5 +1 Erased Histories You Were Never Taught

What you know of history shapes what you see in the present. But history is not just what happened — it’s what has been remembered, what has been recorded, and what has been deliberately erased. Erased because it revealed too much about power. Erased because it exposed brutality, resistance, and hope that threatened those who needed control. What you are about to read are not obscure facts. They are histories that shaped the world — and still do. Their absence in classrooms, books, and public memory is no accident. The silence was designed. And that silence still protects the same systems that erased these stories in the first place. What was destroyed? Who was silenced? And how does that silence continue to serve power today? These are five histories that were erased — and that you need to know about.

The Tulsa Race Massacre — When a Black community was burned out of history

In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was home to one of the most prosperous Black communities in the United States. The Greenwood District — known as Black Wall Street — was a place where Black-owned businesses thrived: banks, theaters, restaurants, hospitals, and newspapers. It was a community built in defiance of the limits imposed by a racist society, a symbol of Black success, wealth, and resilience. And that success is exactly why it was targeted.

On May 31 and June 1 of 1921, white mobs, backed by law enforcement and local authorities, launched one of the most violent and destructive attacks on an American community in modern history. It began with the accusation that a young Black man had assaulted a white woman — an accusation that would never be proven. Fueled by racism and resentment at Greenwood’s prosperity, thousands of white Tulsans looted, burned, and destroyed 35 square blocks of Black homes and businesses. Planes were used to drop incendiary devices. People were shot in the streets. Entire families fled for their lives as their homes and livelihoods were reduced to ash. At least 300 Black men, women, and children were killed, though the true number may never be known. Mass graves remain unmarked, and many victims simply disappeared from the record.

When it was over, Greenwood lay in ruins. And so did the truth. The massacre was deliberately covered up. Newspapers erased their own reporting. Official records disappeared. Survivors were silenced by fear and shame. For generations, this atrocity was kept out of history books, left out of classrooms, ignored by mainstream media. Why? Because the truth of Tulsa exposed too much. It showed how Black success could be met with racial terror. It showed how law enforcement and government could turn on their own citizens. And it showed that white supremacy didn’t just resist Black freedom — it sought to destroy it. The silence served power. And that silence continues to shape how racial violence is seen, denied, or justified in America today. Remember Tulsa not as a tragedy of the past, but as a warning. When history is erased, injustice is protected.

The Haitian Revolution — The uprising the world tried to erase

In 1791, on the island of Saint-Domingue — today called Haiti — enslaved Africans rose up against one of the most brutal slave systems in the world. They fought not for reforms, not for promises of better treatment, but for freedom. And against staggering odds, they won. Over more than a decade of revolt, the Haitian people defeated the armies of three European empires: France, Spain, and Britain. In 1804, Haiti became the first Black republic, the first nation founded by formerly enslaved people who had overthrown their oppressors. It was a revolution that tore through the lies of white supremacy, colonial power, and the myth that slavery was unshakable.

And that is why the world tried to erase it. Haiti’s victory sent shockwaves through the colonial world. In the United States, in Europe, in the Caribbean, those who profited from slavery and empire saw what had happened — and knew what it meant. If the truth of Haiti’s revolution spread, it could ignite rebellions, inspire the oppressed, and weaken the foundations of racial capitalism. So they buried the story. Haiti was isolated, punished, starved by trade blockades and forced to pay a crushing debt to France to “compensate” former slaveholders — a debt that stole the new nation’s future for generations. Textbooks ignored or distorted the revolution. The role of the enslaved in seizing their freedom was erased, downplayed, or smeared.

When Haiti appears in history books, it is often as a warning of “chaos” or “failure” — not as a story of Black courage, resistance, and victory. The world could not allow Haiti’s true legacy to shine, because it exposed the brutality of slavery and the power of the enslaved to end it. The Haitian Revolution matters now because its erasure helps sustain the same systems that still exploit, divide, and silence. To remember Haiti’s revolution is to remember that freedom is never given — it is fought for.

The Forced Sterilization of Indigenous and Marginalized Women — The hidden machinery of control

For much of the 20th century — and in some places, beyond — governments across the United States, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, and other so-called democratic nations waged a quiet war on the bodies of Indigenous and marginalized women. Under the banner of “public health,” “eugenics,” or “modernization,” women were sterilized without their consent. Many were lied to, pressured, or operated on without being told what was being done to them.

In the U.S., this targeted Black, Indigenous, Latina, and poor women. In Canada, First Nations women were sterilized in hospitals and residential schools. In Australia, Aboriginal women were subjected to forced sterilizations as part of policies designed to erase their cultures. In Scandinavia, Roma women and other minorities or native women were caught in state-sponsored eugenics programs. These acts were not isolated mistakes or the work of rogue doctors. They were official policies, backed by governments and medical institutions, designed to reduce the numbers of people considered “unfit,” “undesirable,” or a “burden” to the state. They were policies rooted in racism, colonialism, classism, and misogyny — and they were hidden because they revealed too much about what those systems were really about.

For decades, the stories of the women who were harmed were buried. The records were sealed. The victims were silenced. And even now, many have never received justice, acknowledgment, or reparations. The erasure of this history serves power by allowing the myth of fairness, equality, and progress to stand unchallenged. But remembering it forces us to face how control over reproduction has been — and still is — used as a tool of oppression. To know this history is to see through the lies of benevolence, and to recognize how deeply the right to decide over one’s own body has been denied to so many.

