Dressed in your suit, crisp white shirt, and neatly knotted tie, you look very important. And indeed, you are a significant player in the world of business. These men are no ordinary executives; they’re from IBM, which, during this time, is the largest computer maker in the world.

As you wait, a young fellow appears before you. He seems hardly older than a teenager, but there’s an air of confidence about him. You ask him for directions to Bill Gates’s office, and without hesitation, he leads you there. Much to your surprise, he takes a seat behind the desk. It’s then that you realize he is Bill Gates himself, the head of Microsoft!

Bill Gates is just twenty-four years old at this time, although he appears even younger with his tangled hair, much too-large glasses, a sprinkling of freckles, and his cozy pullover sweater. However, as soon as he begins to speak, it becomes evident that he possesses a deep knowledge of computers which would lead him to become the richest man in the world.

________________

William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Due to being the third Gates with the name William Henry, his family called him “Trey,” which is another way to say the word three. However, to everyone else, he was simply Bill.

As a child, Bill was very active, spending hours rocking back and forth on his rocking horse. This habit of rocking back and forth would become something you’d often see during his important business meetings. He found it to help him think better.

On school nights, there was a strict no-TV rule in the Gates household. Instead, the family would have conversations, play games, and immerse themselves in books. Young Bill loved to read, even deciding at age seven to read the entire encyclopedia and World Book! That is a full shelf of books! 

His intelligence was obvious to all who knew him. There’s a memorable incident where the whole family was ready for a short trip in the car and suddenly realized Bill was missing. His mother found him inside the house, deep in thought. When asked what he was doing, he replied, “I’m thinking, Mother!”

Challenges always intrigued him, and he was known for looking for ways to test his abilities. He was naturally left-handed but would switch to his right hand if he found himself bored in school.

At the age of eleven, he participated in a contest at his church. The challenge was to memorize the Sermon on the Mount, a long list of Bible scriptures. He not only memorized the whole thing but also did it without making a single mistake, impressing the minister. When asked about his accomplishments, he replied, “I can do anything I set my mind to.”

Winning was also extremely important to Bill Gates, and he didn’t like losing. During summers, his family spent two weeks at a cabin named Cheerio near Puget Sound. There, young Bill’s competitive spirit shone as he excelled in many different sports, such as water skiing, ice-skating, swimming, and downhill skiing.

However, in the sixth grade his interest in school seemed to drop. This caused his parents, Bill Sr. and Mary, to make an important decision. They enrolled him in the private school Lakeside at the start of seventh grade, setting the course for a new chapter in his life.

___________

Bill was the smallest kid in his seventh-grade class at Lakeside School, but the teachers at Lakeside helped kids find what they loved. Bill Gates was good at math and science, but he hadn’t found his special interest yet.

Then, one spring day in 1968, a teacher took Bill and some of his friends to a place called “the computer room.” But guess what? There wasn’t a computer in there! You see, at that time, there were no small personal computers like we have today. Computers were huge devices as big as rooms that cost millions of dollars and were only used by the government, military, and universities. Even Lakeside, a fancy private school, couldn’t afford one. So, they got the next best thing – a Teletype machine. It looked like a large electric typewriter, and there was a telephone that connected it to a computer in downtown Seattle.

The teacher showed the boys how to type a special command, which made the teletype start making a lot of noise and punching holes in a long roll of paper tape. 

Then, that message went through the phone lines to the computer miles away, and it sent back an answer.

Bill Gates was amazed by what the computer could do! After that, he spent all his free time in the computer room. He read every computer manual he could find and learned computer languages. 

Some other kids at Lakeside got just as excited about computers, and they all learned from each other. It was funny because the teachers had planned to teach the kids about computers, but it turned out that Bill and his friends became the experts. They even taught the teachers!

At Lakeside, he discovered his true passion – computers! His genius brain now had a focus, and it was all about computers! 

A group of kids got together and created a computer club called the Lakeside Programmers. They loved writing their own computer programs. A Computer program is a set of instructions for the computer to follow. Think of a computer program as a set of commands that you give to a computer to make it do certain things. Like typing out words, playing a game, or doing math. When Bill was just thirteen, he wrote his very first program, and it was for playing tic-tac-toe!

For someone like Bill who loved a challenge, the computer was the perfect playground. Every program was like a puzzle. If he made one tiny mistake in the instructions, the computer would get all confused and make mistakes too.

Now, Bill was younger than most of the other kids in the club, and they thought he was using up too much time on the computer. So, they actually kicked him out of the club for a little while. But the other kids soon realized that Bill was smart and knew things that they didn’t. So eventually they asked him to come back to the club. 

Using the computer wasn’t free; it cost a lot of money. His parents paid for his school, but they told him he had to pay for computer time himself. So, Bill did what any smart kid would do – he got a job! There was a company in Seattle called Computer Center Corporation, and they had a computer. The boys at Lakeside made a deal with them: they could use the computer for free if they found mistakes in its programs. It was a dream job for Bill and his friends because they had control over this massive, million-dollar computer.

They had to work at odd times, like at night and on weekends when the company’s staff didn’t need the computer. Sometimes he and his buddies stayed up until midnight. If he missed the bus home, he had to walk three miles!

When he was fifteen, he teamed up with another Lakeside Programmer named Paul Allen. They created a program called Traf-O-Data, which measured traffic flow in Seattle. And guess what? They made $20,000 from it!

He and Paul were pretty different. Paul was quiet and shy, while Bill was more outgoing and liked to argue to make a point. But they both loved computers and respected each other’s ideas.

They believed that computers had the power to change people’s lives, and they talked for hours about all the amazing things computers could do.

In his junior year, Lakeside School asked him to create a computer program for their schedules because they had just merged with an all-girls school, and it was too complicated to do by hand. Bill did it, and in return, he got about $5,000 worth of free computer time. 

Finally, in 1973, Bill graduated from Lakeside School, and he was all set to go to Harvard University. Lakeside had been an incredible journey for him. He discovered his love for computers, started his first business, met Paul Allen, and they were about to do something no one had ever done before.

College life at Harvard University was already keeping Bill Gates on his toes with classes and campus adventures. But little did he know he was about to change the world forever.

Fast forward to the middle of his sophomore year, a time when Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen stumbled upon a magazine called Popular Electronics with the headline: “WORLD’S FIRST MINICOMPUTER KIT.” 

This was the birth of the Altair 8800. The Altair was unique because it was a small computer able to perform tasks that previously required large expensive mainframe computers. Do you remember the huge computers we mentioned in a previous episode that required large rooms of equipment? With an Altair 8800 at an affordable price, someone could own a computer small enough to have in their own home.

The Altair 8800 didn’t look like today’s sleek computers. It looked more like a black microwave with switches and lights. It didn’t even have a keyboard or screens. 

Bill and Paul quickly realized that the Altair 8800 had the hardware but lacked something very important: software. It was like having a car with no fuel – a machine ready to go but unable to move! 

The physical part of the computer like the hard drive and the motherboard is called hardware – but everything you use the computer for, what you see on the screen like games and pictures is called software. Many people call these apps today. The Altair 8800 was a computer with nothing to do with it. This is where Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw an opportunity! 

Bill Gates was not your typical college student. He and Paul Allen were brilliant programmers bursting with energy and vision. They knew what they had to do – create the missing software that would bring the Altair 8800 minicomputer to life. 

Bill called the company that made the computer. The company was called MITS and was located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He told the head of MITS, Ed Roberts, that he and his partner were writing language software for the Altair 8800. He asked if MITS was interested in seeing it.

Roberts said SURE! He agreed to meet with the boys in a little over a month. They had boldly declared that their program was almost completed … yet they actually hadn’t even begun!

For the next eight weeks, they started on a whirlwind of late-night coding sessions and intense problem-solving. With time running out and their dreams on the line, Bill and Paul had to pull off something extraordinary. A friend from Harvard joined their mission, and just in the nick of time, their program was ready.

Paul Allen journeyed to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to present their creation to Ed Roberts, the head of the company behind the minicomputer. Their software had never been tested on a real Altair 8800 before!

In a room filled with anticipation, Paul entered the command: “PRINT 2 + 2.” Then, the magic happened – the computer responded with a triumphant “4”! Success!

That moment changed everything. Ed Roberts, head of MITS decided to purchase their program, marking the birth of the very first programming language for a microcomputer. And Bill Gates was just a 19-year-old college student at the time!

After Bill and Paul made their deal with MITS, they needed an interesting name for their business. They picked “Micro-Soft” because they were making software for tiny computers (“micro” means tiny). In less than a year, they decided to drop the hyphen. Bill became the president of Microsoft, and Paul was the vice president.

They worked day and night and hired more people as Microsoft grew. As Bill Gates hired new people he expected everyone at Microsoft to work as hard as he did, even late at night and on weekends. Luckily most of the people there didn’t mind because they were young, smart, and excited about computers.

In 1980, Bill was about to sign a major deal with a giant company called IBM. IBM was the biggest computer maker in the world, known for those massive computers that took up entire rooms. But now, they wanted to make smaller computers, and they turned to Microsoft for help. It was a big deal!

At that time, Bill was just twenty-four years old, and Microsoft had about thirty-two employees. In contrast, IBM had well over three hundred thousand people working for them. At first, people at IBM might’ve thought Bill was too young, but they soon realized how much he knew about computers. So, they hired little Microsoft to create the software for their new small computers.

The software they needed was called an operating system, which is like the commander of the computer. It tells everything how to work – the keyboard, the screen, and all the other software. Without an operating system the computer wouldn’t be able to do much, especially not use software!

