I’m half Japanese American but I’ve never celebrated Hinamatsuri, known as Girls’ Day or Doll’s Day, in Japan. It is celebrated on March 3 every year with a display of dolls representing the Heian court in a celebration to celebrate girls and wish for their continued good health and happiness. An expansive hinadan in Katsuura,…
Category: Social Studies
History, social science and geography for kids.
Andrew Jackson Murdered His Native American General: Things They Don’t Teach You in History Books
“If the plantation owners of the South, Jackson’s people, were to have the land they wanted to grow more cotton, the Choctaws had to move,” I said. “And if you, Chief Pushmataha, were so against this move, you must be gone, out of the way.” from When A Ghost Talks, Listen by Tim Tingle …
When Mixed Race Marriage Was Illegal: What They Don’t Teach in History Books
2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark case that made mixed-race marriages legal. It’s hard to imagine that mixed-race marriages were illegal until quite recently. What is the outcome of making mixed-race marriages legal? Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by…
Segregation in California Schools: What They Don’t Teach in History Books
What amazes me the most is that I grew up in Seal Beach, California, one town over from Westminster, where Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu both lived. When Aki and her family were forced to leave their farm during WWII and live incarcerated at internment camps, a banker helped her family lease their land so…
Tulsa Race Massacre: What They Don’t Teach You in History Books
“This history was totally hidden from white children. And that was deliberate.” from The Atlantic I think that the Tulsa Race Massacre may have garnered a single sentence in my history book when I studied A.P. History in high school in Southern California. A single sentence or even paragraph isn’t enough to do it justice,…