The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement

“With astonishing regularity, Americans have held fast to these ideals, despite the clickbait stories that portend calamity. And America has too often fallen short of these standards. Both of these things are true at the same time. America has been just, and it has perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been—and are—good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn’t deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression.”

In this passage, McMahon describes the duality of American history and identity. The United States has both lived up to its own ideals and betrayed them, often simultaneously. In McMahon’s view of History as a Continuum of Progress, we are never only one thing, but the overall trajectory is toward justice.

“The ideals outlined in the Constitution represent our national purpose, the raft we must cling to in the storm, the breath in our lungs, the beat in our chest: Just. Peaceful. Good. Free. Ordinary people conjured this mission. Ordinary men like Gouverneur Morris.”

Here, McMahon reminds her readers that Gouverneur Morris and the other so-called “Founding Fathers” were flawed individuals just like the rest of us. Nevertheless, the guiding principles that Morris wrote have accompanied us for over 200 years and will continue to light the way forward.

“So no, America is not ‘the worst it’s ever been’ today, despite what some news anchors might be trying to convince you of, because if they can make you afraid, they can gain your attention and your money. Has anyone been beaten half to death on the floor of the Senate over the topic of whether it’s cool to enslave people this week? No? Okay.”

One of McMahon’s repeated arguments is that studying history can give context and perspective to a modern world that often seems unbearably dark. Despite the constant rhetoric of division, backsliding, and the impending end of the world, McMahon insists that we have made progress. While there might still be a long way to go, many continue to fight for freedom and justice, as has been the case in every phase of American history.

“She had pioneered Colorado every bit as much as the miners and the speculators whose laundry she had done. She had helped shape the state in ways no one else could.”

In this passage, McMahon describes Clara Brown’s contribution to pioneering the American West. Although she was excluded and marginalized as both a woman and a formerly enslaved person, Clara faced every obstacle with bravery and resolve. She helped to make the American West what it is today, even if most people have forgotten her name.

“Her focus was on the children before her, the eager bodies perched on rickety chairs, their families barely eking out a meager living. What did they need, right now? To learn to read, so they could get better jobs and raise their standards of living. To have skills that people would pay for. And if she had to act nice to some rich folks in town to get her families what was necessary, then she was not above it.”

Here, McMahon describes Virginia Randolph working to bring education to Black children in rural Virginia. Instead of academic lessons, Virginia often taught her charges more practical skills, like cooking and woodworking. This led to African American parents complaining that she was setting their children up for a lifetime of servitude and manual labor. McMahon argues that Virginia was responding to the most immediate needs that she saw in her community. She didn’t aim to overcome centuries of oppression in one fell swoop; she wanted to give her students tools that they could use to improve their own economic situation and those of their families.

“We are taught to admire the impact they had on their community, and we should, because her impact cannot be measured. But we ignore the racist systems that led to Virginia turning over what should have been her life savings back to the county, and for them to willingly take it from her, without compensation.”

This passage illustrates how history is interpreted or presented in a way that hides some of the uglier realities of our collective past. Virginia bought land for her school with her own money and then gifted it back to Henrico County, which happily took it for free. Virginia is celebrated for her selflessness and dedication, but this point of view hides the racist implications of Henrico County accepting her generous gift.

“That single act did more for tens of thousands of children and teachers all over the South, more for justice, more for peace, more for goodness, and more for the liberation of Americans than anyone could have imagined.”

When Virginia agreed to become Henrico County’s supervising teacher, tens of thousands of lives changed. Her influence spread as she traveled across the country, training teachers and supporting schools, which then could go on to educate more children. Just one person taking one action had an enormous impact on the entire country.

“She stayed out of the battles over the national anthem, never advocating for her lines or offering an opinion when a group held a contest to choose an original melody for the verses. (They received twelve hundred entries, and in the end, chose none. None could live up to Samuel Ward’s now familiar tune.) Katie became an unwitting celebrity, finding herself thrust onto national stages she never anticipated, never accepting the credit for her work’s success.”

This passage describes Katharine Lee Bates, the poet behind “America the Beautiful.” Like many of McMahon’s other unsung heroes, Katharine never sought the spotlight and didn’t want the notoriety that came from her unexpected fame. She continued to live a quiet life, pursuing her studies and her writing.