For nearly a year, Microsoft worked hard to create the software operating system, and in 1981, IBM released its first personal computer, called a PC for short and these PC’s used Microsoft’s operating system called MS-DOS. 

Soon, other companies started making copies of IBM’s small computers, called clones. Microsoft could sell versions of MS-DOS to these companies as well. MS-DOS quickly became the standard operating system for computers all around the world. 

With this success, Microsoft grew like crazy. By the end of 1981, they had 130 employees, and by 1983, nearly 500! Bill was no longer able to know everyone by name, but he was still very involved in everything.

At meetings, Bill expected everyone to work hard and he respected those who stood up for their ideas and defended them. What mattered most to him was finding the best solutions to problems.

Microsoft unveiled its latest software update in 1985 called Windows. What set it apart was a small, tool on the computer screen known as a “mouse.” This tiny device had been around for a while, but for most computer users, it was their first time seeing it. The mouse brought a big change in how people used their computers. 

Before Windows, PC users had to memorize complex commands and type them on a keyboard. But with Windows, things became much easier. They could simply point at pictures on the computer screen. By clicking the mouse on an icon, an entire program would pop up. 

The reason they named their software “Windows” was because it allowed you to have more than one “screen” open at the same time, just like having multiple windows in your room.

In 1986, Bill Gates made an important move by taking Microsoft public. Going public meant that anyone could buy small portions of the company, called “shares” of stock. These shares were bought and sold on what’s called the stock market.

Shares in Microsoft sold very quickly and suddenly overnight Bill Gates became a millionaire. By the following year, the value of Microsoft’s stock had skyrocketed so much that he became a billionaire! 

Eight years after becoming a billionaire, he earned the title of the world’s richest person! He held onto that title for many years, from 1995 to 2007, and once again in 2009. His fortune was worth well over $50 billion. 

When he was thirty-eight, he married Melinda French in Hawaii, and it became famous all around the world. In order to keep it private and avoid people coming to take pictures and watch, they rented out all the hotel rooms on the entire island and even hired all the helicopters so that photographers couldn’t fly over and take pictures.

Later on, they became parents to three kids: Jennifer Katharine, Rory John, and Phoebe Adele.

In 1997, he built a fifty-five thousand square foot home near Seattle Washington that sat on top of a hill with an amazing view of Lake Washington.

To be eco-friendly and save trees, they built the house mainly using old, reclaimed lumber. 

When guests entered the house they could wear a badge with a tiny microchip that contained information about their favorite things.” When a guest entered a room, their favorite music played. The lighting and room temperature are automatically adjusted to suit the person’s tastes. Even their favorite art was displayed on the walls! 

The house had everything you could ever dream of: a game room, a movie theater, and a fully equipped gym. The indoor pool, stretching sixty feet long, had music underwater, and you could dive beneath a glass wall to go outside. There was also a boathouse, a dock, and a guesthouse!

But his absolute favorite part of the house was the giant library. Inside that library, hidden behind a secret wall, was a notebook written by the genius Leonardo da Vinci over five hundred years ago. He paid $30 million to own it!

In the English language, there’s a special word for someone who donates a lot of money to help others: philanthropist. After making a ton of money for many years, Bill started giving away huge amounts of it.

He and his wife started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where they donated billions of dollars from their fortune. Their main question was, “How can we use our resources to help the most people in the best way?”

Back in the early days, every office desk had a typewriter on it. But now, thanks to the computer revolution that Bill Gates led, almost every office desk in the United States has a computer on it … and there’s a computer in almost every home. 

So what do you think about the story of Bill Gates? Pretty fascinating, right? Now when you see a computer and the software (or apps) that run on it you’ll remember one of the geniuses who helped bring it into the world. The world is waiting for new ideas to be born. What are some of your big ideas? Or even little ideas? Big ideas have to start somewhere!

The post History of Bill Gates for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

At the heart of the story of Jesus of Nazareth is a man whose life has left an enduring impact on the world. According to the accounts found in the Gospels, Jesus is said to have led a remarkable life. His life and teachings are always described in letters written by Paul, and he is also mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus.

The Gospels, attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, serve as primary sources, each presenting a unique perspective on Jesus’ life. These accounts are akin to friends sharing their recollections of a significant event, creating a picture of the man and his teachings.

Paul, a prominent figure in the early Christian movement, wrote letters to various communities, discussing Jesus’ life and teachings. His letters provide additional insights into the beliefs and practices of the early followers of Jesus.

The historian Josephus, who lived during the same period, contributed to our understanding of the historical context in which Jesus lived. His writings touch upon various aspects of Jewish history, including references to Jesus.

The story begins with the miraculous birth of Jesus. According to the accounts, Mary, his mother, received a visit from an angel who foretold the birth of a special child. Mary, and the man she was to marry, Joseph, traveled from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem where they were to be taxed by the Roman Empire. In Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to Jesus in a stable for animals because there was no room for them in the inns – or hotels – in the town. Shepherds were believed to have seen an angel and followed a star to the stable where they celebrated the birth of the child they believed would become their king. Later, Wise Men from the Orient visited the child Jesus and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and murr. To this day, Jesus’s birth is celebrated on Christmas and is reenacted in plays and reimagined in different ornaments and artwork to remember the birth of the child. 

As Jesus grew, he gained a reputation for performing miracles. These included healing the sick, turning water into wine, and, in one instance, even bringing a man back to life. These accounts portray Jesus as someone with extraordinary abilities, fostering a belief among many that he possessed unique powers.

Jesus’ teachings form an important part of his legacy. He emphasized principles such as kindness, compassion, and love. One of his well-known teachings is the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This simple yet profound principle advocates treating others with the same kindness and respect one desires for oneself.

His teachings extended to helping those in need, urging his followers to help the hungry, the poor, and the less fortunate. The idea was to cultivate a sense of responsibility and create a world where everyone looks out for one another.

However, according to the accounts of his followers, not everyone embraced Jesus’ message. Powerful figures felt threatened by his teachings, leading to his arrest and subsequent death. Despite the tragic end, his followers believed that Jesus came back to life and his “resurrection” as it was called means that like Jesus others can have life after death.

Following the death of Jesus, his followers (also called disciples), who had been witnesses to Jesus’ teachings and believed in his resurrection, continued to spread his message. They traveled to different regions, carrying the message of love, redemption, and the promise of eternal life. This missionary activity led to the formation of communities of believers who followed the teachings of Jesus and saw him as the promised Messiah. These groups became known as Christians because they believed Jesus was a Savior or Christ who would save them.

The Apostle Paul, in particular, played an important role in the early growth of Christianity. Paul traveled throughout the Mediterranean region teaching about Jesus and bringing new people to the faith, including Greeks and people of all backgrounds and ethnicities.

Paul’s letters, which are now included in the New Testament, taught about Jesus and his missionary journeys. They form the early theology of the belief in Jesus as the Christ.

As the Christian communities grew, they faced both acceptance and opposition. The teachings of Jesus, emphasizing love, compassion, and equality, resonated with many, but they also challenged existing social norms and religious practices. Christians were sometimes persecuted for their beliefs, but this adversity only fueled their commitment to the message of Jesus.

Over the centuries, Christianity continued to evolve, adopting various cultural practices and incorporating diverse ideas. Eventually, it became the new religion of the Roman Empire, which led to its spread across the Empire, Europe, and beyond. Later, Christmas became a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus. Many of the symbols of Christmas today come from the stories of his birth: bright stars and gifts for example.

Today, it is estimated there are over 2 billion Christians worldwide, which are made up of many different types of believers, churches, and denominations – but most are united in the belief in Jesus as a divine being and teacher. But even for those who aren’t believers in Jesus’s divinity, many today accept Jesus as a gifted numbered among Buddha, Confucius, and Gandhi, who have led by their example of how to treat others with kindness and compassion. 

The teachings of Jesus continue to resonate today. You may wonder how what Jesus said and did can apply to your own life. Jesus taught, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” It’s easy to become focused on ourselves, but there’s so much going on outside of us and others want to be treated with the same respect we expect.

We all goof up sometimes, right? Jesus was big on forgiving others (and yourself!). So, if someone messes up, or you make a mistake, don’t be too hard on yourself or others. Learn from it, forgive, and move on. 

Jesus taught about compassion. He said we should “love our neighbor” meaning those around us. He taught that he might even mean someone we don’t necessarily like, and even taught his followers to love their enemies. Little acts of kindness, helping out a friend, or volunteering in your community — that’s like living out Jesus’ message of helping those around you.

It’s cool to be awesome at stuff, but remember, nobody’s perfect. Jesus talked about being humble, which means being real about your strengths and weaknesses. It’s all about learning, growing, and staying down-to-earth. He also taught us not to judge others and to try and see our faults and how we can improve before we try and make judgments of others.

Everyone’s got their own story, right? Jesus was big on respecting everyone, no matter where they come from or who they are. He treated people who were normally shunned like the sick or those who made poor decisions the same as everyone else. He often criticized the leaders who were judgemental and didn’t treat others with kindness. Like Jesus, treating others with respect, no matter the differences is like spreading good vibes everywhere you go.

Life can get pretty hectic, huh? Jesus knew the importance of taking a breather. Often, he took the time to get away from the crowds, pray meditate and clear his head. He often did this in the mountains or quiet places or while he walked from town to town. So, set some boundaries for yourself. Take a break, reflect, and take care of your mental and emotional well-being.

