The Untold American History You Never Learned

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]They call Sharon McMahon America's government teacher. Listen to this. Her debut book, The Small and the Mighty.

[00:00:07]Number one New York Times bestseller.

[00:00:09]USA Today Amazon bestseller. A 2025 American book of the year. Named top five best book of the year, number one best history book by Amazon, best non-fiction of the year by Barnes & Noble. And now comes the followup. It's an illustrated book called We Are Mighty, a children's picture book illustrated by Susanna Chapman. The illustrations are really extraordinary, extraordinarily well done, bringing the same spirit now to young readers, celebrating ordinary Americans whose small acts of courage changed history.

[00:00:46]Sharon, congratulations on the release of We Are Mighty and the success of the small and mighty. It's nice to have you here.

[00:00:54]>> Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

[00:00:55]know Claraara Brown, Virginia Randolph, Katherine Lee Bates, Septima Clark. My reaction was, wait, who? And that's the whole point. I mean, the whole point of what you did with the small and the mighty and and now are through these illustrations is to say there are a lot of other people beyond the founding fathers whose names you do know who warrant attention.

[00:01:19]>> So true. I mean, as we're approaching the 250th anniversary of America, of course, we should celebrate and learn about the founding fathers, the presidents who have come before us.

[00:01:30]Those are all important characters to know. But history is actually full of thousands of people whose ma whose names are never in the history books, but who made a real consequential difference in the history of this country. They changed the course of history. And you know, I think part of our job as Americans today is to learn about who they are and what they did. How did you what was the process? How did you make a determination as to who would be included? And I'm sure that there are a whole host of other books where you can do likewise and roll out additional names, but how did you narrow the the list?

[00:02:05]>> One of the things that I wanted to do is make sure that we have a range of history stories told in this children's book. So, it starts really with the founding era and moves all the way up into the civil rights era. I wanted there to be a nice range of times that teachers, parents, educators, librarians uh can point to, but I also wanted there to be a variety of different things happening. So, it's putting together this sort of puzzle piece of making sure that we're not telling only stories about people who went to the Olympics, only stories about teachers, that there's a variety of different types of topics for children to learn about.

[00:02:39]>> Okay. Well, I do want to talk about one of the teachers in particular, Septima Clark. People who are watching us, people who are listening to us, I I sure as heck hope they know Rosa Parks and the role that she played. Septima Clark was actually a teacher of Rosa Parks. I didn't know this story. It's an amazing story, but talk to us and use this as an illustration of what the book writ large represents. Who was Septima Clark? Mhm.

[00:03:05]>> She was a woman who became a teacher in Charleston, South Carolina at a time when Charleston refused to hire black teachers. So, she actually had to leave Charleston uh to go work elsewhere, leave her child in the care of family to go find a job somewhere else. And eventually, she does get hired when the rules change in Charleston. She gets hired to be a teacher there. And then Charleston changes its policies and says, "If you want to be a civil rights advocate, you're going to have to renounce your membership in all of these civil rights organizations because those are communist." That was how uh many places in the South got rid of membership in civil rights organizations was they just declared that it was communist in the 1950s. So if you're going to work here, you got to renounce your membership. Well, Septimos said, "I'm not going to do that. civil rights is a bigger issue than just my my own employment. So, she eventually gets fired from the Charleston School Board and goes to work at a place in Tennessee called the Highlander Folk School, which was kind of like a residential short-term residential retreat facility where adults could go to for a week or two to learn about how to organize for civil rights, to learn about how to advocate in their own communities. And because Septima was fired from her job in Charleston and goes to Tennessee to work at this school for adults, one of the people that she teaches, as you mentioned, is uh is Rosa Parks. She she also teaches John Lewis, by the way, who who died not very long ago, who was a member of Congress up until not long ago. Uh but she taught Rosa Parks. And not long after Rosa Parks leaves Highlander Folk School is when the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott happens. So the civil rights movement would not be the same without Septima Clark. She is regarded by many historians as the mother of the civil rights movement. She is sort of giving birth to and teaching all of the foot soldiers, the big names of who we come to know. She becomes friends with Martin Luther King. I actually interviewed Jim Klyber, who's currently in uh currently in Congress right now, who was friends with Septa M.

[00:05:12]Clark. Wow. uh and who actually was was invited to her home along with Martin Luther King before before they both passed away. He has some great stories to tell about her. But one of the things that I learned from her that listen, I really think Congress and some people in politics could learn from this from her wisdom is that when she gets to be an old woman, they come to her and they say, "What have you learned?" You know, she's born in 1898. She does she this is now the 1970s. She's elected to the Charleston School Board. What have you learned? She's lived through two world wars. She's lived through the entire civil rights movement. And what she says she's learned is that she can work with her enemies because they might have a change of heart at any moment. And dang, if I don't want to put that on a billboard around the beltway, uh the the American public is, you know, I think pretty pretty weary of how politics have worked in this country for a long time.

