavery and people of African descent.

Marya McQuirter

Marya Annette McQuirter, PhD, curator of the dc1968 project, has 20+ years of experience utilizing digital, emerging & print media, and face to face conversation, to create excellent content for the public.She is the co-author of a volume in the award-winning Young Oxford History of African Americans series. She also authored the African American Heritage Trail Guide, Washington, DC, an award-winning 100-page guide highlighting the long history of African Americans in the nation’s capital.

Cheyney McKnight

Cheyney McKnight is the founder and owner of Not Your Momma’s History. She acts as an interpreter advocate for interpreters of color at historical sites up and down the east Coast, providing them with much needed on call support.

Not Your Momma’s History consults with and aids museums, historical sites, historical societies, private businesses, etc. in developing specialized programming about slavery and the African experience within 18th and 19th century America.  NYMH also trains staff from all backgrounds on how to talk about slavery with diverse audiences.

Dr. Crystal Sanders

Crystal R. Sanders is a historian of the United States in the twentieth century.  Her research and teaching interests include African American History, Black Women’s History, and the History of Black Education.  She received her PhD in History from Northwestern University and received her BA in History and Public Policy from Duke University.  She is a Historian, Speaker, Professor, and Author of the award-winning A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle (UNC Press 2016).

Dr. Cornell West

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He is the author of 20 books, best known  for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.

African American Expulsion

Christen Thompson
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As the nation’s capital once again becomes a center of protest during a time of national crisis, it can be an apt moment to reflect upon Washington’s own immense African American history and past civil rights achievements. In fact, the discipline of African American history itself has its roots firmly planted in Northwest, D.C. In a Victorian row house on “Black Broadway,” Carter G. Woodson established the headquarters of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) and dedicated his entire life to sustaining the early black history “mass education movement.” In “Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.: The Father of Black History,” author Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, PhD reveals Woodson’s vital importance to the creation of African American history as a field of study and the role his home played in both the Shaw neighborhood and the District.

As the senior pastor of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church in the Mount Vernon Square neighborhood for more than forty-five years, William Henry Jernagin was a foundational leader in the American civil rights movement. His work helped to abolish Jim Crow laws in the city as he rose to leading positions in the National Baptist Convention and National Fraternal Council of Negro Churches. Through his office he also was an early mentor and inspiration for a young Martin Luther King, Jr. Ida E. Jones, PhD tells his captivating life story in “William Henry Jernagin in Washington, D.C.: Faith in the Fight for Civil Rights.”

At the outbreak of the Civil War and the enlistment of new African American troops, the need for African American nurses, doctors and surgeons to heal those soldiers arose through a segregated medical establishment. Washington became the center of Union military medical treatment as brave healthcare workers created a medical infrastructure for African Americans by African Americans. The most prominent African American surgeon, Alexander T. Augusta fought discrimination, visited President Lincoln and testified before Congress as Washington’s Freedmen’s Hospital was formed to serve the District’s growing free African American population, eventually becoming the Howard University Medical Center. In “African American Medicine in Washington, D.C.: Healing the Capital During the Civil War Era,” author Heather M. Butts, JD MPH MA charts the robust history of the origins of African American medicine in Washington, D.C.

Though these titles are just a handful of stories among the vast history of African American culture and civil rights in Washington, they offer a chance for readers to learn about where we’ve been, and perhaps gain some lessons for how to move forward. 

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