The Violent History of White Supremacy Is Rarely Taught in Schools. It Should Be

 A very painful, but excellent and deeply 

important article. May we all be brave enough

and care enough to want to know the truth.

— Molly

 

Teran Tease, 5, watches at Oaklawn Cemetery during a test excavation in the search for possible mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre on July 21, 2020.

By Corey Mitchell

Searing images from this month’s mostly white insurrection in Washington, D.C.—including a hangman’s noose on the Capitol grounds and the Confederate flag carried inside the U.S. Capitol—harken back to another era when both were tools and symbols of white supremacy across the country.

But relatively few students have learned about previous sordid moments that foreshadowed this year’s efforts to instill terror and violently overturn an election such as the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, widely thought to be the only successful coup in U.S. history, and the Tulsa Race Massacre.

New attention to what is taught in history class has sparked debate over the approach that schools should take.

“In secondary education, we tend to sidestep the controversy, the trauma, the pain, the suffering that’s embedded in history,” said Karlos Hill, an associate professor and chair of the Department of African and African American studies at the University of Oklahoma. “For some to tell the truth about American history, in particular to tell the truth about Black history, would run counter to what history is supposed to do, which is to make us more patriotic, more flag loving and flag-waving.”

Hill created and leads the Tulsa Race Massacre Institute, a professional development program that helps Oklahoma teachers craft lesson plans to teach about the white mob that in 1921 stormed a Black community in Tulsa, Okla., ravaging a thriving business district and leaving dozens of people dead in their wake.

Oklahoma officially incorporated the massacre into the statewide school curriculum in January 2020.

“We’re trying to make sure that we don’t have a whitewashed version of history,” said Amanda Solivan, the social studies content manager for the Tulsa school district. “Clearly, our country is struggling in terms of how we have some critical conversations about race.”

In the waning months of his presidency, Donald Trump used his platform to warn of a “crusade against American history” and threatened schools that adopted a curriculum based on the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which examines how slavery shaped the United States and highlights the historical contributions of Black Americans.

On Monday, the White House released the report of the presidential 1776 Commission, which argues that schools need “pro-American” curriculum because American heritage and principles are under attack from revisionist history. Trump did not appoint any professional historians.

Pushing back against Trump’s call for “patriotic education” well before the report’s release, scholars argued that students should learn a complete version of U.S. history and be empowered to debate the nation’s virtues and flaws.

Mobs of white residents in 1921 attacked the Black business district in Tulsa, Okla. resulting in dozens of deaths.

States debate about what and how to teach 

about America's racist past

 

Teaching U.S. history has long been politicized and racialized. What students learn and how textbooks present history varies from state to state, school district to district, and even school to school.

 

The politicization ramped up last fall when Trump threatened to cut the funding of California schools that teach a curriculum based on the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

 

Trump lacked the authority to cut the federal funding, but he was not the only federal official who ranted against the framing of the project and its use in schools.

 

“They want you to believe that America’s institutions continue to reflect the country’s acceptance of slavery at our founding,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech in July 2020. “It’s a disturbed reading of history. It is a slander on our great people.”

 

In a year that brought a national reckoning on the country’s history of racism and white supremacy, the debate over how to frame history is ongoing in some states.

 

In North Carolina, some Democratic members of the state Board of Education are pushing to make the social studies standards more inclusive, with more focus on how government and economic policies have denied opportunities for some people. The suggested changes were sparked by the national protests over the police killings of George Floyd and other Black people.

 

“When you’re arguing for more inclusive standards, what you’re really saying is that there are groups of people whose stories have not been adequately told,” said James Ford, a Black man and member of the state board.     

 

Please continue this article here: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/insurgency-refocuses-need-for-history-of-white-mob-violence-to-be-taught-in-classroom/2021/01