We are not supposed to find much joy in the study of history. At least, that’s what Henry Ford believed, and his words on the subject have become legendary: “History,” he said, “is more or less bunk.” A century later, and that view of history doesn’t seem to want for advocates. In January 2021, the San Francisco Unified School District moved to rename forty-four of its schools, including ones named for Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Revere, and Dianne Feinstein. It was objected that the reasons were often absurd—Paul Revere, for instance, was to be obliterated because he was connected to the Penobscot Expedition during the American Revolution, which was supposedly directed at dispossessing the Penobscot Indians from their lands but in fact had nothing to do with the Penobscot tribe. Critics asked why historians weren’t consulted, but the head of the renamings task force blew the objectors off with words Henry Ford would have applauded:
What would be the point? . . . Based on our criteria, it’s a very straightforward conversation. And so, no need to bring historians forward to say—they either pontificate and list a bunch of reasons why, or [say] they had great qualities. Neither are necessary in this discussion.
But the volume of ridicule this drew down on the heads of the San Francisco district board members in fact forced the renamers to retreat—at least for the moment. History 1, Henry
