On this week's On the Media, how to tell our real history and make people believe it.

I want to go to that legacy museum because it said something about the lynchings that happened after the abolition of slavery.

And I'm like, what?

Most people can't tell you anything about slavery, because they don't know that there were four million enslaved people living

in this country when the Civil War began.

They treat us like animals.

I sleep on this naked floor and chains and handcuffs.

There's no point in which we can say, okay, we're done now.

This is always going to be what happened.

Look at the feet.

Look at the hands.

Look at the creases. And I have a much larger vocabulary, but I am still so overwhelmed. I think a lot of people realize, yeah, something bad really did happen.

And they don't want to acknowledge it because they're afraid they're going to be punished for it.

I have no interest in punishing this nation for its history.

I want to liberate us.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is away this week.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

This week and next, we're re-airing two episodes about the stories

of our histories, the ones we embrace and those we refuse to hear. Because getting history right

is pretty much the most important thing citizens can do in a nation at war with itself, as ours

was and is.

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