[00:06:12]>> And the idea that we cannot work together for the common good. That is not how progress has ever been made in this country. this in intense hyperartisan tribalism uh has never led us somewhere productive and even Septima who had been through far worse than most of us will ever live through. That was her her perspective was I can work with my enemies not because my enemies are good not because they have good ideas not because they having sleepovers at my house but because they might have a change of heart at any moment. And how would your enemy ever have a change of heart if you don't turn the light on for them?

[00:06:52]>> Septima Poinset as in poinsettia Clark.

[00:06:57]Another interesting aspect of her of her genealogy.

[00:07:01]>> That's right. Uh she is a descendant of a man named Joel Poinset who was uh relatively prominent in early American history, but who was also an amateur botonist and who traveled to Central America and found what we know as poinsettia plants that we put out at Christmas time. That's not what they're called in Spanish. Uh but they do turn red. Their leaves turn red at the end of the year. and he brought them home as a uh you know souvenir from his travels in Central America and then named them after himself. The full title of Sharon McMahon's book is the small and the mighty 12 unsung Americans who changed the course of history from the founding to the civil rights movement. I I would have thought it a difficult task to make it approachable for kids with illustrations, but these illustrations in the book, the brand new book, are just tremendous. So, Susanna Chapman gets special recognition because I I I just marveled at them. I'm showing some of them for the benefit of YouTube, but talk to me about her work.

[00:08:08]>> Yeah, she is she is such a talented illustrator. uh she's an award-winning illustrator and the illustrations in the book are very dynamic. There's a lot to look at. There's, you know, something happening in every spread and she works using multiple mediums media in the in each illustration. She's doing watercolor, paper cuts, uh digital uh illustrations, uh hand lettering. Like there's so many things that are happening. I really believe that children's pictures picture picture picture books sort of rise and fall in the quality of the illustrations and I just have marveled at her work at every turn. She's she's absolutely such a talent.

[00:08:49]>> I'd like to think that if I ask this audience, they're pretty sophisticated political observers to name the father of the constitution that they would identify James Madison. If I were to say the penman of the constitution, I don't know how many and and correct me if I'm doing uh wrong with the pronunciation.

[00:09:07]Gouver. Governer, not Governor, but Gverir Morris. Who was Gverir Morris, if I'm saying it correctly?

[00:09:16]>> Yeah. The The funny thing about his name is nobody actually knows how he pronounced it. Gouvenir, Gvenir.

[00:09:22]>> Uh, you know, we don't have recordings and and he never phonetically spelled it out where it's like, "Same is pronounced." So, we're giving our best guess. It was actually his mother's maiden name and his mother was a Dutch immigrant to the United States, one of America's sort of founding families of New York. Uh so that Gouvenir is a very good guess on the short list, but he was uh regarded by James Madison as you know one of the premier writing talents of early America. And it was Governor Morris who pens the words uh that we all know in the preamble that we the people in order to form a more perfect union.

[00:10:05]Those are those are his sort of his babies uh from his own mind. He's the person who is tasked on this very small committee with with distilling all of these ideas uh that the the entire constitutional convention had been debating and arguing for months. uh distilling them all down into a comprehensive document that would be understandable to the average person.

[00:10:30]It's going to be published in newspapers all over the country. It has to be short. Has to be short enough to print in newspapers. Has to be understandable.

[00:10:37]It has to be lasting. And these these these words we the people have changed the changed the world. They really have. But it's more than just American history that those words changed. They changed world history. And yet he fades into obscurity after his death. He's not on the money. He's not on the classroom walls. We don't have the Governor Morris posters. Most people would not be able to pick him out of a lineup. But uh if you're a historian of the era, you know how important his contributions were. He was a best friend of Alexander Hamilton. And I write about him in my book for adults, the small and the mighty. Uh it is he he is at Alexander Hamilton's bedside when bed when Alexander Hamilton is dying and ultimately is a pawbearer at his funeral. He speaks at his funeral. Uh they were sort of two sides of the same coin. Governor Morris is this very tall, wealthy, stately portly man. And Alexander Hamilton is, you know, young, scrappy, and hungry and has nothing and is this tiny little uh man with this big brain. But he gets re, you know, Ham Morris is not in the Broadway show even though he was much closer to Hamilton than many of his other friends. And so once again, uh, he's written out of the story. And I think he's really worth a read.

[00:11:57]>> Let me ask the Sharon McMahon question of Sharon McMahon. When a reader finishes the last page and closes this book, what is it that you want them to know?