“Because they knew that a huge part of the country’s opposition to their suffrage was opposition to Black women being enfranchised, white women were often willing to not just look the other way but to intentionally exclude Black women for the purposes of appeasing white men.”

Here, McMahon describes one of the frequently overlooked aspects of the women’s suffrage moment in the United States, namely the intentional exclusion of Black women. White women were so fixated on earning the vote for themselves that they sometimes went as far as assuring the public that they didn’t want Black women to have the same rights. Although women’s suffrage was an important step forward in the United States, McMahon reminds readers that the movement was steeped in the white supremacy of the era.

“Suffrage wasn’t an idea that sprang up overnight. Women like Inez Milholland and Maria de Lopez climbed onto the shoulders of the people who came before. Much of what the generation of new women was able to accomplish was because of women like Rebecca Mitchell, who made sure the women of the West could vote long before Inez and Maria were even old enough to understand what suffrage was.”

Here, McMahon describes the long history of women who worked hard to lay the groundwork for a national suffrage movement. Although figures like Inez Milholland get the credit for winning women the right to vote, women from previous generations worked hard to break gender barriers and establish women’s suffrage at the state level in certain places.

“The moment of Inez’s passing opened another area for women to demonstrate their bravery and worth on the world stage. Only four months after her death, the United States officially entered the Great War. The U.S. military recruited some twenty-two thousand female nurses to serve overseas, but there is one group that stands out in my mind who never get the credit they deserve: the Hello Girls.”

World War I coincided with the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. As women like the Hello Girls were called to serve, they did so with just as much bravery and determination as men did. Their service highlighted the implausibility of treating women differently from men.

“Anna died in 1907, a quiet end to a seemingly quiet life. She never marveled at the Rocky Mountains, never experienced the warmth of the Pacific Coast, never saw the cathedrals of Europe. She never married. She had no children. She lived alone, save for some hired help. But quiet lives can sometimes leave the loudest echoes.”

Anna Thomas Jeanes lived a modest, simple life despite her sizable fortune. When she passed away, she left her money in a fund to support rural schools for African American children. Her money allowed for tens of thousands of children to be educated, touching countless lives and proving that one ordinary person can have an extraordinary impact.

“Booker T. Washington has long been criticized for engaging in respectability politics—that if Blacks just acted the way that white people wanted them to, then there could be racial harmony. Washington, some feel, was participating in the system of white supremacy.

I get it. I really do. And if this is your view, you’re not wrong. But I’ll also add an AND to these sentiments. The system was inherently racist, AND Booker and Anna were doing what they thought was best at the time.”

Booker T. Washington was the most famous Black educator of the early 20th century, and he worked with Anna to bring education to rural Black communities across the South. However, his critics at the time—most notably W. E. B. Dubois—argued that his emphasis on manual labor over academics perpetuated white supremacy. McMahon argues that we must remember the context that Booker was working in. McMahon views History as a Continuum of Progress, and in this view, Booker’s work laid the foundation for more equitable solutions to come.

“Progress doesn’t arrive unbidden, carried on the back of a silvery bird, deposited on our doorsteps during the night. Progress is birthed. It is conceived of and labored for. It is the work of multitudes. None of us can do it all. But all of us can do something. And it might as well be the next needed thing.”

Here, McMahon argues that progress must be fought for and that everyone has an important part to play even if this role does not lead to their name being recorded in history books. Progress is never the work of just one person but always a collective effort. This statement highlights The Role of Forgotten Figures in Shaping History.

“Sears, says historian Louis Hyman, was unintentionally undermining white supremacy with its catalog business. While larger cities might have had a wider selection of stores, rural communities often had one general store, and the owner often doubled as the postmaster. Rural general stores were not Targets, where you could spend an hour or more browsing. Goods were kept behind counters. You had to go in and specifically ask for an item. White shopkeepers often stood between Black consumers and the things they needed.”

Throughout The Small and the Mighty, McMahon illustrates how small actions can have large, often unexpected effects. When Richard Sears built a business empire on mail-order sales, he had no intention of undermining white supremacy. However, Sears allowed Black customers a new level of access to goods that were usually denied to them by white shopkeepers.