In summary, the story of Jesus of Nazareth transcends religious boundaries, offering valuable lessons that can inspire people from all walks of life to strive for a world characterized by empathy, understanding, and goodwill.

We hope you enjoyed learning about the origins of the Christmas holiday and the story of Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings; however you celebrate the winter holiday whether it be Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Chinese New Year, or one of the other many holidays across the wide world, we wish you a happy holiday and New Year!

The post History of Jesus of Nazareth for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

When Desmond was a little boy, Father Huddleston was walking through Desmond’s neighborhood. This was strange in itself. At the time, blacks in South Africa were required to live only in certain areas. So white men rarely came to Desmond’s neighborhood, unless they were policemen. Father Huddleston was clearly not a policeman: He was dressed strangely, with a stiff white collar and black shirt. Stranger still was what Father Huddleston did: he stopped, tipped his hat, and said a warm “hello” to Desmond’s mother. 

For a white man to treat his mother–a black woman–with kindness and respect was truly remarkable to Desmond, even as a small child. Many white people in South Africa either ignored blacks or were rude, or even cruel to them. Later, Desmond would learn that Father Huddleston worked tirelessly to help make South Africa more fair and kind to its black citizens. But that simple hello in the street showed him that all kinds of people were capable of compassion. All kinds and colors of people were human. And that planted the seed of the idea that he would spend his life striving to make it a reality. The idea of a South Africa where all people, black and white, lived together in a peaceful “rainbow” society.

When Desmond graduated high school after his bout with tuberculosis, he studied to become a teacher. He joined the debate club at his college, where he met Nelson Mandela, a young lawyer, who would become president of South Africa decades later. After graduating, Desmond got a job as a high school English teacher. He met a friend of his sister’s, Leah, who was also studying to be a teacher. The two began dating and decided to marry in 1955.  

But as Desmond was starting out in the world, the country was going through changes that would force him to take a different path than he had planned. South Africa was about to enter a very dark period of its history. Both Desmond and Nelson Mandela would play a big part in helping the country climb out of this period. 

South Africa had long had laws that tried to keep black and white citizens separate from each other. But in 1948, the country elected a government that wanted to be much more strict about making sure these laws were followed. They created a system of laws called Apartheid. They forced blacks to live in certain, limited areas. Blacks had to get special passes if they wanted to visit a white area. They couldn’t own land. They couldn’t vote. Blacks and whites couldn’t marry each other. They couldn’t even go to the same beaches.  

As Desmond and Leah started their life together, things were getting worse. The government passed a law that forced black South Africans to go to separate schools, and then didn’t pay black teachers as much as whites. Desmond and Leah decided to quit teaching. Desmond had been volunteering in their Anglican church and decided to become a priest. Meanwhile, Leah started school to become a nurse. 

Desmond studied to become a priest in South Africa and then in London. When he and his family moved back to South Africa in 1967, he began to speak out against Apartheid, cautiously at first. He wrote about how the church should help solve issues facing blacks in South Africa and beyond. When students at a university protested policies that supported Apartheid, Desmond gently stepped past the police dogs that surrounded the protesters and began to pray with them. Desmond would become known for this warmth and gentleness when facing tense situations.

Desmond was becoming a leader in the church as he spoke out more. He became a bishop, which is a very respected leader in the church. In 1978, he became the leader of the South African Council of Churches, which worked with many different Christian churches throughout South Africa. He was the first black man to hold this influential position. He used it to spread his message even further. He shared his vision of South Africa as a rainbow nation far and wide. 

Desmond was committed to working towards this rainbow society without violence, and even with gentleness and humor. He went to protest marches and committed civil disobedience, such as visiting beaches that were supposed to be whites-only. Civil disobedience is when you protest an unfair law by breaking that law, but in a peaceful way, which could still get you in trouble. And Desmond and other protesters DID get in trouble: Desmond was arrested and fined, and the authorities were violent with many others. 

Desmond also visited other countries, trying to get people around the world to care about the situation in South Africa. He met the Pope and the leader of the United Nations. He even asked leaders of other countries to boycott, or refuse to buy things, from South Africa. When he returned to the country after a speaking tour, the government took away his passport, which meant he couldn’t leave the country. They gave it back a year later, but this would happen a few more times as he traveled the world to speak out against Apartheid. Still, Desmond knew that if the leaders of other countries didn’t put pressure on South Africa’s government, it would be very hard to change things.  

Then, in 1984, Desmond won the Nobel Peace Prize. He gave a speech to accept the prize. In it, he told how Apartheid had caused people to mistrust and hate each other. He told how the police used violence against everyday people and peaceful protesters. He told how South Africa was a beautiful country of rolling mountains and sunshine, where people just wanted to live in peace with their families. He told how Apartheid had made that impossible for blacks and even many whites. 

Many people around the world learned from news coverage what Apartheid was really like for the first time. Governments finally decided to sanction South Africa, meaning they made laws that made it harder for South Africa to buy or sell things to other countries. 

Meanwhile, Desmond returned to South Africa, where he continued to speak and march against Apartheid. The government was starting to listen. Desmond and other activists met with the president of South Africa, Pieter Botha. But he still wasn’t willing to make many changes. 

But Desmond’s influence was growing. People loved to be around this warm, joyful man, who made everyone feel valuable and loved. In 1986, the church made Desmond archbishop of Cape Town. As the archbishop, he got to move into a big, beautiful house set aside for him. This angered the government because the house was in a whites-only area. But Desmond used his superpower and turned a tense situation into an opportunity to show kindness. He had a playground built on the lawn, and let anyone come to play or swim in his pool.

Finally, things began to change. In 1990, a new president was elected. F.W. de Klerk showed signs that he would be willing to end apartheid. He freed Nelson Mandela from prison after nearly thirty years and refused to punish peaceful protesters. After long talks with Mandela, Tutu, and others in the anti-apartheid movement, de Klerk agreed to put an end to Apartheid. 

In the next election, all South Africans were allowed to vote. Black South Africans, voting for the first time, lined up for hours to cast their ballot. Desmond dropped his vote into the ballot box in front of cheering supporters, then jumped up and down, saying he felt two inches taller than when he came in. He said a new South Africa began that day, “where all of us, black and white, will be holding hands and working for a common prosperity.”  Nelson Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa. Today, South Africans commemorate this election every April 27th as Freedom Day. 

But the story didn’t end there. South African society still had a lot of work to do if all people were going to live in peace together. Think of a time when you had a big argument with a sister, brother, or friend. A time when you hurt each other’s feelings. It probably took some time to feel better and learn to be friends again. The whole country of South Africa felt this way. It would take time and work to help everyone feel like they could live and work peacefully together. Apartheid had been in place for more than 50 years. Many black people didn’t trust whites because of how badly they’d been treated. Many white people were afraid that the new government, led by a black man, might treat them just as badly in return. 

But Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu came up with a better plan. They formed a group, which Desmond led, called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They would help South Africans talk to each other. People who had been hurt by the old system would get to tell their stories. And so would people who had hurt others. They would be honest. They would listen to each other. Finally, they would be able to forgive each other.  

As Desmond put it, “I am human because you are human. My humanity is caught up in yours.” It’s important to remember when we’re angry with someone, they are still a person, just like us. We have to live with other people. Saying I’m sorry is one of the hardest things you ever have to do if you mean it. And waiting for someone to say they’re sorry to you is just as hard. But things start to get better right afterward. 

Sources

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/truth_and_reconciliation

https://www.history.com/topics/africa/apartheid

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1984/tutu/biographical/

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1984/tutu/lecture/

https://passiontounderstand.blogspot.com/2010/04/this-day-in-history-27-april-1994.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africas-tutu-anti-apartheid-hero-who-never-stopped-fighting-rainbow-nation-2021-12-26/

https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2022/01/01/10-memorable-quotes-by-desmond-tutu.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_South_African_general_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_Education_Act,_1953

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._W._de_Klerk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_laws

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

The post Life and History of Desmond Tutu For Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Can you imagine what it would be like to not be able to see or hear? Your world would be completely dark and silent. How would you talk to your friends and family? How would you eat? How would you walk around the house and play with your friends? Tonight we are going to talk about a girl who lived most of her life without being able to see or hear. This is the amazing story of Helen Keller!

Birth

Helen Keller was born June 27, 1880, in Alabama. She was a healthy child and lived a pretty normal life for her first year. She learned to talk at 6 months old and walked like most kids when she was 1. When she was 19 months old she became very sick. After she was well her mother noticed she couldn’t see or hear anything. Helen had permanently lost her sight and hearing. Close your eyes again and cover your ears. This is how Helen lived and it was very difficult for her to cope with life afterward. Imagine trying to walk around the house or eat your dinner. Imagine trying to go outside and play and do basic things like play with your toys or friends. Because Helen couldn’t hear her ability to speak never improved, so she wasn’t able to talk to people in her family. All of these challenges led to Helen acting out in ways that made life for her and her family even harder. If you put yourself in Helen’s shoes you can think of how hard it would be to act normal under such circumstances. 

Helen would often kick and pinch her family members. When she was angry she would fall on the floor and screen and yell. At the dinner table, she grabbed food off their plates. The family felt so bad for Helen that they let her do whatever she wanted. They didn’t know how to deal with a child who couldn’t see or hear. Some friends and family said they should send her away, because she was causing so much trouble for the family, but her parents loved her too much to do that.

Anne Sullivan

One day her mother was reading about another child who was blind, but received help by Alexander Graham Bell. Alexander Graham Bell was also known for the invention of the telephone. They met Bell, who recommended them to a school called The Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts. They traveled there, and for the first time met Anne Sullivan. Anne Sullivan agreed to move to Alabama to help Helen.