[00:12:08]>> Good research, Michael. uh that you know that that's what I love to ask people. I want children to be able to and adults to be able to tuck this into their pockets that who they are matters that what they do matters. And so because who they are and what they do makes a difference. They have to decide what kind of difference they want to make.

[00:12:30]And that's something that's available to every single one of us. If we're four years old, if we're 94 years old, we can all choose to do the next needed thing.

[00:12:38]And in fact, that is exactly what the world is waiting for this morning.

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[00:13:49]Different subject. Final question or two. So, two weeks ago, you wrote for the free press an essay that I read at the time that I was I was really pleased to see you author about your being disinvited from the Utah Valley University commencement uh ceremonies.

[00:14:06]You were to have been the speaker. And what occurred to me, and you pretty much make the same point, is that the same First Amendment that protected Charlie Kirk's right to come to that campus and speak should have protected Sharon McMahon's right to come and speak as well. But it didn't. And what I learned from you is that really it was the the state officials who played an oversized role, elected officials in including Mike Lee who played an oversized role here in discouraging the university from allowing you that opportunity. What would you have said if you had delivered that commencement address?

[00:14:44]>> One of the things that I really wanted uh the students to hear is that we are the world is not waiting for them to change the world. We're not nobody is depending on them to go out into the world and to uh you know fix everything that is happening but they do have an important responsibility to the future.

[00:15:03]Uh and it's important to think about like what what responsibility do I have and what role do I want to play? But one of the other things I really wanted them to know is that it is easy to be told when you are on the precipice of graduating from college that you know the the sky is blue and the birds are chirping and your future is in front of you and you just have to get out there and grab it by the horns and today is a day for optimism. And I would actually argue against reaching for an easy optimism, which is this feeling that everything is going to work out for you.

[00:15:37]Because that easy optimism crumbles as soon as somebody you love dies, as soon as a scary diagnosis happens, as soon as you don't get a job that you believed you were perfect for. And so I advocate for rather than reaching for an easy, unstable, fragile optimism, to reach for the hand of a more durable hope, a more durable hope that sometimes just feels like a hand in the dark that sometimes is not visible to you in in the moment that you find yourselves in. uh but a a more durable hope that says that even though these are the times that try men's souls uh that the future is not yet written and that we cannot give up on our opportunity to impact the future for the good. So those are just a couple of the things that I want students to >> Is it fair is it fair to say that and and I I don't know definitively because the the posts have been taken down. Your position was not a position of weighing in on things that Charlie Kirk had said so much as it was trying to establish to some extent a public record so that people could understand wherein was the controversy over comments that he had made. Is that a fair way to say it?

[00:16:50]>> I think that's I think that's accurate.

[00:16:52]You know, one of the things I discovered uh is, you know, I I work in this field like you do and Charlie Kirk seemed to me to have a very, you know, outsiz influence uh in the world, especially of conservative politics. I was very surprised at the number of people who had never heard of him.

[00:17:08]>> Mhm.

[00:17:09]>> Thousands of people came to me and were like, "What is going on? I've never heard of this person. Why would anyone assassinate somebody I've never heard of?" So there was a large contingent of people who felt like no idea who this guy is. Why why are we talking about him? Uh and then also a large contingent of his fans who only viewed him um in very very positive in a very positive manner. They viewed him as a spreader of the gospel. They viewed him as an advocate for free speech. they could not understand why a third subset of individuals uh felt like his rhetoric was harmful and that he said things that were either um you know controversial or insulting. So this group sort of on the other end of the spectrum felt like why would anyone hate Charlie Kirk? He was nothing but a wonderful man. So my posts were really aimed uh at helping the people who had never heard of him contextualize who this man is. 20 million podcast listeners a month is a is an incredible influence on on culture and also helping to contextualize Yeah.

[00:18:12]for fans.

[00:18:13]>> Well, no, I I I didn't mean to interrupt. I I just I just want the record to be >> to be complete because forever I try here to guard against relying on sound bites that others have determined for me. I want to hear everything. I want to read everything. I at least want it to be there for those who are willing to invest the time. you you get the final word on on this and then I I'll reference the book again.

[00:18:37]>> Yeah. I I believe uh that the principles to me in in this entire scenario with uh my invitation and disinvitation uh the principles to me, principles of democracy, the principles of the constitution are far more important to me than my individual right to speak at one specific university. I I care more about the government attempt at intervention into what kind of speech is acceptable. I care more about that uh than I do about like, oh, I I should have been the commencement speaker. Um, this is not about my ego of being invited or disinvited. I'll get other invitations. That's fine. Uh, but today it's me. uh tomorrow it's a Christian author to or the next day it's another Charlie Kirk figure or it's an LGBTQ community member. Uh the principle of the government not interfering with the free speech rights of citizens is far more important to me than any single invitation. That extended to Charlie and as you mentioned I think that extends to me and to everyone else not just to me to everyone.