“Here again is the AND, the nuance that we must embrace with history. Our minds want to categorize people into one of two camps: Good or evil. Angel or demon. Most often, that viewpoint denies people the fullness of their humanity and can overlook positive contributions or ignore negative impacts. The fact is that Sam Armstrong had paternalistic and harmful ideas, and he was also beloved by thousands, including students like Booker T. Washington.”

McMahon insists that it is important to see both the good and bad aspects of history and individual players. No one event or person is wholly good or evil, and trying to classify things as such means that we often fail to see the whole picture. Another example of this is Samuel Armstrong, a white man who founded an important Black technical school at the turn of the century. He was undoubtedly influenced by the racism and white supremacy of the time, but he was loved and celebrated by his African American students and acted from a desire to do good.

“Everyone did what they could, where they were, with the resources available to them. JR was a rich man with staff. He could well afford to fund five thousand schools. Some of the community members could give only fifty cents. JR may be out here getting maximum credit, but those small gifts mattered. That fifty cents was a sacrifice for some. The widow who pushed five dollars into the collection basket deserves just as much respect as the millionaire.”

This passage furthers McMahon’s argument that everyone has an important role to play in making change and that no one contribution is more important than another. Wealthy men like Julius Rosenwald might get the credit for building schools across the South, but those schools would never have been built without the much smaller contributions of community members across the South.

“What will history remember with kindness? The leader with the most cunning tweets? The one with the most self-aggrandizing speeches and the biggest audiences? No, it’s not the cynics who emerge the heroes, but the people who spent their lives in service to others. It’s those that fight for justice for someone whose reflection they don’t see in the mirror.”

Here, McMahon suggests that history will remember those who dedicate their lives to serving others. Taking action is the only way to create a truly lasting legacy; everything else vanishes quickly.

“Then, and now, one of the most effective ways to stop cultural change is to create a moral panic around it. Moral panics have been around since this country’s inception, with the Salem witch trials being among the first widely publicized (and deadly) panics. Since then, moral panics have been used as a tool to subvert and dismantle movements that the dominant caste views as a threat.”

McMahon discusses how members of the dominant cast try to discredit cultural movements that they feel threaten their way of life and social status by equating them with a “moral panic” that poses a danger to society. During the civil rights movement, the moral panic of the day was the threat of communism, so many white supremacists and segregationists tried to claim that civil rights activists were communists.

“White supremacy and white Christian identity are inextricably linked in American history. Facts don’t require our personal approval for them to be facts.”

McMahon uses her characteristic, conversational tone to challenge versions of history that gloss over ugly or unsavory realities. Some individuals and groups try to deny reality, and it is always possible to construct a historical narrative to support a preexisting ideology. However, facts don’t change based on our opinion of them.

“You’d be mistaken if you believe that Black women did not speak up. You’d be mistaken if you thought that Black women did not risk their personal safety to work for justice. You’d be mistaken if you thought these facts were never going to see the light of day again, swept under the rug of today’s moral panic, the moral panic of learning about the real, true, beautiful, infuriating, horrific, meaningful history of the United States and calling it by some other boogeyman name like Critical Race Theory (it’s not) or labeling it a divisive concept (it’s only divisive if lies and cover-ups benefit you in some way).”

Here, McMahon calls out the modern-day moral panic of naming certain pieces of historical information “divisive” or labeling them as “critical race theory” and banning them from schools because they threaten the validity of white supremacy. History is often told in tidy stories that avoid placing blame or making anyone uncomfortable. McMahon insists that the US embrace the entirety of its collective history, lest it forget the innumerable people who struggled and suffered to create the world that she and her readers live in today.

“Everything Rosa had done and seen had led to this moment. It wasn’t that she was tired from Christmas shopping or a long day at work. It was decades of organizing, of investigating rapes, of baking cookies to sell for someone’s legal defense.”

Part 7 of The Small and the Mighty tells the story of the Montgomery bus boycott and all the work that led up to Rosa Parks’s historic refusal to give up her seat. The moment was created by countless others who had bravely stood up against inequality and by the decades of work that Rosa herself had done to prepare herself—evidence of The Importance of Forgotten Figures in Shaping History.

“And it is us, the small and the mighty, who make America great.

Not again, but always.”

In this passage, McMahon alludes to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign promise to “make America great again.” She argues that America is already great and has always been great. It is a status achieved through the tireless work of generations of ordinary Americans.