There's a Thanksgiving history lesson we often forget — but that's never been more relevant

Happy Thanksgiving! 

In 1621, a hungry group of migrants who came to America for religious freedom the year before shared a meal with Native Americans from the Wampanoag tribe to give thanks for the pilgrims’ first harvest, after arriving a year earlier with little to eat, too late in the season to grow crops. 

Nearly 400 years later, families around the United States including my own will recreate that meal and give thanks for the blessings that life has given us. 

On this Thanksgiving, I wanted to give thanks that a grandson of immigrants from Italy, Poland, Germany, England and Ukraine lives in a country where I have been able to grow successful and comfortable. 

I had to work for it. When I began my career, it was doing jobs like working as midnight janitor and delivering heavy kegs of beer in rural West Virginia working on a beer truck. Still, unlike many people beginning their careers in most places in the world, my country’s politics and economics gave me a close-to-fair shot at becoming successful. It did not matter that I was the grandchild of migrants. 

It’s worth mentioning that among the developments for which I’m thankful are tools like LinkedIn that allow people to connect in ways that were unimaginable 10 years ago. When I got that job on a beer truck, it was because the owner of the beer distributorship and my grandfather were both the sons of Italian immigrants, and that personal tie got me a job that I otherwise would not have gotten. 

Tools like LinkedIn are creating more open marketplaces for work, and making labor less rooted in biology (who is your dad?) or sociology (which country club do you belong to?). Biology and sociology still matter, but the openness fostered by today’s technology platforms make biology and sociology a little less deterministic. 

I hope that Americans gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table remember that unless you are part of the less than 1% of Native Americans who make up our population today, that you are a descendent of immigrants. And while you, too, might have grown successful or (relatively) comfortable, there are many people in the world who need demonstrations of compassion like what the Wampanoag showed the pilgrims, teaching them how to farm and hunt in the new world. For hundreds of years, America has been made itself home to waves of migrants from England to Germany, Poland, Ireland, Italy, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mexico and dozens of other countries around the world who have fled poverty or political oppression. Your ancestors did not come to the United States if they were prospering in their homeland.

As we give thanks on Thanksgiving, let’s remember from whence we come.

Alec Ross is the author of The Industries of the Future, to be released in February by Simon & Schuster.