strange fruit indeed: interrogating contemporary textbook representations of racial violence toward...

Teachers College Record Volume 112, Number 1, January 2010, pp. 31–67Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University0161-4681

Strange Fruit Indeed: InterrogatingContemporary Textbook Representationsof Racial Violence Toward AfricanAmericans

ANTHONY L. BROWNKEFFRELYN D. BROWN

University of Texas at Austin

Background/Context: Recent racial incidents on college and high school campuses through-out the United States have catalyzed a growing conversation around issues of race andracism. These conversations exist alongside ongoing concerns about the lack of attentiongiven to race and racism in the official school curriculum. Given that the field of educationis generally located as a space to interrogate why these difficult issues of race in schools andsociety still persist, this study illustrates how contemporary official school knowledgeaddresses historical and contemporary issues of race and racism. To do this, we examine howhistoric acts of racial violence directed toward African Americans are rendered in K–12school textbooks. Using the theoretical lenses of critical race theory and cultural memory, weexplicate how historic acts of racial violence toward African Americans receives minimaland/or distorted attention in most K–12 texts.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: We examined the knowledge con-structed about racial violence and African Americans in the United States. Using the theo-retical lenses of critical race theory and cultural memory, we show how the topic of historicacts of racial violence toward African Americans receives minimal and/or distorted atten-tion in most K–12 texts. The purpose of this study is to illustrate that although accounts ofracial violence that historically have been excluded from textbooks are now being included,this inclusion matters little if it is presented in a manner that disavows material implica-tions of racial violence on sustained White privilege and entrenched African Americaninequities.

32 Teachers College Record

Research Design: The findings from this study come from a textbook analysis of 19 recentU.S. history social studies textbooks adopted by the state of Texas. Drawing from the tradi-tion of recent critical textbook studies, this study used a literary analysis methodology.Findings/Results: In this study, we found that although narratives of racial violence werepresent throughout the texts, they often rendered acts of violence as the immorality of singleactors or “bad men doing bad things.” Additionally, these presentations portray violence asdisconnected from the institutional and structural ties that supported and benefited fromsuch acts.Conclusions/Recommendations: The findings from this study illustrate the limited histori-cal and sociocultural knowledge about race and racism provided to teachers and studentsthrough K–12 social studies textbooks. These findings have direct implications for howteachers and students conceptualize and grapple with real issues of race and racism inschools and society. We suggest that the knowledge contained in school texts must go beyondsimply representing acts of racism, situating such acts of racism within the discursive andmaterial realities that have shaped the lives of African Americans in the United States.

In recent years, racial incidents on university, college, and high schoolcampuses have incited conversations about the significance of race andracism in schools and society. For example, on several college campuses,students have opted to observe Martin Luther King Day with what somecall “ghetto parties.” The circulation of images through popular mediaand the Internet has enabled millions to observe these perverse andracist images of White college students dressed in blackface and drinking40-ounce bottles of beer, throwing gang signs, flashing gold teeth grills,and donning large gold chains.

Recently, during another racial incident that took place on a highschool campus, six African American male students were charged withattempted murder and conspiracy for the beating of a White student.1

This conflict emerged amid growing racial tension after an AfricanAmerican student decided to sit under a tree where White students tradi-tionally congregated. A few days after the fight, White students at thehigh school hung three nooses from the tree, an act that led to a numberof additional racial conflicts between the students. The initial noose inci-dent, commonly referred to as “Jena Six,” eventually received nationalattention because of the harsh penalty given to a group of AfricanAmerican male participants and the lack of punishment given to theWhite students who placed the three nooses under the tree. This eventhelped to stimulate a growing discussion about the historical and con-temporary symbology of “the noose.”

In the fall of 2007, two recorded incidents occurred that involved thehanging of a noose on university campuses. The first took place inSeptember 2007 at the University of Maryland, College Park, where a

Contemporary Textbook Representations of Racial Violence 33

noose was found hanging near the university’s cultural center, a buildingthat houses several African American student organizations. Then, inOctober 2007, a noose was tied onto the office door of Dr. MadonnaConstantine, an African American professor of psychology and educationat Teachers College, Columbia University. Both of these university inci-dents resulted in criminal investigations and spawned discussions aboutthe significance of hate crimes on college campuses.

An ahistorical reading of these incidents might lead one to believethese acts were simply isolated aberrations. One might also assume thatthe perpetrators of these acts were simply immoral or uneducated, with-out making the connection between these events and the history of raceand racism in this country. We introduce this article with these racial inci-dents because we recognize that a powerful, often unacknowledged rela-tionship exists between the legacy of racial violence in the United Statesand how contemporary incidents of racial violence can be understoodtoday (Markovitz, 2004). That these racial incidents occurred in educa-tional institutions raises additional questions about the role that “official”historical and sociocultural knowledge plays in the understanding thatteachers and students ultimately possess about race and racism in theUnited States. We argue that such knowledge informs how teachers andstudents make sense of the historical and contemporary context of raceand racism in the United States and helps to frame how individuals exist(and might exist) in a democratic society. Our concern with textbookknowledge, then, is based on the recognition that knowledge, particu-larly the forms found in official formal K–12 school curriculum, matters.It matters for teachers, who, in the case of the United States, are mostlikely White, female, and from middle-class backgrounds that includelimited (if any) experiences with, and presumably limited knowledgeabout, race or communities of color (Howard, 1999; Sleeter, 2001).Without direct experiences with, or specific knowledge about, diversecommunities or the history of race in the United States, these individualsat best draw from knowledge they gained in their own K–12 schooling(and textbooks), as well as what they received in their teacher educationprograms—institutions that are also heavily populated with faculty thatare overwhelmingly White and who too often lack this knowledge them-selves (Cochran-Smith, 1995; Dixson & Dingus, 2007; Grant, 1988;Howard, 1999; Ladson-Billings, 2005; Obidah & Howard, 2005; Sleeter,2008, 2001). In stating this, however, we do not wish to oversimplify thisknowledge gap as affecting only White individuals. Students of color,although possessing perhaps more experiential knowledge of race andracism in the United States, are also implicated in the potential gap inknowledge presented about these issues in K–12 schooling, textbooks,


