Thanksgiving Reconsidered
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:05.2 | History this week, November 26, 1970. |
| 0:14.0 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:19.2 | Above the harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, at the top of a hill, |
| 0:23.2 | sits a bronze statue. |
| 0:25.2 | It depicts Massasoyet, a great leader of the Wampanoag tribe. |
| 0:29.6 | If you could see, one thing he'd be looking at all day long is a stone monument, |
| 0:36.4 | a rectangle of austere granite columns surrounding a rock. |
| 0:42.0 | Plymouth Rock. |
| 0:46.0 | The town of Plymouth, Massachusetts makes a very big deal about Plymouth Rock. |
| 0:50.8 | Supposedly, it's the place where the pilgrims first set foot in what is now the United States |
| 0:57.3 | 350 years ago. The town has already been celebrating this big anniversary for months, |
| 1:04.0 | with speeches, with a parade, with a display at the Plymouth National Wax Museum featuring |
| 1:10.0 | a live display of pilgrim crafts and 26 pilgrim tabloes. |
| 1:14.8 | But today, Thanksgiving Day, there will be a very different sort of gathering. |
| 1:24.4 | In the past several weeks, flyers went out across the country telling protesters to come to Plymouth |
| 1:30.2 | for a national day of mourning. The organizers, the United American Indians of New England, |
| 1:37.7 | called for native people from all over the US to join them at Plymouth. |
| 1:42.0 | They say, quote, |
| 1:44.4 | may the voice of our people be heard throughout the land. |
| 1:48.4 | And so, on Thanksgiving morning, about 200 people begin to gather at the base of that statue of |
| 1:56.6 | Massasoyet. There are speeches, words of protest, and then some of the activists actually go down the hill |
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