Thread by @aledlab

Alabama school history books have been hotly debated since the Civil War. Do you remember what books your school used? Have you ever wondered why they were picked?

A 🧵:

Of course, you don't remember school in 1868. After the Civil War, Republican officials rebuilt a statewide public education system. They opened schools to Black students and implemented standardized textbooks -- two choices, among others, that Alabama residents didn't like.

After Reconstruction collapsed, a new set of state officials saw standardized textbooks as useful. Among the first recommended under a new law was William Garrott Brown's 1900 History of Alabama. It framed the Civil War as being incited by "a man's duty to protect his property."

Marie Bankhead Owen, a director of the state archives, wrote several influential texts that reshaped public understanding of the state's history, the Civil War, and the impact of slavery, including textbooks, an encyclopedia and children's plays for the state centennial.

The book "Know Alabama" was recommended for decades for fourth graders. This text is told from the perspective of a white child walking through a plantation.

Ninth graders from the 1950s through the 1970s read Summersell's book. It dismissed the horrors of slavery and KKK violence. One edition called slavery "the earliest form of Social Security." Martin Luther King Jr. got one mention in the 1970 edition.

Of course, not all teachers agreed with these books, and some used other works. From their earliest days on the continent, Black teachers practiced what Carter G. Woodson called "fugitive pedagogy." They fought for education and connected lessons to stories of freedom.

In the 1980s, Robert Norrell said he was one of the first Alabama publishers to show the faces of enslaved people, rather than simply hands and feet, in his books. He tried to add individual stories and context to discussions about the experiences of enslaved people and freedmen.

Richard Bailey also tried to dispel myths about Black Republican voters and officials during Reconstruction. He described their education, expertise and commitment to equal rights in the face of resistance.

Learn more about textbook debates in @greezbock's recent story for @aldotcom @Report4America, and read past work by John Archibald, Kyle Whitmire and Starr Dunigan.

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References for this thread and further reading include: John Archibald, Karen Cox, Starr Dunigan, Kari Frederickson, Hilary Green, Gordon Harvey, Brian Lyman, Scott Morris, Stephen Weeks, Kyle Whitmire, and primary sources noted.

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