{"id":136,"date":"2021-11-02T05:45:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T05:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stand.org\/illinois\/?p=136"},"modified":"2022-07-08T23:37:56","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T23:37:56","slug":"understanding-the-past-resolving-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stand.org\/illinois\/our-stories\/understanding-the-past-resolving-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Past, Resolving Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up in Northern Virginia, we often took our out-of-town visitors to Mount Vernon and Monticello. What I remember most about being ushered past the red velvet ropes through the crowded, 18th century-styled rooms is how the guides refused to answer my questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In response to the guide\u2019s prideful exclamation that \u201cThe General\u201d always wore perfectly starched shirts, I asked how much the women who ironed them were paid. I was keen to know because my mother paid me $5 each Sunday night to iron five of my father\u2019s shirts for the upcoming week. I sincerely wondered how George Washington\u2019s help was compensated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No wonder I understood so little of our country\u2019s foundational history; slavery was literally a sidebar in my K-12 history books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still today, schools teach our children to recite the Declaration of Independence while never learning about the only book Thomas Jefferson published,&nbsp;<em>Notes on The State of Virginia<\/em>. Our second president\u2019s 1785 book argued that \u201cBlacks \u2026 are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.\u201d To justify white supremacy, Jefferson concluded: \u201cNature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Americans, we should learn from history and hold ourselves to higher standards as we teach our children the entire truth, however uncomfortable, about our founding principles. Teaching the legacy of slavery today will allow us to see the origins of racial and social inequality in order to effectively address the divisive issues that continue to weaken our country today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our children&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/learnfromhistory.org\/\">must understand our past to be equipped to resolve<\/a>&nbsp;these societal challenges for the next generation of civic leaders in our communities. Let\u2019s erase the lines drawn by our founding fathers and celebrate our common American values of life, liberty, and justice for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Growing up in Northern Virginia, we often took our out-of-town visitors to Mount Vernon and Monticello. What I remember most about being ushered past the red velvet ropes through the crowded, 18th century-styled rooms is how the guides refused to answer my questions. In response to the guide\u2019s prideful exclamation that \u201cThe General\u201d always wore [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","color_schema":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-learn-from-history","tag-learn-from-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.6 (Yoast SEO v27.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Understanding the Past, Resolving Challenges - Stand for Children Illinois<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/stand.org\/illinois\/our-stories\/understanding-the-past-resolving-challenges\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Understanding the Past, Resolving Challenges\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Growing up in Northern Virginia, we often took our out-of-town visitors to Mount Vernon and Monticello. 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