Anne first taught Helen sign language. Sign language is where you move your hands and fingers in different ways to communicate words. For example, if you want to say “you” you point. If you want to eat you move toward your mouth with your fingers. But, of course, this didn’t work for Helen, so they tried to spell words into Helen’s hand so she could feel them. But Helen didn’t understand and became frustrated. One day at the dinner table yelled and started grabbing everyone’s food off their plates. Anne took control of the situation and had everyone leave the room. This made Helen even madder, but Anne was determined to show her that even when she threw tantrums she wouldn’t get what she wanted. Before she could improve at sign language, she’d need to learn some basic discipline. 

Anne soon realized that the only way to teach Helen would be to live somewhere else. So they got in a carriage and rode circles around the family’s home for a while and then stopped at a small home nearby. They did this so Helen thought they had traveled very far, when really they were living around the corner. But it was important for Helen to know only Anne was around, so she’d have to rely on her to learn. 

One day Anne had the idea to put Helen’s hand under the water to let her feel it first. Then she held her hand and spelled W-A-T-E-R into it with sign language. She did this over and over until it clicked for Helen that she could use these signs to communicate with others. She spelled the word back into Anne’s hand. Helen became very excited! By that evening they learned 30 new words! Once Helen could learn to communicate, she wasn’t as frustrated. Often when someone else is angry or acts out in ways we don’t understand, they may do this because they aren’t understood. Before you judge others and criticize them, first try to understand why they may be behaving this way. Anne did this with Helen and it completely changed her life.

With Anne’s help, Helen continued to learn new signs and eventually learned to read books using braille. Braille is bumps on a page that represent words. When a person cannot see they feel the words instead. For example, the letter “A” is a single dot and the letter “B” is two dots. 

Attending School

Helen also attended a school in Boston for other children who were deaf. She really wanted to be able to speak and for many years worked on improving this ability. She was also determined to go to college, but it was very expensive so she wasn’t sure how to make it happen. Around this time she met Mark Twain, the famous American author who wrote books like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. They became friends and Twain introduced her to a wealthy friend who decided to pay for her college. Helen attended and later graduated college, a major achievement for someone who was deaf and especially for someone who was deaf and blind. 

Charitable Acts

Helen later wrote a book about her life and traveled and spoke to others about her experiences and ways to improve the world for people with disabilities. She also spoke in favor of women being able to vote. Soon people all over the world knew about Helen Keller and listened to her speak and read her books. In 1920 she helped start the American Civil Liberties Union. 

Over the years, Helen traveled to 35 different countries, sharing her ideas and spreading her influence to others who were inspired by her incredible life. 

Helen once said:

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

She also said:

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

Conclusion

Spend some time thinking about what it would be like to live like Helen. Do you know anyone who can’t see or hear? When you try to see the world the way someone else does, we call this “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”, it helps you to understand them. Often we get caught up in our own little world and realize that the world is made up of people with many different life situations and experiences. When you get the chance, look up sign language symbols and letters and try to learn a few. It can be a lot of fun! 

Think of the challenges Helen faced and think of your own challenges. It may not be obvious, but everyone has their own struggles and their own challenges. Spend some time thinking about yours, and what you might do to change your situation. You also may realize there are some things you just can’t change. For example, Helen wasn’t able to change the fact that she couldn’t see or hear. You may have similar challenges. You may be stuck in a place you don’t like or with someone who is hard to be around. Or maybe you have physical disabilities like Helen. But remember, even though you can’t always change your situation, you can change how you react to it. Helen couldn’t make herself see, but she could learn new ways to communicate. She learned sign language and learned braille, so she could read. She learned how to type, so she could write books. Everyone has their own unique challenges, so it is up to YOU to come up with a plan for how you can act and improve your situation. And this will often mean asking for help, and that is ok, too!

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But if someone had asked a young Frederick Douglass these questions, he wouldn’t have been able to answer some of them.  Frederick was born into slavery in the early 19th century, in the state of Maryland. Not only was he considered the property of his white master, but many other things were also denied to him and his fellow enslaved workers. Frederick never knew his birthday, or exactly how old he was. He never knew his father, though there were rumors that his master was his father. He barely knew his mother: she was forced to work on a farm miles away from Frederick. She wanted so badly to see her son that, whenever she could, she would walk for miles after a long day of fieldwork to visit him late at night. Sadly, these visits stopped when Frederick was seven. He would only learn later that his mother had died.

This was how life looked for millions of enslaved people at the time. Birthdays and close family members are important parts of who we are, but slave masters didn’t want their slaves to have these connections. They didn’t want them to learn to read or write. Family, birthdays, and books might give the enslaved worker things to care about and hope for that had nothing to do with working for their master from dawn til dusk, and work was what the master wanted.

Not long after his mother passed away, Frederick’s grandmother took him to a different plantation. Once there, the master made her leave. Frederick stayed. At 8 years old, he would get a taste of what life as an enslaved worker was like. He was given two long shirts to wear, but no pants, shoes, or even a blanket. He slept on the floor, sometimes stealing a flour sack to keep warm under. He saw the grown-ups go off to the fields to work before dawn, and not return until it was dark, so tired they were ready to collapse. He saw his aunt whipped for talking to a man she liked.

But soon, Frederick’s enslaver decided he’d be of better use elsewhere. He sent Frederick to live with his relatives in Baltimore, Hugh, and Sophia Auld. There, he would live in a house and be given better clothes to wear. But this wasn’t exactly a privilege: Frederick was going there to be a servant to the Auld’s son. 

Still, for a brief time, Frederick got a glimpse of a better life. But the nice house, the big, bustling city, and the real clothes were just a small part of that better life. His new mistress, Sophia Auld, gave him something far more valuable than those things..in fact, more valuable than even she realized. She taught him to read. 

Sophia Auld did not come from a family that kept slaves. She didn’t know it was illegal to teach them to read, and maybe she didn’t realize what a powerful thing reading was. But she was delighted to see how quickly Frederick learned, and he loved his lessons. 

Hugh Auld was not so pleased. He scolded Sophia that reading would ruin Frederick as a slave. He thought, like many other slaveholders, that if slaves knew how to read they might learn about ideas that made them question slavery. They might start thinking about freedom and democracy. They might rebel or run away. 

Sadly, Sophia came around to her husband’s way of thinking. She stopped teaching Frederick. She became distant and cold. Frederick wrote later that “slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me.” It made her less kind and less human.

Hugh Weld was right about one thing though. Reading gave Frederick power.  Like many enslaved people, Frederick had wished for freedom even before he could read. But in books, he found people who argued that he deserved freedom, who said he was just as human as any white person. He learned about people and ideas that gave him the strength to keep hoping – for his own freedom and that of all enslaved people. 

Frederick didn’t want to stop learning. He befriended white children in the streets of Baltimore. He convinced them to help him with his reading and writing. Like Sophia, they didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to. They saw Frederick as just another little boy. Many of these children were hungry and poor, so Frederick would take a little extra bread from the Auld’s kitchen to share with them. By the time he was 12, he convinced many of these children that he should be free when he grew up, just like them. They could see what the grown-ups all around them couldn’t: Frederick was a child just like them, and he deserved the same freedom they had. 

Eventually, Frederick was sent to work on Hugh’s brother’s farm. Thomas Auld was far more strict than Hugh, and he and Frederick clashed from the beginning. Frederick would sometimes let Thomas’s horse run off. He knew the horse would always wander to a particular neighbor’s house, and that neighbor would give Frederick a good meal when he went to retrieve the horse. But maybe he secretly wished that escape could be so easy for him. Thomas soon got tired of this behavior. He thought he knew how to teach Frederick to be obedient and meek. He sent him to live with a man named Edward Covey. 

Covey was the worst person yet. He wasn’t a new master, who just wanted Frederick to work and obey his orders. Covey’s job was to break slaves who weren’t behaving the way their regular masters wanted. He worked Frederick harder than any other master had, and punished him more cruelly. He whipped and beat him almost daily. But Frederick stayed strong. He never gave in, and finally, one day, he had had enough. He fought back. The two fought with each other for hours, but finally, Covey gave in. From that day on, Frederick knew he could stand up to even the worst treatment. More than that, he knew he could escape.

Frederick was sent back to the Aulds in Baltimore. He had one goal now: to free himself. To go north, where he could make his own decisions and fight for the rights of others to do the same. 

In Baltimore, he met a free black woman named Anna. The two fell in love, but Frederick didn’t want anything to get in the way of his goal of freedom. He told Anna he would marry her when he was a free man.

Finally, he found a friend who was willing to help. The friend was a free black sailor in Baltimore, and he let Frederick use his identification papers. Wearing a rumpled sailor uniform that didn’t quite fit, Frederick got on a train to Delaware, then a ship to Philadelphia and freedom. He settled in New York and sent word to Anna to join him.

Freedom for himself wasn’t enough though. Frederick knew that millions of other enslaved people still suffered – children without mothers who didn’t have enough to eat or wear; grownups who worked every moment of the day with no pay and no choices in life. He began to speak against slavery, and in August of 1841, he traveled to a meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Someone in the hot, crowded meeting hall had heard him speak before and urged Frederick to address the meeting. 

Frederick was nervous because he’d never spoken in front of such a large group. His voice shook. But soon after he began, he saw the sympathetic expressions on the faces in the audience. He told about his struggles to learn to read and about the harsh treatment he’d endured under Edward Covey. How he didn’t know his age or birthday, and never really knew his mother.

