Teaching White Supremacy: U.S. History Textbooks and the Influence of Historians

Origins of the Research and the Gutman Library Collection

• The research began as part of a broader study entitled The Liberator’s Legacy: Memory, Abolitionism, and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1865–1965.
• This project aims to assess the impact of William Lloyd Garrison and his antislavery colleagues, both black and white, including their children and grandchildren.
• Key figures studied in relation to this legacy include:
  • Founders of the NAACP: Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
  • John Jay Chapman.
  • William Monroe Trotter and the Boston African American community.
• The scope of the project unexpectedly shifted during a visit to the Special Collections Department of Harvard University’s Monroe C. Gutman Library.
• The library contains an invaluable collection of nearly $3,000$ U.S. history textbooks dating from approximately $1800$ to the $1980\text{s}$.
• This discovery led to a new project: Teaching White Supremacy: The Battle Over Race in American History Textbooks.

The Ideological Foundation of U.S. History Textbooks

• The core priority identified in the vast majority of reviewed textbooks is White Supremacy.
• One specific text explicitly utilized the capitalized title: —The White Man’s History.—
• African Americans typically appear in these books only as a —problem,— —ignorant negroes,— slaves, or anonymous abstractions.
• History is written with white people of European descent as the —real subjects,— where assumptions of white priority and domination suffuse every chapter and theme.
• A $2018$ study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Hard History: American Slavery, confirms that schools continue to ignore difficult issues, and supremacist ideologies remain embedded in national identity.
• The influence of historians in the $20\text{th}$ century has been enormous, as their work was filtered down to students through educators, professors of education, school administrators, and popular authors.

Pre-Civil War Textbooks and the Standard of Whiteness

• Noah Webster’s Influence:
  • His History of the United States ($1832$), published in Louisville, Kentucky, set an early standard.
  • Webster once told black minister and abolitionist Amos G. Beman that —wooly haired Africans— have —no history, & there can be none.—
  • In his book, Webster elevated Connecticut Puritans to the status of founding fathers while ignoring slavery and making only passing mentions of states below the Mason-Dixon line.
• The Erasure of Abolitionism:
  • Until $1860$, no American history textbook mentioned the name of an abolitionist or the existence of an antislavery movement.
  • Discussions of slavery, when they occurred, focused strictly on Congress and political leaders like Henry Clay.
  • History was defined narrowly as European exploration, colonization, the Revolution, the Constitution, party politics, and presidential administrations.
• Samuel Griswold Goodrich (—Peter Parley—):
  • One of the most successful authors of the mid-$19\text{th}$ century, claiming to have published $170$ different volumes with total sales of $7,000,000$ copies.
  • His Pictorial History of the United States ($1843$) sold $500,000$ copies.
  • The $1866$ edition, published posthumously, added a chapter on the Civil War but completely neglected the fall of slavery, reinforcing the message that black lives were irrelevant to history.

Exceptions and Sympathetic Portrayals

• Between the $1870\text{s}$ and early $1900\text{s}$, a few authors treated the abolitionist movement with sympathy and as agents of democratic change:
  • Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Abolitionist and colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers.
  • Josephus Nelson Larned: Canadian-born author, editor, and librarian.
  • Charles Carleton Coffin: Famed Civil War reporter.
  • Albert Bushnell Hart: Harvard University historian (after $1900$).
• These authors provided space for figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth.
• They depicted abolitionists as unpopular but principled individuals who created the constituencies that allowed Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans to resist the South.

The Depiction of Slavery and Reconstruction in the 20th Century

• Despite some sympathetic views of abolitionism, textbooks from $1900$ to the mid-$1960\text{s}$ were characterized by white arrogance and black incapacity regarding Reconstruction.
• The —Rollicking— Slave Myth:
  • Arthur C. Perry and Gertrude A. Price’s two-volume American History ($1914$) portrayed slaves as gleeful people enjoying a —rollicking time— at their cabins after work.
  • Fremont P. Wirth, a professor at Peabody College for Teachers, published The Development of America ($1937$–$1957$), which taught that slaves lived in —serene contentment— and loved their masters.
• David Saville Muzzey:
  • A Columbia University historian with over $50$ publications.
  • His History of the American People was used relentlessly between $1927$ and $1938$, and for decades thereafter.
  • Muzzey attributed the Civil War to the —mutual provocation— of abolitionists and slaveholders but placed prime responsibility on the North.
  • He described Reconstruction as an —unmitigated disaster,— an —orgy of extravagance, fraud, and disgusting incompetence,— and the —unbearable burden of negro rule.—
• The Southworths and the KKK:
  • Gertrude Van Duyn Southworth and John Van Duyn Southworth wrote The Story of Our America ($1951$), adopted by Indiana for $7\text{th}$ and $8\text{th}$ grades.
  • They portrayed the Ku Klux Klan (using images from the film Birth of a Nation) as a heroic organization of veterans restoring —respectable whites— to power to stop the —pillage— by Carpetbaggers and their —Negro— tools.

Scholarly Justifications of White Supremacy (1930s–1940s)

• Ralph Henry Gabriel and Mabel B. Casner:
  • In Exploring American History ($1931$–$1943$), they argued that former slaves found —freedom could be a greater curse than slavery.—
  • They claimed white men organized secret societies to fight —evils— like theft, which they asserted was —very common among those who had recently been slaves.—
• Marcus Jernegan (University of Chicago):
  • His The Growth of the American People ($1934$) labeled the Freedmen’s Bureau an organ of —race hatred.—
  • He described the KKK as an —honest bulwark— that merely played on the —superstitious fears of the negroes— by dressing in sheets to discourage voting, while claiming reports of Klan violence were fabricated.
• John D. Hicks (University of California, Berkeley):
  • In A Short History of American Democracy ($1943$), Hicks claimed slavery was a —distinct advance— over life in Africa.
  • He wrote that slave moral standards were —sufficiently latitudarian to meet the needs of a really primitive people.—
  • He asserted that —Slave women rarely resisted the advances of white men— and that cohabitation without marriage was —perfectly normal.—
  • Hicks's influence at Berkeley was massive, with classes often exceeding $500$ students.

The Turning Point and the Case of —Exploring the New World—

• Textbooks largely ignored the work of major African American scholars until the $1960\text{s}$, including:
  • John Wesley Cromwell
  • George Washington Williams
  • Carter G. Woodson
  • W.E.B. Du Bois
• The Case of —Exploring the New World—:
  • Authors: O. Stuart Hamer, Dwight W. Follett, Benjamin F. Ahlschwede, and Herbert H. Gross.
  • Published repeatedly between $1953$ and $1965$.
  • It justified slavery by asking, —Who else would do the work?— in reference to picking cotton.
  • It adopted a —reconciliationist— approach, painting Robert E. Lee as a —noble, gallant, and heroic— figure loved by both North and South.
• The persistence of these narratives suggests a link between historical textbook content and modern outbreaks of racism and anti-Semitism.