[00:19:44]>> That was well said. The new book is called We Are Mighty. We are Mighty.

[00:19:48]Sharon McMahon with great illustrations from Susanna Chapman. Wish you good things with the book and thank you for being here.

[00:19:56]>> Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:19:57]>> Okay, let me just button something up because maybe I should not have taken it for granted. Perhaps I should have more fully explained. Sharon McMahon was to have been this year's commencement speaker at Utah Valley University. And she was disinvited. And she was disinvited. And in the free press two weeks ago today, she explained her whole side of the controversy. Quote, "The evil murder of Charlie Kirk traumatized his family, the school community, and the nation." I said it then and I'll say it again now. Political violence has no place in a free country. No family should have the darkest moment of their lives blasted across the internet for strangers to consume. In the days after his murder, I also said something else, that condemning Charlie Kirk's assassination did not require treating his public record as untouchable.

[00:20:48]Some people experienced some of his words as harmful while he was alive.

[00:20:52]Saying so was not a celebration of violence, nor an excuse for it. It was a distinction a nation rooted in the First Amendment should be able to make.

[00:21:02]Murder's evil, and the public words remain part of the public record. If you were a Charlie Kirk fan, I posted, you might not realize why there is so much backlash to posts eulogizing his death.

[00:21:15]I also shared some of Kirk's more controversial statements, writing, "Millions of people feel they were harmed, and the murder that was horrific should never have happened does not magically erase what was said or done."

[00:21:28]My posts helped to educate those who had never thought of Charlie Kirk as anything but a positive force in the world about why millions of people didn't seem to share an affinity for him. So that's what she wrote in this free press lengthy piece where she provides her side of the story and I'm glad she wrote it and I'm glad they they they published it.

[00:21:49]>> Yeah, that is really really interesting.

[00:21:51]And I I mean maybe the it was just like a too soon thing. In other words, when she posted it, I think now people are unpacking his work a little more. I mean, gosh, and and I'm just thinking about like the Kevin Hart roast. He's actually part of, you know, joking about it, which I mean, the cringe factor was so high, I had to hide underneath my co sofa, but it's happening now. So, and she seems to be a very thoughtful person. I don't think she is one of these flamethrowers who's trying to get a rise out of people. She she also I I will tell you TC and you you know this but I want the audience to know this. I wanted to remind myself >> of what had she actually posted. Yes.

[00:22:30]>> She's removed them her her word choices to say that she archived them. And listen to this paragraph. A couple of months ago I archived the posts along with a video of me tearfully denouncing his murder as news of it broke while I was live on the internet. The posts had racked up hundreds of thousands of likes and nearly six months later continued to gain traction on social media. I archived them not because I had said or done anything I regretted. I don't. My job is as an educator and my post was designed to help both sides of the political divide better understand the situation. I archived the posts because of the threats against my children that were continuing despite the elapsing of many months. And then finally, relative to whether she was subject to a heckler's veto, the danger was real, but it did not appear on its own. The serious threats began only after government officials and Turning Point USA turned a commencement invitation into a public campaign of denunciation, pressure, and financial threat. The university was left to absorb the risks, both physical and financial, that no commencement ceremony should have to carry. This is how government censorship often works in practice with pressure, threats, and costly consequences.

[00:23:52]>> It's a shame. I mean, I just I I you know, we've talked a lot about censorship and about um especially >> commencements. Commencements.

[00:24:00]>> Yeah. We're going to do a whole thing tomorrow.

[00:24:02]>> We've talked about that. Yep. We're going to do a whole thing tomorrow. But we've talked a lot about that because because you were disinvited. Yeah.

[00:24:07]>> Um for a reason that doesn't didn't make sense here. So I I see it the same way.

[00:24:12]Um >> as do I. I was I was going to mention that to her like why take the time, right? Right. My my folks know the story. Yeah. Anyway, that's the Sharon McMahon picture.

[00:24:21]>> The finishing the finishing of it.

[00:24:22]>> There there it is. And the and the book the book the illustrations are fabulous.

[00:24:27]Really cool. And it's it's fun because there are so many it her thesis is spot on. There are so many people who don't make it to the top of our level of consciousness about about history and we should know them.

[00:24:38]>> And one other note is that she speaks so incredibly well. There are no there's no hesitation. There's no ums and I would have really liked to have heard her commencement address.

[00:24:46]>> I agree. She gave us a little insight.