After that, Frederick joined the Anti-Slavery Society and began to tour the free states, speaking about his experience. His perspective was valuable since many in the North had not witnessed slavery up close. He wrote his autobiography, revealing the terrible things he and other enslaved people experienced every day.

None of this was safe or easy. Having his name in newspapers and pamphlets, then on a published book, meant that people in the south might realize who he was, and Frederick’s old master might send slave catchers to kidnap and bring him back. After his book came out, Frederick traveled to England. In England, all people were free. Frederick spoke to groups there about American slavery, convincing many British people to speak out against the system. Two English friends raised money to buy Frederick’s freedom. For 710 dollars and 96 cents, the Aulds officially gave Frederick the freedom he’d known all along was his right. 

Frederick returned to America as a free man in 1847. By this time, many Americans were starting to think that they would never be able to resolve their differences about slavery peacefully. Civil War broke out in 1861 between the Northern, free states, and slaveholding states in the South. Frederick knew this conflict would determine the fate of the millions of people still enslaved in America. 

Frederick was one of the most famous men in America by now. He met with President Lincoln in the White House and helped convince him to allow black men to fight in the Union army. He then recruited black men to fight, including two of his sons. He attended Lincoln’s second inauguration, and when he was turned away at the door for a reception afterward, Lincoln insisted the guards let him in. Lincoln asked Frederick his opinion of his speech, saying there was “no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours.” Frederick told the president that it “was a sacred effort.”

Frederick lived three more decades after the civil war. He kept working to help black people get to vote, get their education, and enjoy the rights that had been denied them for so long.

Frederick was born enslaved–denied a mother, a birthday, and his freedom. He was taught to read almost by accident, and that one forbidden activity opened a world of ideas–of freedom, justice, and opportunity to him. He discovered that words were powerful. With his speeches and writing, Frederick opened the minds and hearts of masses of people, even a president, to the experiences of enslaved people. He made them see these people as people, made them care, and made them act. Frederick’s voice may have shaken at first, but it grew strong and clear and deep. And it could never be broken. 

Sources

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/frederick-douglass/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7716878/

https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/confronting-a-president-douglass-and-lincoln.htm

Douglass, Frederick. (1845) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Anti-Slavery Office, Boston. 

Pinkney, Andrea Davis. (2012) Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America. Disney, New York.

The post History of Frederick Douglass for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Imagine you live in a beautiful mansion, with green lawns, swaying, leafy trees, and pleasant gardens surrounding it. You and your family have everything you need: nice clothes, books, and toys, good food. You don’t have to work for anything. Sometimes your parents make you do chores, but you suspect it’s really just to teach you some lesson about the importance of hard work.  After all, you have servants to take care of the hard work. 

This was the life that Sarah and Angelina Grimke were born into, alongside their 12 siblings. Sarah was one of the older children in the family, while Angelina was the youngest. Their father, a judge in South Carolina who had fought in the American Revolution, believed in discipline and hard work. He had his children work out in the fields with those servants, to teach them that hard work was important. 

What he didn’t count on though, was that Sarah would learn a different lesson from these chores. She didn’t believe her father really valued the hard work of these servants. She knew that he didn’t even pay them. Instead, the hundreds of workers who tended the cotton fields–the source of much of the Grimke family’s wealth–were slaves. 

Sarah’s Drive to Bring Change

Sarah didn’t just learn that these enslaved workers had a hard job though. She learned that the African Americans working beside her were real people, with minds and feelings, hopes and desires, just like hers. She saw how poorly her family treated them, forcing them to work long days, dealing out harsh punishments, and forbidding the children from going to school. 

Sarah decided to try to change things. She taught bible lessons to the enslaved children in the area. She wanted to teach them to read the scriptures for themselves, but her parents wouldn’t let her. Instead, she taught her own servant, a girl named Hetty, to read. They would close the door to her room late at night and quietly go over the lessons in Sarah’s schoolbooks. When her parents found out, they were furious. In early 19th century South Carolina, it was against the law to teach a slave to read, and her father agreed with that law. 

Sarah felt trapped. She wanted to become a lawyer, and secretly went about studying her father’s law books. But of course, Judge Grimke didn’t approve of this either. He knew his daughter was smart and capable, but thought, like most people at the time, that women should be wives and mothers. 

Sarah wanted to do something different, but as a child, she had very little opportunity to do what she wanted. When her little sister Angelina was born, she thought she saw a chance to change things. She begged her parents to let her be the baby’s godmother, and they gave in. She promised she would always cherish and protect her sister. It was the beginning of a lifelong bond between the two–the sisters were so close that Angelina even called Sarah “mother.” 

What Sarah didn’t tell her parents was that she would also make sure that little Angelina not only knew the value of hard work, but the value of the people doing that work. 

Angelina turned out to be an enthusiastic student of Sarah’s teachings. She was curious, confident, and sometimes stubborn. Like Sarah, she was upset by the poor treatment of the enslaved people who served their meals, cleaned their house, and worked long hours in the cotton fields.  

As Sarah got older, she wasn’t what she could do to help end slavery. She began to lose hope that she could ever change things. She no longer tried to teach slaves to read, because her father had nearly whipped Hetty for her lessons. But she knew deep down that she needed to help. By the time she reached her twenties, her friends and family began to worry that she would never marry. They thought this would turn her into a sad, bitter old woman. They were wrong: Sarah would find meaning and purpose in her life, but not by getting married and having children. 

Sarah Grimke and the Quakers

In 1819, Sarah went with her sick father to Philadelphia to get medical treatment. While there, his condition took a turn for the worse. The treatment didn’t help, and he passed away. While he was sick, a group of Christians called Quakers helped Sarah take care of him. They were quiet, simple, and kind people. Sarah became friends with some of them and learned that they also believed slavery was wrong. She stayed with a Quaker family for a time after her father’s death, and returned home with books they’d given her. 

When Sarah returned from Philiadelphia, her feelings that slavery was wrong began to grow. Not only that, she missed her life in Philadelphia , and wanted to become a Quaker. So a few years later, she did just that. Her antislavery views had not made her popular in South Carolina, and had even caused her to argue with her family. She returned to Philadelphia in 1821.

In the meantime, Angelina rebelled against her parent’s views. She refused to join her mother’s church, instead joining another church where the minister was against slavery. Unfortunately, many members of the church were in favor of it. Angelina was kicked out after she spoke against slavery at a church meeting.

By 1829, Angelina was also growing frustrated with the way things worked in South Carolina. She decided to join Sarah in Philadelphia, and also converted to Quakerism. The sisters’ faith would guide their thinking about slavery and the role of women in society for the rest of their lives. But just because they were in the north, where slavery was illegal, that doesn’t mean they stayed out of trouble! 

Soon after arriving in Philadelphia, Angelina wrote a letter that landed her in hot water with their Quaker friends. The letter was to William Lloyd Garrison, who published an abolitionist newspaper. Abolitionists were antislavery activists. But unlike some activists who believed slavery was wrong and should end someday, the abolitionists thought it should end NOW. Angelina praised Garrison’s work, saying that she believed abolition was a cause worth suffering, even dying for. Garrison published the letter in his newspaper. When Angelina’s fellow Quakers saw it, they were not happy.

Even though the Quakers were against slavery, their rules said that their whole community needed to agree to something before speaking out publically. They also thought that some of Angelina’s words seemed to support violence in the fight against slavery, and Quakers never supported violence. But Angelina stood behind her words, and Sarah supported her. At this point, Sarah was also frustrated with the church–she had tried for years to become a minister, but the church didn’t support her. The sisters left the Quaker church, staying true to their personal beliefs.

Angelina, the Abolitionist

Angelina’s letter attracted attention though. The American Anti-Slavery Society invited them to a speaker training in New York City.  It was there that Angelina met her future husband, Theodore Weld. Soon, abolitionist groups were contacting the sisters, asking them to speak at meetings and events. At first, they only spoke to audiences of women, but as they became more well-known, they began speaking to audiences of men and women. This was scandalous in the early 19th century. People thought that women shouldn’t speak in public. Ministers chided them, even calling Angelina “devil-ina.” 

But the Grimke sisters gained a following. Many in the northern United States had never seen slavery close up, so they didn’t really know what it was like. Some northerners thought the abolitionists must be exaggerating how bad it was. Sarah and Angelina had seen it close up, and could tell the doubters just how bad it really was. 

Angelina wrote a book aimed at Christian southern women, urging them to do what they could to end slavery. 

“I know you do not make the laws,” she wrote, “but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do; and if you really suppose you can do nothing to overthrow slavery, you are greatly mistaken.”

Angelina’s argument was simple, but powerful: The bible teaches that you should treat people how you want to be treated yourself. That’s called the Golden Rule, and it’s part of many other religions as well. No slave owner would say they want to be a slave, so how can they justify enslaving others? She told women to teach slaves to read and free them if they were the owners. 

With her book, Angelina angered both pro-slavery southerners, and northerners who believed women belonged at home. Sarah, her wise older sister and protector, knew she had to find a way to support Angelina. So, she wrote her own book!

In her book, Sarah took on her sister’s critics. She argued that women should be given the same education, pay, freedoms and rights as men. She said that both men and women would be better off if women were treated as equals, rather than as inferior to men. 

The Grimke sisters could have stayed in South Carolina, in that beautiful house with the green grass and swaying trees. They could have married wealthy husbands and lived in luxury. But they realized that choice would harm the enslaved people forced to work their land. They knew they would be partly responsible for that horrible treatment if they stayed. 

