These partisans have not been hiding; they are only drawn into the public realm when fear is evoked. It is this same anxiety that’s emerged in Oklahoma because of the new Advanced Placement U.S. History guidelines. In a later interview, Califano captured the root of that anxiety: "Many, many of our young people get their view of history from films and television," he said. "It’s important for people who make movies that claim to be historically accurate to be accurate." When the established memory of figures and events from the past is challenged, both the defenders and opponents of that memory will fight to influence the young.

The passion and urgency with which these battles are fought reflect the misguided way history is taught in schools. Currently, most students learn history as a set narrative—a process that reinforces the mistaken idea that the past can be synthesized into a single, standardized chronicle of several hundred pages. This teaching pretends that there is a uniform collective story, which is akin to saying everyone remembers events the same. Yet, history is anything but agreeable. It is not a collection of facts deemed to be "official" by scholars on high. It is a collection of historians exchanging different, often conflicting analyses. And rather than vainly seeking to transcend the inevitable clash of memories, American students would be better served by descending into the bog of conflict and learning the many "histories" that compose the American national story.

Califano is explicitly worried that future Americans will remember Lyndon B. Johnson differently than he does. Oklahoma state Representative Dan Fisher, a Republican, appears worried that future Americans will have a different understanding of their country’s past than he does, too. Fisher recently introduced a bill that would have defunded AP U.S. History in the state, claiming that the College Board, which runs the AP program, published a revised framework that harps on "what is bad about America" and fails to teach "American exceptionalism." (The controversial effort garnered a good deal of criticism, and Fisher has since backtracked on the legislation.) The memories of Fisher, Califano, Courtney, and Wilson have clashed with the memories of others.

Perhaps Fisher offers the nation an opportunity to divorce, once and for all, memory from history. History may be an attempt to memorialize and preserve the past, but it is not memory; memories can serve as primary sources, but they do not stand alone as history. A history is essentially a collection of memories, analyzed and reduced into meaningful conclusions—but that collection depends on the memories chosen.

Memories make for a risky foundation: As events recede further into the past, the facts are distorted or augmented by entirely new details—something the NBC news anchor Brian Williams learned to devastating effect. An individual who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge probably remembers the events in Selma differently than someone who helped Johnson advance legislation in Washington. Both people construct unique memories while informing perfectly valid histories. Just as there is a plurality of memories, so, too, is there a plurality of histories.