The Burning of Indigenous Codices — How knowledge was destroyed to erase cultures

When Spanish conquistadors invaded the Americas, they didn’t just seek gold and land. They sought to wipe out entire civilizations, starting with the destruction of their memory. One of their first targets: the books — the codices — of Indigenous peoples.

The Maya, Mexica (Aztec), Mixtec, and other Indigenous societies of Mesoamerica had developed complex systems of writing. Their codices recorded history, science, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and spiritual knowledge. They were libraries of human understanding built over centuries. In the 16th century, Spanish conquerors and missionaries ordered these codices burned. At the orders of men like Bishop Diego de Landa, fires consumed untold volumes of knowledge. The act wasn’t random destruction — it was strategy. To break a people, you erase their language, their history, their wisdom. You sever them from their past so they can be remade in the image of their conquerors. Only a handful of these books survived, scattered in European museums and archives. What was lost is beyond measure. Entire branches of thought, science, and culture — incinerated.

This history is rarely taught. When it is, it’s often framed as a sad but inevitable part of conquest. But it was deliberate cultural erasure, aimed at control and domination. Why does it matter now? Because colonial violence didn’t end with the burning of books. The destruction of Indigenous knowledge continues through land theft, resource exploitation, and the silencing of Indigenous voices. Remembering the burning of the codices means remembering that erasure is a tool of power — and that reclaiming memory is an act of resistance.

The Role of Queer and Trans Communities in Early Civil Rights Struggles — The erased frontline of resistance

The history of civil rights is often told in a way that erases the role of queer and trans people — especially those who were Black, brown, working class, and poor. These were the people who stood on the frontlines, who risked everything not just for their communities but for broader fights for justice. And yet, their names and contributions were pushed aside in favor of stories that fit mainstream respectability.

Stonewall wasn’t the first or only act of queer resistance. Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco (1966), three years before Stonewall, saw trans women and drag queens — many of them Black and brown — fight back against police violence when they were harassed and brutalized in one of the few places that would serve them. It was one of the first recorded collective uprisings of trans and queer people against police repression in the U.S., but is rarely taught or mentioned. In the 1960s and 70s, groups like the Gay Liberation Front and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) — founded by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — weren’t just fighting for gay rights. They were standing with Black Panthers, Young Lords, and other radical groups, connecting queer liberation to struggles against poverty, racism, and imperialism. Queer and trans people were also part of early labor struggles and prison justice movements. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a Black trans woman, not only survived Stonewall, but went on to work for decades on behalf of incarcerated trans women and people targeted by the prison-industrial complex — a link rarely acknowledged in mainstream civil rights histories. And beyond the U.S., there’s erasure too. In Argentina, during the Dirty War, queer people were part of the resistance against the military dictatorship, despite being targeted both by the state and often sidelined by other activists. The contributions of trans sex workers to anti-dictatorship struggles were written out of much of the post-dictatorship narrative.

These are just some of the stories that have been buried. The pattern is the same: queer and trans people helped build movements for liberation — and as those movements became more public and more eager for mainstream approval, the most marginalized were left out of the story. Why does this matter now? Because those same divisions and silences continue. And because remembering the truth means building movements today that refuse to leave anyone behind.

The Pontic Genocide — A people erased, a history denied

Between 1914 and 1923, in the shadow of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Pontic Greek community of Anatolia was targeted for destruction. The Turkish campaign against them was not random violence. It was a deliberate, systematic effort to erase an entire people — their lives, their language, their culture — from the lands they had inhabited for thousands of years along the Black Sea. Over 350,000 Pontic Greeks were killed through massacres, death marches, forced deportations, and starvation. Villages were burned, churches and schools destroyed, and families torn apart. Women were raped, children died on the forced marches, and entire communities were scattered or wiped out.

This was part of a larger plan of ethnic cleansing that also targeted Armenians and Assyrians. But unlike the Armenian Genocide, the Pontic genocide remains far less known, even today. Why? Because powerful interests — both at the time and in the years since — have chosen denial, silence, or minimization over truth. Acknowledging it would mean confronting uncomfortable realities about nationalism, empire, and the cost of building a modern state on the bones of others.

For decades, survivors and their descendants fought to keep the memory alive. But in many parts of the world, including in official histories, this genocide is still denied or downplayed — as if erasing the memory could erase the crime. Why does it matter now? Because genocide denial is not just about the past. It feeds the logic that some people can be erased with impunity. Remembering the Pontic genocide is not about mourning alone. It’s about refusing that logic. It’s about honoring those who were lost by standing against every attempt — then or now — to silence the truth.

These aren’t just stories of the past. They are truths that were buried so the powerful could shape the future on their terms — a future that still protects injustice, that still denies the harm done, that still benefits from silence. The Tulsa Race Massacre. The Haitian Revolution. The forced sterilization of Indigenous and marginalized women. The burning of Indigenous codices. The role of queer and trans communities in civil rights struggles. The Pontic Genocide. These are not isolated tragedies. They are parts of a larger pattern: erase the memory, and you erase accountability. When we remember these histories, we break that pattern. We refuse to let violence and erasure stand unchallenged. We see the present more clearly — and we see our responsibility to act. These stories were silenced because they showed what was possible. They showed resistance, courage, and truths that those in power didn’t want passed down. Don’t let them stay buried.