Ted Audio Collective.

Audio Collective.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host Chris Duffy.

Growing up, I remember learning a pretty standard by the book

explanation of American history which means that now as an adult I'm frequently

surprised to find out that the stories I thought I knew I actually had all wrong.

For example, I always thought that the story of Rosa Parks was of an older woman who decided that she'd had enough

and she refused to give up her seat at the front of a bus to a white man because she was tired after a long day of work.

But as today's guest, Professor David Eicert explains in his talk at TEDX Nashville,

that is not how things actually happened.

Here's a clip. I am the proud father of two beautiful children.

When Elijah was in the fourth grade, he came to me, came home from school,

bubbling over with excitement about what he had learned that day about African American history. Now I'm an African American

Cultural Studies professor and so as you can imagine African American culture is

kind of serious around my home.

So I was very proud that my son was excited about what he had learned that day in school.

So I said, well, what would you learn?

He said, I learned about Rosa Parks.

It was okay. What did you learn about Rosa Parks?

He said, I learned that Rosa Parks was this frail old black woman in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama, and she sat down on

this bus and she had tired feet and when the bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white patron,

...