By Dr. Sarah Pawlicki
While reminiscing about her graduate school experience in the late 1990s, one of my undergraduate mentors remembered a male professor dismissing women’s pasts as “pots and pans history.” To him, the history of people confined to kitchen work and childcare was neither interesting nor valuable.
Even if his premise was accurate—which it isn’t—daily life would grind to a halt without such labor. Subjecting these supposedly “mundane” aspects of daily life to derision undercuts the fullness of our history by building a hierarchical view of the past. It presents history as a series of dramatic flashpoints shaped by the few, not as a continuing story built day by day through routine choices made by the many.
Overlooking the human dignity of historical actors without proximity to power runs counter to American ideals of equality. By perpetuating an antidemocratic view of history, Freedom 250—the Trump administration’s takeover/rebrand of America 250—rings hollow. If we’re actually trying to build a society in which all people are considered equal and treated equally, how come we’re projecting this inequity into our collective past?
Historians of American women redefined historical significance across the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Founders of the field reclaimed histories of women who likely didn’t think of themselves as extraordinary, but whose lives offered much-needed insight into the past. For example, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s classic A Midwife’s Tale documents Martha Ballard’s life by examining the diary Ballard kept detailing her life as a midwife in the early American republic. Ballard’s records (“Cloudy. Wind South East. I have been at home. Pikt green peas in our gardin”) are not necessarily the stuff of awe-inspiring patriotic legend. However, when stories like hers are devalued, we circumscribe the public’s historical imagination.
Equality means that Martha Ballard’s story is as vital and rich as George Washington’s. Egalitarianism insists that people in the past were significant by the simple fact of their existence, independent of the social capital they held. It demands that we look for beauty, innovation, and heroism beyond the litany of “founding fathers” we know well.
It is true that Washington’s role as a military and political leader was unique—but are we not all individuals and thereby unique universes unto ourselves? Valorizing exceptionalism can create a vision of history that leaves most people by the figurative wayside. To paraphrase the historian Eric Foner—that blinkered version of the past could not have possibly produced the present we now live in.
Freedom 250 promises to deliver more grandstanding puffery than humane storytelling. The kick-off light show at the Washington Monument displayed a historically uninformed, anti-Indigenous, and aggressively chauvinist melodrama. The only woman featured in the video was, I assume, intended to represent Sacagawea accompanying the Corps of Discovery—she isn’t mentioned by name. How can a belief in the fundamental equality of all people coexist with such a narrow definition of historical significance? Is there room for Martha Ballard’s pea picking in such ostentatious pageantry?
Using history to aid the Trump administration’s sleight of hand—creating shiny spectacles to distract from human rights abuses—is a cynical misuse of public history. It is a slap in the face to historians who spent decades uncovering the intricacies of individuals’ past hopes, dreams, fears, and sadnesses. Such regression in historical storytelling prioritizes vainglory over depth and dramatic tableaux over narrative.
Prior to the Freedom 250 takeover, the National Park Service produced exemplary projects reflecting the dignity of everyday individuals. The 2024 Home and Homelands digital exhibit opened its interpretation with a close analysis of stories revealed by a settler family’s jellypot. Its thematic paths revolve around everyday objects like a paint can, a fence, and a basket. These items aren’t glamorous, but they reflect histories that are germane to our everyday lived realities. It is to all of our detriment that instead of multivocal exhibits crafted with care, the Trump administration has chosen to propagandize a tacky, heroized history, chock-full of airbrushed white supremacist fantasies.
As we’re pulled toward Freedom 250’s bombast, perhaps we can recenter ourselves, our historical imaginations, and our collective memory through a deliberate look at the quotidian. Let’s take time away from the hoopla to learn about ordinary people living ordinary lives—and who themselves contained multitudes. When we care about everyday stories more than grandiose civic religion, we recenter ourselves in our shared humanity.
Recommended Reading
- Cleves, Rachel. Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America. Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. Simon & Schuster, 2018.
- Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary. Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Dr. Sarah Pawlicki is a public historian and writer who seeks out opportunities to center histories that have been subjected to marginalization, erasure, and censorship. Dr. Pawlicki received a PhD in History from the University of Minnesota in 2023, with graduate minors in Heritage Studies and Public History and Native American and Indigenous Studies, and is passionate about how public history can intersect with and support movements toward reparations.