Versions of this essay have appeared previously at Daily Kos. It concludes with excerpts from Frederick Douglass’ famous Independence Day speech delivered in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852.
We do too much "heroification" in America, according to James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (one of his several books that ought to be on everybody's shelves).
Loewen thinks the word hero has been cheapened, ending up more often a description for football quarterbacks who throw perfect last-minute passes than for, say, the passerby who risks her own life to pull a child from a flooding river.
Heroification describes what textbooks, many teachers, and the likes of Lynne Cheney have done to a multitude of other notable Americans. The process of heroification not only turns the notorious into role models, but many people who actually deserve the praise they get are transformed into one-dimensional stereotypes without flaws. It’s as if we can't stand to see our heroes as human beings who don't always get things right—who, in fact, sometimes behave deplorably and hypocritically.
Despite his flaws, my number one personal hero is—and has been since I was introduced at age 14 to his autobiography—Frederick Douglass, the runaway slave whose persistent eloquence was one of the leading factors persuading Abraham Lincoln to bring Black soldiers into the Union Army. Without those 180,000 men who ultimately fought, quite literally, for freedom, it is uncertain whether the Union would have survived.