Thanksgiving Reconsidered
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Summary
November 26, 1970. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival, protestors gather under a statue of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who had made peace with the Pilgrims, and partook in the legendary Thanksgiving meal. This protest was organized by Wamsutta Frank James, a Wampanoag activist who wanted to draw attention to the full story of Thanksgiving – a story of fear, violence, and oppression that spanned generations.
America’s reckoning with the truth of Thanksgiving, James argued, would empower indigenous people to fight for their equal rights. This protest – a National Day of Mourning – continues to this day, now led by James’s granddaughter. So what is the true story of Thanksgiving? And why is it so important for us to remember?
Special thanks to Kisha James, Paula Peters, and David Silverman, author of This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving.
This episode originally aired November 22, 2021.
To stay updated: historythisweekpodcast.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.8 | History This Week, November 26, 1970. |
| 0:13.5 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:18.8 | Above the harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, at the top of a hill, sits a bronze statue. |
| 0:26.1 | It depicts Massasoyate, a great leader of the Wampanag tribe. |
| 0:30.9 | If he could see, one thing he'd be looking at all day long is a stone monument, a rectangle of austere granite columns surrounding |
| 0:41.0 | a rock. Plymouth Rock. The town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, makes a very big deal about |
| 0:50.2 | Plymouth Rock. Supposedly, it's the place where the pilgrims first set foot in what is now the United States |
| 0:57.2 | 350 years ago. |
| 1:00.1 | The town has already been celebrating this big anniversary for months, with speeches, with a parade, |
| 1:06.7 | with a display at the Plymouth National Wax Museum featuring a live display of pilgrim crafts and 26 pilgrim tableaus. |
| 1:16.6 | But today, Thanksgiving Day, there will be a very different sort of gathering. |
| 1:23.8 | In the past several weeks, flyers went out across the country telling protesters to come to Plymouth for a national day of morning. |
| 1:33.3 | The organizers, the United American Indians of New England, called for native people from all over the U.S. to join them at Plymouth. |
| 1:42.3 | They say, quote, may the voice of our people be heard throughout the U.S. to join them at Plymouth. They say, quote, may the voice of our people be heard |
| 1:47.1 | throughout the land. And so, on Thanksgiving morning, about 200 people begin to gather at the base |
| 1:55.5 | of that statue of Massasoit. There are speeches, words of protest, and then some of the activists actually go |
| 2:04.6 | down the hill to that famous rock and bury it in sand. Others board a bright painted replica of the |
| 2:14.5 | Mayflower that's anchored in the harbor, climb up the rigging, and tear down the flags. |
| 2:19.5 | Some of them crash a commemoratory Thanksgiving meal and slip over a commemoratory Thanksgiving |
| 2:25.0 | table. It's a protest against the myth behind this major American holiday, against the oft-told, sanitized story, which covers |
| 2:38.0 | over decades of brutality and suffering. |
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