Happily, both of the Grimke sisters lived long lives, and saw the end of slavery in the United States following the Civil War. It had been a long and difficult path, and there was still a long way to go before all people had equal rights. The Grimke sisters began to help forge that path the moment they stepped out of that big, white mansion and into the wider world.

Sources

https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/grimke-sisters.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Moore_Grimk%C3%A9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelina_Grimk%C3%A9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimk%C3%A9_sisters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Faucheraud_Grimk%C3%A9

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Early Days of Wangari Maathai

This is the world Wangari Maathai knew as a child. Born in the rainy season in the highlands of Kenya to a farming family, she spent a lot of time outdoors. She learned to observe the natural world: the rains, the rocks, the plants, and animals. She grew her own garden, diligently tending her crops. She fetched water from a spring where it bubbled up out of the ground and found hideaways behind forest plants. She learned how the rain fed her family’s crops, which fed her family and provided them with income when they sold the excess. She learned how that rain flowed down to rivers, providing clean drinking water for people and animals. 

She learned to respect nature because it could be dangerous. Animals hid in the forest – leopards and elephants. She learned to care for it because it could also be fragile. Human beings could easily throw things out of balance by taking more than they needed from them, or not protecting what they gave them.  

When she was eight, Wangari left her little farming village. Her mother took her and her older brothers to the nearby town of Nyeri so her brothers could go to school. In the 1940s, girls in Kenya rarely went to school. Wangari went along so that she could help her mother around the house with cooking and cleaning. But within weeks of their arrival, it became clear that this plan would never work. Wangari asked her older brothers about what they were learning each day when they got home from school. Soon, one of the brothers asked their mother why she couldn’t just go to school too.  Her mother decided this wasn’t a bad idea, and soon, Wangari was going off to school each day too.

Wangari loved school and did well. She especially loved learning about the living world, the plants, and the animals that had been her constant companions when she lived in her small farming village. She graduated high school in 1959 but didn’t want to stop. As unusual as it was for a girl to finish high school in Kenya at that time, it was almost unheard of for one to go on to college. But Wangari heard about a program that sent Kenyan students to the United States for college. She applied and got a scholarship! Wangari was off to study at Mount Saint Scholastica College in Kansas. 

Educational Adventures of Wangari Maathai

The 1960s were a time of big social changes in the United States. Women and African Americans were fighting for rights that they had been denied for a long time. They wanted equal opportunities to work and go to school, and they wanted unfair laws to be struck down. It was an exciting time, and Wangari embraced the ideals of equality and freedom. She went on to get a Master’s degree in biology at the University of Pittsburgh before returning to Kenya.

While she was gone, Kenya had gone through some big changes of its own. The country had been controlled by the British empire since the 1920s, but in 1963, it gained its independence. When Wangari returned, she came back to a country that was finally run by its own people. Wangari was excited to be a part of her country’s history. She hoped she could help it become a place where all people have equal rights and opportunities.

But, Wangari still wasn’t done learning. She began studying to become a veterinary doctor at the University of Nairobi. She became the first woman in East Africa to earn such an advanced degree! She began working as a professor at the university, teaching others about veterinary medicine. 

Working Towards Democracy

Even though she was busy working at her job and starting a family by this time, Wangari kept thinking about how she could help make her country reach the ideals of democracy and equality. She took time to notice the problems facing the people of Kenya. One thing she noticed was that the lush, green hillsides she had explored as a child, the forests that had first taught her about the natural world, had changed. So many trees had been cut down that the land looked bare. Under British rule, people had cut down huge swaths of forest to make way for crops that could be sold for lots of money overseas, like coffee and tea. For someone who loved nature, like Wangari, this was a sad thing, but she knew it wasn’t just a problem for the trees. This deforestation was a problem for people too. 

Trees help the land in many ways. They provide shade on hot days and grow fruit that people and animals eat. With their deep, spreading roots, they keep the soil on mountainsides from washing away in the rain. With so many trees gone, the rainy season no longer meant good crops and drinking water. Instead, the rain washed all the best soil down the hillsides, and into the rivers below. This made it harder to grow crops, so farmers couldn’t earn enough money to support themselves. It also made the rivers dirty, so the water wasn’t good to drink. With fewer trees, people had to walk farther to find firewood, which made it harder to cook meals.

These problems especially affected women, because they were the ones who went to fetch water and firewood. They had to walk further and further to find clean water and large trees. 

Wangari wanted to help return her country to the beautiful, green landscape she’d known as a child, and, at the same time, fix the problems that deforestation had caused. If she could help people plant trees, they would also be able to grow more crops, so they could earn enough money to live off of. They would be able to find clean water and firewood nearby. 

Wangari worked with a women’s group to pay women in rural areas of the country to plant trees. This helped with both deforestation and poverty since these women now earned a little bit of money to help their families. She taught women all over Kenya how to plant trees in nurseries, then transplant them into wild areas. At the same time, she taught them about how trees helped keep the land and their communities healthy. She called this project the Green Belt Movement because they planted trees in rows that would look like long, green belts across the land.

At first, the Kenyan government didn’t like Wangari’s movement. Didn’t like that a woman was taking charge, didn’t like that people planting trees weren’t professional foresters, and didn’t like that she helped poor people take control of their lives. Many in the government thought it would be better to make money for themselves by selling the deforested land to people who wanted to build on it. Wangari was attacked, beaten, and arrested.  But she never gave up. The Green Belt Movement planted millions of trees in Kenya. Hillsides became green again. Trees helped hold soil in place so it didn’t wash away into the rivers, making them mucky and brown. 

Wangari was even elected to Kenya’s parliament in 1997. She got 98% of the vote, which is very unusual for an election! Later, she was made minister of the environment. She helped make policies that would ensure long-lasting change and protection for the environment. Wangari felt that protecting the environment was a critical part of keeping people healthy and provided for. She had seen how the trees planted by the Green Belt Movement helped people out of poverty, cleaned up rivers, and made the soil healthy again. 

Over time, Wangari’s movement started to mean more than just trees. People started to see that it was about helping people who were suffering, and when you do that, you create a more peaceful society. When people have what they need, they can help others too. They also saw that the small act of tree-planting, when many people did it, had a huge impact. This is how democracy works too: when enough people vote or speak out, small acts can amount to big changes.  Kenya was working towards becoming a democracy during this time, so this was an important idea to spread. The trees planted by the Green Belt Movement became symbols, reminding people of how they could overcome their differences, make better decisions together as a country, and live in peace.

Nobel Peace Prize

In 2004, Wangari received a huge honor. She won the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Nobel Peace Prize recognizes someone who has done big things to support peace between countries or help people who were suffering. With her trees, Wangari had helped end suffering for people in Kenya and create a healthy environment where they could live peacefully for years to come. She did this even while she faced serious opposition from her own government. She worked not only to improve the natural environment but to guide her country towards democracy so that everyone could have a voice in how things were run. 

Wangari became ill and passed away in 2011, but the movement she started continues. They still plant trees in Kenya, but also partner with other groups around the world to plant trees and tackle other problems like climate change and inequality. Even though the world faces a lot of big problems, it’s important to remember that even small acts can lead to big change, if enough people do them. There are so many things you can do to help, too! Plant a tree, donate food to a food pantry, or just say a kind thing to someone.  If you do it, maybe someone else will too. All these little acts add up, bringing us closer, as Wangari put it, to “a time when we have shed our fear and give hope to each other.” 

Sources

https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/kenya

http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ 

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2004/maathai/lecture/

https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1860/14.%20Kenya%20Country%20Profile.pdf

Crayton, Lisa A (2020). Wangari Maathai: Get to Know the Woman Who Planted Trees to Bring Change. Capstone, North Mankato, MN

Maathai, Wangari (2006) Unbowed. Random House, New York.

Swanson, Jennifer (2018) Environmental Activist Wangari Maathai. Lerner Publishing, Minneapolis.

The post History of Wangari Maathai for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Imagine that you are living in South America in the 1940s.  Life is fun in Argentina, the country where you live, but also hard for your family and for many people you know.  Most people are poor and cannot find jobs that pay well.  The jobs that your aunts, uncles and parents have don’t pay very much.  And so people are not feeling very hopeful about their futures.  There is a lot of talk in the evenings about what people can do to make life better.  

You listen to what the adults talk about and one day, you go into the city with your mother and hear someone speaking on stage.  It is a famous woman who comes out.  She is dressed well and speaks with great passion about what should be done to make the lives of regular people better.  “Who is that?” you ask your mother.  “It is the president’s wife,” your mother responds.  “Her name is Eva Peron and she is a great saviour of our country, Argentina.”

Eva Peron was the wife of the president of Argentina in the 1940s.  She became very famous because she was good at speaking in public and she was passionate about helping poor people of her country.  People loved her and felt that she played a big role in improving the lives of the people of the time.  But Eva Peron was not always rich and famous.  She was actually born into a poor family, which helped her to understand the struggles of being poor. 

Eva Peron was born in May 1919 in Los Toldos, Argentina.  When she was born, her name was actually Maria Eva Duarte.  She was born to a poor family.  She grew up in poverty, meaning that she didn’t have a lot of money or access to good things in life.  She had three siblings, but her closest was a sister named Erminda and together, the two girls dreamt of becoming famous actresses.  They made up plays together and put them on for their parents and friends. 

Her mother was named Juana Ibaguren and her father was named Juan Duarte.  Unfortunately, when Eva was 7 years old, her dad died suddenly.  Everyone was very upset and their money problems suddenly got much worse.  Eva’s dad had previously been married and when he died, all of his money went to his first wife and children. Juana Ibaguren and her children were now even more poor than before.

