Diversity Brings Breadth to U.S. History

An FBI Evidence Response Team member watches as a vault containing a coffin, believed to hold the remains of Emmett Till, as it is loaded onto a truck at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill., in this June 1, 2005, file photo. The Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the investigation into Till's death, nearly 50 years after the 14-year-old's murder helped galvanize the civil rights movement, and the Cook County medical examiner will conduct an autopsy on Till's remains to help gather evidence. Till was abducted and killed in August 1955 in Mississippi, reportedly for whistling at a white woman. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File) (Charles Rex Arbogast - AP)

-- American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling Jamestown, Va., in 1607. They hear about how white Northerners freed the black slaves, how Asians came in the mid-1800s to build Western railroads. The lessons have left out a lot.

Forty-two years before Jamestown, Spaniards and American Indians lived in St. Augustine, Fla. At least several thousand Latinos and nearly 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War. And Asian-Americans had been living in California and Louisiana since the 1700s.

Now, more of these and other lesser-known facts about American minorities are getting more attention. The main reason is the nation's growing diversity.

More than one in four Americans is not white, and many minority groups are gaining strength _ in numbers, political clout and resources _ to bring their often-overlooked histories to light.

Minority communities "are yelling for inclusion in the national consciousness," said Gary Okihiro, a historian at Columbia University. "One needs to understand what's true about the past to be able to make sound judgments about our present."

There are hundreds of efforts _ big and small _ under way to tell the untold stories.

Although Hispanics are the nation's largest minority group _ 14.5 percent of the population according to Census Bureau figures released last week _ there is no national museum dedicated to their history.

Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra of California is pushing a bill to study building one on the National Mall in Washington. "When you walk the Mall in the capital of the United States, there is no better place to try to understand what Americans are and where we have been," Becerra said. "But it's still an incomplete picture."

The Mall has dozens of sites highlighting American culture and history, including the National Museum of the American Indian that opened in 2004, 20 years after it was authorized. Organizers in June settled on the future site of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but its opening date is still years away. A Latino museum would be even further off.

Other federal agencies are shifting their work to incorporate more minorities' stories. Six years ago, National Park Service historians met to reevaluate how park sites tell the story of the Civil War, said Donald W. Murphy, deputy director of the parks. Old battlefield exhibits mainly discussed who fought and how many died. Now they include personal diaries, including those kept by slaves.

Once considered marginal to American history, those stories are "really important because oftentimes the margins really are the holders of American democracy," said Okihiro, an expert in Asian-American history. "They are those who have fought against their own racial profiling and fought for the freedoms that the majority seem to take for granted."

Asian-Americans are the only immigrants in U.S. history to have faced laws explicitly written to bar their entry _ laws that were not overturned until immigration reform in the 1960s, said Dmae Roberts, whose eight-hour public radio program on Asian immigration, "Crossing East," airs on hundreds of stations.