For Louisa May Alcott

From a Letter to Friends:

In education, I was always involved in finances, transportation, custodial/maintenance, food service, technology infrastructure, and similar support service issues.

Obviously, I attended meetings when curriculum was discussed, but it wasn't my ballpark.

I think we are doing better than when I was in school and learned about Honest Abe Lincoln and George Washington chopping down cherry trees.  

It wasn't till college when in my freshman year I took a Black History class and I learned about some notable leaders or writers Dubois, Douglas, Hughes, etc 

There remains a gap in knowledge that you can't get in just one course but also about Hispanic, Asian American, and even female writers and leaders.

So here is what I learned recently:

Louisa May Alcott.  Great writer who wrote Little Women and who many young girls read (and probably little boys need to read).

Ms. Alcott was an abolitionist and suffragette in the middle 19th century.

Her household as a child was part of the underground railroad.  Her father started a coed school unheard of at the time AND he even enrolled a Black student.

(Parents rebelled at the latter and the school in Massachusettes had to close because parents pulled all their kids from school.)

Alcott's father was an intellectual, kind of eccentric.  But his friend list included Emerson and Thoreau and other supporters of John Brown.

Louisa May also became friends with these gentlemen and with Frederick Douglas and other notables of the era.

Louisa May once wrote a short story (based on a true story) about a mixed race man who married a white woman. Seems when the neighbors found out about this relationship, they literally ran the fellow out of town.  Not sure if they used tar and feather or not.

Louisa May found this appalling, wrote her short story on the matter, and turned it into the Atlantic in 1860, where she had already been published more than once.  She was well known author by then.

The Atlantic (that supposed liberal bastion) turned the short story down since the notion of inter-racial marriage was too controversial.  It was later published in a different periodical a few years later.  (Maybe under assumed name?)

Louisa May served as a nurse during a portion of the Civil War.  She advocated for women's rights.  And she is a hell of a writer. 

Nothing little about this woman.  

By the way, I understand that Little Women has some auto biographical aspects.  The father based on her father to some extent. The "Tom Boy" sister, the heroine, Louisa May.

And our President wants to create some "model curriculum" which teaches none of this but the mythology of Washington and cherry trees and Honest Abe.  Patriotism light. 

Heck, we need more social studies and literature studies featuring minorities and women, not less.  We also need to be age appropriate but honest with kids...