Eva and her family struggled to have enough to eat and pay rent for their home.  So the older children had to get jobs to help earn money.  The family moved to Junin, a city in the Province of Buenos Aires in 1930.  The older children took jobs as teachers and cooks.  Eva’s mother also started taking in boarders, or people who pay money to stay at a home and be fed meals.  Eva’s mother also earned money by cooking and sewing clothes.

When Eva was 15 years old, she needed to get a job as well to contribute and bring in money.  But instead of taking one of the jobs that were available in their town, Eva did not lose sight of her dream to become an actress.  She decided to move to the big city of Buenos Aires to become an actress.  She packed her bags and caught a bus into the city.  There she found a cheap boarding house to stay at and she started trying out at various theatre houses for auditions.  

Eva was a talented actress and a beautiful young girl.  She found work at a number of theatre companies and landed roles in plays that they were performing.  While she was a teenager, Eva was in many plays and theatre productions and and even landed her first film role, or role on TV.  She also got a contract, or paid position, performing as a voice actress on the radio. 

Eva made a good amount of money as an actress and when she was about 20 years old, she decided to invest her money in starting a business.  To invest means to use your money to try to make more money.  Eva’s new business was an entertainment business called “the Company of the Theatre of the Air.”  In her new business, Eva produced radio programs like the ones she had acted in. 

At first business was difficult and stressful, but over time Eva had great success: she made a deal to create a special radio series in which she would act like famous women in history.  She was very excited to get the chance to play famous historical figures like Queen Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great.

When Eva was in her early 20s, she met a man that would dramatically change her life.  He was an older man named Juan Peron.  Juan was a colonel in the army and a government official.  They met in Buenos Aires and fell in love.  It wasn’t long before Juan asked Eva to marry him and they got married in 1945.  

Only one year later, Juan became the president of Argentina!  Can you imagine what it would be like to go from being an actress with a radio program to the president’s wife within one year?  That must certainly have been a wild time for Eva.  

Eva became a very powerful influence on Juan’s politics.  Influence means the power to shape how things are. Eva used her position as first lady to fight for causes she believed in.  This included fighting for women to have the right to vote and improving the lives of poor people in her country.  She also had a lot of influence over health andworker’s policies in the government while Juan was president. 

Because Eva was a voice actress on the radio, she was very good at speaking .. and very good at speaking in front of crowds. People who heard her speak liked listening to her a lot.  She spoke about all the ways that she wanted to help poor people make their lives better.  Eva started giving speeches while her husband was president.. And people loved her!  She was very easy to listen to and poor people who heard her speak loved to hear her message about how the president planned to help them.  

Eva became very popular.  Everywhere she went, people knew who she was and were very excited about her messages of hope for the future.  She became even more famous and she used her fame to continue spreading her message around the country of Argentina.  She spent about 5 years doing this and her popularity grew and grew.

Unfortunately, Eva started to experience health problems.  She wanted to continue working to help her fellow people of Argentina and to help poor people.  But unfortunately she got sicker and sicker and soon she was not able to work.  The people of Argentina were very sad when they learned that she was sick.  They brought her flowers and chanted her name.  They knew that she had helped them so much and they wished she would get well and stay with them for years to come. 

Eva made her last appearance in front of a crowd June 1952, when her husband was elected president for a second term.  She passed away the following month from cancer.  She was given a large funeral and millions of people showed up to say farewell.  It showed how much support Eva had from the Argentine people at the time. 

Eva Peron is a famous person in her home country of Argentina and around the world still today.  Many people are fascinated by the story of how a poor girl became a famous political power house.  Her life story has been made into a number of books, films and plays.  This includes a famous play called Evita in 1979. The most famous song is “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” and made her legacy even more known across the world.

Spend some time thinking about Eva and her life. Growing up, her life wasn’t easy but rather than sitting around and feeling sorry for herself, she started working and practicing to become an actress. It took time for her skills to grow and for her business to take off, but she stuck with it until it became successful. And when Eva became successful and the wife of the President, she used her power and influence for good. She spoke out for people who had less people, those who couldn’t vote or who were poor. Even though most of us don’t have the same power as Eva, we can use what we have to help others. This may mean donating clothes or food or money to help those in need. Our family likes to go to a place where we prepare and box food for people in need. Ask your parents if there’s a place like this near you where you can volunteer your time. Every little bit helps and makes the world a better place like Eva Peron strived for herself!

The post History of Eva Peron for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Have you ever looked at paper money and wondered about the people whose pictures are on the bills in your country?  Most countries have images of important people from history on their coins and bills.  In America, most of the bills contain images of past presidents who did important things.  But as you know, from listening to this podcast, there are many people throughout history who have done important things that are not presidents!

This is why right now, in the United States, the government is working on plans to have the $20 bill redesigned.  The new version of the bill will have a picture of a woman that not everyone knows.  But she was an important person in American history.  Her name is Harriet Tubman.  When the bill goes into circulation, she will be the first African-American woman to be featured on American money. 

Who was Harriet Tubman?

Harriet Tubman was a human rights activist and former slave.  She fought during her lifetime for the end of slavery.  This is known as “abolition.”  She helped many people escape slavery during her lifetime.  She helped them get to freedom through a secret route called the “Underground Railroad.”  But let’s go back in time and see how she became such an amazing woman.

Birth

Harriet Tubman was born in 1820 in Maryland.  Her original name when she was born was Araminta Harriet Ross.  She had 8 brothers and sisters and her parents were slaves.  Her parents gave her the nickname “Minty” which was short for Araminta.  

Minty’s life as a child was hard because she lived in slave conditions.  A “slave” is the legal property of another person and forced to obey them.  Minty loved her family, but they were separated when she was young.  Three of her sisters were sold to a different families and moved to the south to work on cotton plantation farms.  As slaves, Minty and her family often suffered violence.  Minty was beaten as a child by her “owners” which caused her to have injuries that lasted her whole life. 

Minty was inspired by her father, who spoke out when their “owners” wanted to separate their family even further.  They were planning to sell Minty’s younger brother to a different family to work on their farm, by Minty’s dad didn’t want any more of his children sent away.  Her father resisted this and was successful.  To “resist” means to stand up against an action that you don’t believe in. Watching her father stand up for his family set a strong example that inspired Minty. 

When she was a teenager, Minty was hurt very badly.  She had been sent to the store to buy supplies for the farm and she came across a slave that had left the fields where he worked without permission.  The man’s “overseer” told Minty to help him get the runaway slave back.  She would not help.  The man threw a large weight at her and it hit her in the head.  She had headaches and trouble sleeping for the rest of her life. 

These experiences as a child and seeing how African-American people around her were treated inspired Minty to want to help end slavery as an adult. 

John Tubman

In 1844, Minty met a free black man named John Tubman.  Around that time, around half of the  African-American people in Maryland were free.  There is not much that is known about John Tubman, but Minty married him and changed her name to Harriet Tubman when she did.  The couple lived together for a number of years and were together when Harriet began her work with the Underground Railway.

Harriet Escapes!

In 1849, Harriet’s owner died.  She decided that she would escape slavery in Maryland and move to Philadelphia.  Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, decided to come with her.  Her husband did not decide to go along.  On their way to Philadelphia, the three siblings saw a “wanted” poster with their pictures on it.  It offered a $300 reward if anyone captured and returned the three of them.  

The brothers were scared by this poster and decided to return to their owner’s plantation.  Harriet, however, refused to go back to living as a slave.  Instead, she continued heading north towards Pennsylvania.  

The Underground Railroad

Harriet travelled along a network known as the Underground Railroad.  The Underground Railroad wasn’t an actual railroad for a train, it was a path that ran from states that had slavery to states where all people were free. Harriet travelled this path for nearly 90 miles to get to Philadelphia.  She is quoted as saying, “When I found I had crossed [the line into Pennsylvania], I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.  There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”

Harriet was truly happy to be free in a free state.  But rather than remaining safely in the North, Harriet decided that it was her mission in life to rescue her family and others living in slavery back home. 

In 1850, Harriet helped much of her family make the journey to Philadelphia via the Underground Railway. This was the first of many trips that Harriet made along the route to help guide others.  

Because of her work and leadership guiding others to safety and freedom, she was given the nickname “Moses” by the people that she helped.  This was a reference to the leader in the Old Testament who led the people of Israel out of slavery. Over time Harriet was able to help guide her parents, most of her siblings and approximately 60 other people to Pennsylvania where they could live free. 

Because so many slaves had escaped, the States passed laws allowing for former slaves that had escaped their home state to be captured and returned to slavery.  So Harriet changed the route of the Underground Railroad to Canada, where slavery was not allowed.

The Civil War

Harriet continued to help others during the Civil War in America.  She worked for the Union Army as a cook and a nurse, and later as an armed scout and spy.  Harriet was the first woman to lead soldiers in the war. She led a raid at the Combahee River that liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.  Liberated means freed from imprisonment or slavery.

In 1859, a Senator who was also an abolitionist sold Harriet a small piece of land in Auburn, New York. Harriet moved there after the war and got remarried and raised children there.  Much of her family came to live with her there as well. 

Even though Harriet became famous for her work to lead slaves to freedom, she did not have a lot of money.  Others who believed in her cause gave money to her to help her live and she shared this money generously with her family and others who needed help. 

