History is story telling. It’s also much more than that. The way we tell stories communicates much about our values and perspectives. Storytelling a powerful act; those who generate the shared stories of a group’s past can exert an enormous amount of authority over the group’s sense of identity.

Collectively we have some sense of the power hidden within historical narratives. We even have a few pithy proverbs to prove it:

• “History is written by the victors.” –Winston Churchill/Walter Benjamin/George Orwell
• “Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter” – Nigerian Proverb/Kenyan Proverb/Chinua Achebe
• “You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” – George Washington/Eliza Hamilton/Lin-Manuel Miranda

As I was preparing for the semester that has just begun, I’ve been thinking about the power and authority of the past how it manifests itself both in my history classrooms and…