I was reading newspaper front pages from the 1930s, and I was taken aback. I'm not naive about American history, but I was a bit knocked off my feet by things that used to be on the front pages of newspapers.

Black history is American history.

I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.

There's so much in American history that has been hidden and shunned.

It's not painful to relive it. I'm comfortable with my position in American history.

Eighty years ago on July 2, 1937 Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the world in a Lockheed Model 10- Electra. Her expedition, sponsored by Purdue University, a public research university located in West Lafayette, Indiana, was brought to an end when this daring woman aviator and her navigator and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared near Howland Island in the central part of the Pacific Ocean. Since that time it was generally assumed that she had crashed at sea and simply disappeared beneath the waves of an unforgiving ocean.
All the speculation ended on Sunday July 9, 2017 when Shawn Henry, a former executive assistant director for the FBI, brought world attention on the “History Channel” to a photograph that apparently shows Earhart and Noona on the dock of Jaluit Atoll, overlooking the SS Kaoshu towing a barge, with what looks like the Electra they had been flying. The intensive research and analysis that Shawn Henry and his team conducted presents compelling evidence and leaves no doubt but that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had survived the crash. The team’s research also presents evidence that Amelia Earhart was held as a prisoner of war on the island of Saipan by the Japanese and died while in their custody.