When Harriet was an old woman, the head injuries she had gotten as a child became more painful.  She went to a hospital in Boston to get brain surgery to help relieve the pain and the “buzzing” that she had regularly in her ears.  Unfortunately, she because sick with pneumonia following the surgery and died in 1913. Harriet was buried with military honours at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

Harriet’s Legacy

Harriet was known very far and wide while she was alive and she became an American hero and icon after she died.  An icon is a person or thing that is regarded as a symbol. Today, she continues to inspire Americans struggling for civil rights and their allies with her bravery and actions.  Because of her amazing legacy, the U.S. Treasury Department announced in April 2016 that she would replace Andrew Jackson on the new $20 bill.  She was a freed slave and a freedom fighter, and for that, she emerged as the top choice for the first American woman to appear on U.S. currency. 

From Harriet Tubman, we can learn a great deal about overcoming hardships and the impact that an individual person can have.  Harriet dedicated her life to helping others.  She believed strongly in the cause she was working for, to free slaves, and took action and worked tirelessly to bring about her dream. 

Are there injustices that you have experienced or that you can see in the world around you?  What are some ways that you can take action to make the world a better place for all and to improve the lives of those who may be suffering?

The post The History of Harriet Tubman for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Close your eyes and imagine that you are hiking through a dense jungle in Mexico.  The leaves around you are thick and wet. You use a sword to chop your way ahead. Sometimes you stumble and fall on roots or get stuck in vines that block your path. The weather is hot and humid. Your body is covered in sweat. You are thirsty and your muscles are tired and ache, but you keep moving. You keep pressing on. A long line of fellow Mexicans are hiking with you, moving quietly towards your goal. You and your fellow soldiers are determined to defeat the Spanish who rule your country. You want them to leave so you can rule it yourselves. Leading your group is a priest who has great ideas of how Mexico can be independent, can become its own country, free from Spanish rule.  You are following one of the most famous Mexican men in history: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, also known as the “Father of Mexico.”

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Mexican Catholic priest who called for a revolution, or rebellion, against the Spanish government in 1810.  Hidalgo, as he is commonly known, is thought of as the “Father of Mexican Independence” due to his role in helping the mexican people fight against Spanish rulers. 

In 1753 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was born near Guanajuato, Mexico.  At that time, the name of the country was not Mexico, but rather it was called “New Spain” because Europeans from Spain had settled in the area and claimed it as their own. But most of the people living in Mexico weren’t from Spain, they and their ancestors had lived there long before the Spanish arrived and conquered their lands. 

Miguel was the second son of Cristobal Hidalgo y Costilla and Ana Maria Gallaga Mandarte y Villasenor.  Miguel’s dad was an administrator, or government worker of the hacienda, or town. 

When Miguel was growing up, his family was fairly rich, so he had a good, easy life.  He was considered to be a “creole” person, which means his ancestors were Spanish.  He had loving parents and had fun with his older brother Jose Joaquin.  

When Miguel was 12, his father sent him and his brother Jose Joaquin to the city of (Vaya-dolid) Valladolid to go to school.  Miguel studied religion and after completing a lot of courses on various religious topics, or courses about God and the meaning of life, he became a Catholic priest in 1778.  

After he was a priest, Miguel Hidalgo became known as Father Hidalgo. He returned to his hometown university to teach philosophy, which means the study of how humans think, and theology, which means the study of God.  

Now that Miguel was an adult and a priest, he was able to travel and meet people.  He loved to learn and was particularly interested in European ways and thinking.  This was not the normal path for a Mexican Catholic priest in the 18th century!  Most priests stayed in their church area and spent their days praying.  But Miguel was too curious about the world and too social to stay in one place and not ask questions and learn new things. This is the best way to learn new things, be curious and ask questions! 

Even thought he was different from most priests at the time, Miguel became the rector, or leader, of the church of San Nicolas in 1790.  Unfortunately though, the other priests in the area did not like the way he behaved, so he was only in the role as rector for two years. 

Father Hidalgo moved on to lead the churches in the towns of Colima and then San Felipe Torres Mochas and later Dolores. Besides studying, he also grew grape vines and olive trees in the church gardens.  He opened a pottery-making studio, or art area, and taught himself to make pots. He had many hobbies to keep his life interesting. 

Father Hidalgo was very giving and showed compassion for poor people in the towns where he lived.  Compassion means concern for someone’s suffering. Father Hidalgo put on classes to teach poor people skills that they could use to make money, like carpentry, or woodworking, and blacksmithing, which means to make things out of iron or metal. 

Because of his interest in learning and philosophy, Father Hidalgo became very involved with the small group of educated people that lived in his town.  These educated people had gone to university and learned about politics and government and they weren’t happy with the way that Spain was controlling their country of New Spain. Remember at this time Spain controlled Mexico and didn’t let them vote or make their own decisions.  

In 1808, a new Spanish leader named Joseph was put in charge of the Spanish territories, including New Spain, where Father Hidalgo lived.  The people of New Spain did not like their new rulers, as they were mean and greedy.  He and his friends planned to remove the Spanish rulers from being in charge and get their old king, the King of Spain, released and put back in place as their leader. 

The Spanish rulers learned that there was a secret plot to take over, so Father Hidalgo and his friends had to speed up their plans. In Dolores, Father Hidalgo climbed to the top of the church where he lived and with all of his might rang the church bell.  This was the signal that their fight against their Spanish rulers had begun. Then, he went outside the church and waved a banner of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. This was September 16, 1810 and became a famous event called the Grito de Dolores or “Cry of Dolores”. This was the beginning of the Mexican people’s fight for freedom.

Father Hidalgo’s second in command was a military captain named Ignacio Allende.  Together Father Hidalgo and Captain Allende led a group of creole and first nations men into towns and cities near where they lived.  They gathered more men in the towns and cities and slowly the size of their group grew.  With each town they moved through, the group took control of the Spanish government and replaced it with their own. 

Unfortunately as the group grew bigger, so did it’s problems.  Father Hidalgo’s goal was to take power back from the Spanish. But the group of men that became his followers grew more and more violent.  The Catholic Church was not happy about what they saw happening.  They removed Father Hidalgo from his role as priest and member of the Church.

Miguel was no longer called “Father Hidalgo” anymore, but that didn’t stop him from his mission of removing the Spanish from power in his country.  Miguel and his followers continued to move through more cities until they finally arrived at Mexico City, the biggest city in Mexico.  

There, the Spanish were ready with their army. Gunshots rang out, smoke filled the air, a battle broke out between the Spanish army and Miguel’s army. Soon Miguel and his army had to retreat or move back to safety, in a city called Guadalajara.  There, Miguel formed a new small government that declared that they were in charge.  One of the first things his government did was declare an end to slavery and promise to return lands to the Indigenous people.  These were very modern ideas for the time. 

In Guadalajara, Miguel also started a newspaper called El Despertador Americano, which means “The American Alarm Clock.”  The newspaper published stories and information about the revolution.  Revolution means a forced overthrow of the government. They were determined to become free from Spanish rule. 

In January 1811, Miguel and his men gathered at Calderon Bridge outside of the city of Guadelajara to meet a small Spanish army for a battle.  The Spanish army was well trained and well armed. Weapons were fired. The Spanish had a better army and Miguel and his soldiers had to run away.  After this loss, Miguel’s friend, Captain Allende, became the new leader of the group of rebel fighters.

But some of the survivors of the battle followed Miguel north to join a group that was setting up in what is now the American city of San Antonio.  Along the way they were captured by the Spanish army near a town called Coahuila. The group members were put on trial and were found guilty of fighting against the ruling Spanish.

Miguel and his fellow soldiers had fought bravely but did not survive to continue fighting with their fellow countrymen. But the revolution that he started continued even after he was gone.  In 1821, Mexico eventually won the war against Spain and became independent. If you live in the United States, this event was similar to Independence Day when Americans became free from British and the King’s rule.

September 16 is now celebrated as Mexico’s Independence Day, similar to the 4th of July in the United States. This is the day Mexico became its own country. Every year on this date, Mexican people celebrate their heritage and brave people like Miguel Hidalgo who fought for their freedom.  Usually the President of Mexico will do the same thing Hidalgo did, go to the church’s bell tower and ring the bell to signal the start of the war of Independence called the “Grito de Dolores” or “Cry of Dolores.”

After he died, Miguel’s remains were buried in a monument in Mexico City, now called the Angel of Independence monument.  This monument celebrates the “Father of Mexican Independence” which is Miguel Hidalgo’s nickname.  There is also a state in Mexico named after Miguel, called Hidalgo, and the town that Miguel was originally a priest at is now known as “Dolores Hidalgo.”

We can learn a lot from Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. He was very curious and was always learning. He also had many hobbies to keep life interesting. He was also very brave and risked his life to push out the Spanish rulers who controlled his country.  He was organized and a strong leader, and passionate about freedom, and because of this he had many people who followed him into battle and believed in his cause.  Because of his bravery and beliefs, Miguel is now remembered as the “Father of Mexican Independence.” 

Learning about Miguel is also a great chance to learn more about Mexico, it’s people and its culture. Mexico has a vibrant culture with delicious food, music, dancing, and artwork. Family is very important in a culture where they take care of each other and meet often to eat and enjoy time together. Mexican culture has also become a big part of American culture, seeing that over 36 million people living in the United States are of Mexican ancestry.  Be sure to look up some videos about Mexico and Mexican culture. One of our family’s favorite movies is Pixar’s “Coco.” Be sure to check it out if you haven’t yet.

Thanks for listening to this episode about Miguel Hidalgo and be sure to tune in next Monday for a new episode!

The post History of Miguel Hidalgo for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.