May 9, 2025 | Newsweek
Stories of the past might be whitewashed, rewritten, or replaced in official spaces, but people’s consciousness of the past can’t be stripped away.
Melita Garza, Associate Professor and Tom and June Netzel Sleeman Scholar in Business Journalism
In this Newsweek opinion piece, Melita Garza, associate professor and Tom and June Netzel Sleeman Scholar in Business Journalism, combines a Mother’s Day remembrance with a call to use oral history to preserve the lived experiences of events that some want to see removed from museums, books, and other official histories.
“In drawing on these personal recollections, I hope to make the case that listening to our mothers and recording their stories is a way to honor them that will endure long after the flowers have wilted, the perfume faded, and the chocolate box recycled. I say this not just as a daughter, but also as a media historian who spent more than 20 years as a reporter telling the stories of others in the Milwaukee Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Bloomberg News,” Garza said.