The Flawed American History

Inaccurately Portrayed Historical Events

Persecution of African-Americans
- Inaccurate portrayal of American history has sparked many disputes. The injustices faced by Blacks, Indigenous, and people of color are shielded from students.
  - Instead of rendering accurate information, everything is painted in a way where bigotry was a thing of the past after the Civil Rights Movement.
  - Black and white photographs are frequently used in textbooks to depict time, giving the impression that the development happened a long time prior.

American Civil War
- Within the New York Times magazine article, Maureen Costello of the SPLC stated that slavery is taught “because they got to teach the Civil War.”
  - This resonated with a lot of people in social science as slavery was only mentioned once the chapter on the Civil War began
- What is also profoundly aggravating is how the war is depicted.
  - In classes, the Union was depicted as the savior who liberated the slaves despite the fact that slavery was legal within the North. The South was depicted as the “bad people” who acted barbarically.
  - There is little clarity in how the free slaves who made a difference in the North battle experienced extraordinary prejudice at the hands of Union officers. What was also not taught is that the South’s attitude on free labor continues to exist presently in our industrial jail system. These gaps and exclusions foster ignorance in the younger generations.

Jim Crow Era
- Whereas students may be taught about discrimination and laws preventing blacks from voting, they are frequently uneducated around the extreme savagery Whites ordered upon Blacks throughout the Jim Crow Era.
  - The Jim Crow Era took place from 1877 through the 1950s.
  - Mob savagery and lynchings were frequent events.
  - Racial terror was utilized as means for Whites to maintain control and prohibit Blacks from gaining equality.
  - Many Whites – not just White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan – engaged in this viciousness.
- Within the same time frame, White society made negative generalizations around Blacks as a way to dehumanize them and legitimize the violence executed by Whites.
  - These generalizations stated that Blacks were ignorant, apathetic, apprehensive, criminals, and hypersexual.
  - Blackface minstrelsy refers to Whites darkening their skin and dressing in tattered clothing to perform the negative generalizations as a part of entertainment.
    - This symbolism and amusement served to solidify the negative stigma about Blacks in society. Numerous of these negative stereotypes hold on to today.

Inaccurately Portrayed Historical Figures

Christopher Columbus
- The man credited with discovering the Americas is not a hero for everyone.
  - Columbus was involved in enslavement and mass killings of the continent’s indigenous peoples and minority groups.
  - He is responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and the birth of racism in this country. Sadly, these themes are not taught in our current educational framework.
  - Not only did Columbus not land in what we now call America, but he and his men were horrifically brutal toward the Caribbean people
- In a mere two years’ time, White Europeans had wiped out half of Haiti’s 250,000 people with a wide-spread pandemic.
  - The causes of death were suicide, parental drowning of newborns so that they did not have to endure the European’s atrocious acts, including torture, enslavement, rape, and smallpox which led to the decline of the native population in the 17th and 18th century.

George Washington
- Due to his numerous achievements, people often forget his flaws and radical viewpoints.
- The first president of the United States was a slave owner.
  - Legally, morally, and politically, people who were enslaved by and to Washington were property without any rights, equal opportunity, or the ability to live free.
  - They were not Washington’s “subordinates.”
  - They were his property.
  - Although he started developing conflicting views on slavery, he remained passive.
- Washington did not always act on his anti-slavery principles.
  - He avoided the issue publicly, believing that bitter debates over slavery could tear apart the fragile nation.
  - Concerns about his finances, separating enslaved families, and his political influence as president led him to delay major action in his lifetime.

Thomas Jefferson
- The third president of the United States was also a slave owner, much like his forerunner.
  - Even if he had projected counter slavery viewpoints, it did not coincide with his actions
- If Jefferson was indeed so antislavery, then why didn’t he release his own slaves?
  - George Washington allowed for the freeing of his slaves on his death in 1799, so why didn’t Jefferson at least do the same at his death in 1826?
  - Most experts think that the current law prohibited him from freeing his slaves. But that was not the case.
- 1782 law on manumission:
  - “Be it, therefore, enacted, That it shall hereafter be lawful for any person, by his or her last will and testament, or by any other instrument in writing, under his or her hand and seal, attested and proved in the county court by two witnesses, or acknowledged by the party in the court of the county where he or she resides to emancipate and set free, his or her slaves, or any of them, who shall thereupon be entirely and fully discharged from the performance of any contract entered into during servitude, and enjoy as full freedom as if they had been particularly named and freed by this act.”