In 1868, Sophie Mousseau was photographed at Fort Laramie alongside six white Army officers. But her identity—and her life story—remained un
"In recent weeks, as part of a broader assault on historical records, exhibitions and books, government functionaries have scrubbed countless government websites of historical names: civil rights activist Medgar Evers, Medal of Honor recipient Charles C. Rogers and baseball star Jackie Robinson, among others. Amid fierce public pushback, some of the sites have now been restored. Critics insisted those names mattered, not only because they honor individual accomplishments, but because they denote bigger stories about combating racial segregation osr fighting for civil rights. Individual stories make the abstract more concrete, the past more complex.
When Ira Hayes, the Pima Indian present in the famous image of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, loses his clear tribal affiliation in an article headline, we lose something. It’s no accident that most of the names and stories scrubbed from the record are those of people of color.
American history needs more names, not fewer. It needs the names of the famous and the names of those who, like Sophie, have remained unidentified in personal and institutional archives. Take that shoe box out of your closet and label your family photos. Everyone’s story matters."
