Recently, corrupt human/turtle hybrid Sen. Moscow Mitch McConnell (Secession-KY) and 38 other Republican Senate colleagues sent a letter to the Secretary of Education expressing horror at the thought of a realistic history of slavery and Jim Crow being taught in America's public schools. They've been on a tear about the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory, which counters the whitewashed version of American history that's been portrayed in history books for generations, ones which those Republicans learned from.
A revealing and thoroughly researched article in The Root looks at the kinds of textbooks that were used in the schools at the time these Republicans would have studied there. Not surprisingly, the history of African-Americans is rarely mentioned, and when it is, it's through the eyes of either paternalistic or outright racist authors. A small sample:
Sen. Marsha "Whiteburn" Blackburn (TN):
"In 1959, the year Sen. Marsha Blackburn would have entered kindergarten in Mississippi, the state legislature handed control of choosing textbooks to Gov. Ross Barnett. At the request of the Mississippi State Society of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the state had already mandated a ninth-grade course in Mississippi history, which means Blackburn learned the history of her state from John K. Bettersworth’s textbook Mississippi: a History.
The New York Times wrote in 1975 that Bettersworth’s catalogs 'treat blacks of old as complacent darkies or as a problem to whites.' When The Root reviewed the text, we noticed that the entire history of the 250-year institution of slavery was reduced to five pages. Bettersworth’s book was based on UDC propaganda that taught children that the slave master treated his slaves 'as his own,' but noted that most of the human chattel were so lazy that 'it took two to help; one to do nothing.'” (our emphasis)
Sen. Ted "Cancun Ted Coup" Cruz (TX):
"If Second Baptist High School adhered to the standards of the Texas Department of Education, we can surmise that Cruz had to learn speeches from Jefferson Davis, but not that slavery caused the Civil War, which wasn’t taught in Texas schools until 2018. Texas’ social studies curriculum 'deemphasized slavery, questioned New Deal entitlements and mandated study of the 'optimism’ of ‘thankful’ immigrants,' before 2010, according to the Texas Tribune. The state also believed Harriet Tubman was too sensitive a subject for third-graders but taught that slavery was the 'third-most-influential cause of the war.'" (our emphasis)
Sen. Lindsey "Huckleberry" Graham (SC):
"Although Brown v. Board of Education officially outlawed segregation in 1955, Lindsey Graham’s school district in Pickens County, S.C., didn’t desegregate until 1970. So it’s understandable why he learned history from The History of South Carolina, published from 1840 until 1970 by three generations of descendants of pro-Confederate William Simms. While Simms’ early versions opined about the 'irresponsible, uneducated, unmoral and, in many cases brutish Africans,' Graham likely used the 1958 edition where Mary C. Simms Oliphant, Simm’s granddaughter, had a much more progressive view. [ed. -- snark!]
'Most masters treated their slaves kindly,' wrote Oliphant. 'Africans were brought from a worse life to a better one. As slaves, they were trained in the ways of civilization. Above all, the landowners argued, the slaves were given the opportunity to become Christians in a Christian land, instead of remaining heathen in a savage country.'” (our emphasis)
We should note that just learning from racist history books isn't the only factor in moulding a racist. Newborns aren't racist; children have to be taught racism by their peers, and more importantly their parents or guardians. But the point is that by introducing work like the 1619 Project into curricula would go a long way to eliminating this kind of overt racism being taught to students. Otherwise, we'll be getting more Huckleberrys, Coups, and white supremacists in the halls of Congress and state legislatures in the future.