and, later, in teacher education programs. Indeed, this dilemma presentsa problem for all teachers who possess the responsibility for providingstudents with an equitable education and for preparing them for civicand social life.

It is within this context that we entered this study, considering the ques-tion of whether teachers simply will not teach these topics or whetherthey cannot adequately teach these topics because of the knowledge pro-vided to them in mainstream K–12 official curriculum. As teacher educa-tors and researchers concerned with social justice—one who preparessecondary social studies teachers and one who prepares elementary gen-eralist teachers who are expected to teach social studies—how might weunderstand these racial incidents and curriculum knowledge about raceand racism in relation to teacher education? We suggest that in light ofthe challenges we face (along with many other teacher educators) inpreparing preservice and in-service teachers to work effectively with anincreasingly diverse K–12 student population, these incidents push us toconsider the role that school knowledge can play to help read such racialincidents. Here we are particularly concerned with the kinds of historicaland sociocultural knowledge currently offered to teachers and students.

To explore this, we focused on how issues of race and racism, particu-larly the way violence against African Americans is presented in K–12school curricula. We examined how official school curriculum rendersand interprets the histories of racial violence against African Americansin the United States. Specifically, we examined if and how K–12 socialstudies textbooks discuss racial violence directed toward AfricanAmericans, including the way African Americans resisted in the midst ofsuch conditions.

In the discussion that follows, we begin with a review of the literatureon curriculum and textbooks, specifically focusing on how this workaddresses the limitations and biases in African American history in U.S.K–12 textbooks. We follow this with an overview of the theoretical frame-works used to guide this study: cultural memory and critical race theory (ineducation). Cultural memory refers to the narratives, symbols, and dis-courses that shape how individuals understand and make sense of thepast (Flores, 2002; Le Goff, 1977/1992), whereas critical race theory is atheoretical lens that illuminates the discursive and material ways that raceoperates in society and schools (Bell, 1995; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995;Solórzano, 1997). Using these frameworks, we present the findings fromour analysis of 19 recent textbooks adopted by the state of Texas. Thesefindings illustrate that although historic acts of racial violence towardAfrican Americans and the responses of African Americans to that vio-lence received some attention—albeit sketchy and distorted—in most


K–12 social studies texts, this knowledge is lacking in important and vitalways. The article concludes with a discussion of these findings and theimplications that these findings have for teacher education and K–12schooling.

LITERATURE ON CURRICULUM AND TEXTBOOKS

For decades, scholars have raised questions and concerns about the inad-equacies of traditional social studies textbooks (Allen, 1971; Anyon, 1979;Apple, 1993; Banks, 1969; Carlson, 2003; Krug, 1961; Loewen, 1995;Lowenthal, 1997; Van Sledright, 2002). Much of this scholarship hasmaintained that these texts gloss over events, overgeneralize and/orexclude different group experiences, and provide few to no opportuni-ties for students to make sense of various histories and events in relationto their own lives. These observations illustrate the significant role thatschools and school curriculum play in addressing educational inequities.Conversations about what and whose knowledge is most valued in theofficial school curriculum frame contemporary discussions about achiev-ing equity and social justice for all students. And despite the contestedterrain of the term social justice, the question of what and whose knowledgeis most valued remains foundational to debates about school inequities.Scholars have referred to the focus of school knowledge in addressingsocial inequalities as the politics of difference or the politics of recognition(Fraser, 2000; Sleeter & McClaren, 1995).

In more recent years, there has been growing concern regardingwhether discussions about recognition, representation, and identity poli-tics have overshadowed concerns about how structural realities help toreproduce school and societal inequities. Philosopher Nancy Fraser(2000) suggests that efforts to achieve social justice must account forboth recognition and the structural realities that shape a group’s experi-ences. In a similar vein, we contend that school curricula, specifically theknowledge contained in textbooks, must go beyond simply providing newnarratives of difference; it must provide the knowledge that studentsneed to decipher the structural and discursive ways that race informs thepast and present.

HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY DISCOURSE ABOUT AFRICANAMERICANS IN U.S SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOKS

Throughout the 20th century and into the present, scholars have raisedsimilar concerns about the problematic knowledge circulated aboutAfrican Americans in social studies textbooks. These authors critiqued


the way traditional textbooks help to reproduce and perpetuate totaliz-ing images of, perspectives on, and beliefs about African Americans(Alridge, 2006; Banks, 1969; Du Bois, 1935; Ernest, 2004; Schomberg,1925; Woodson, 1933/2000; Woodson & Wesley, 1935; Wynter, 1992). Itwas also assumed that textbooks provided little historical understandingof the events that have shaped the present social, educational, and polit-ical context of African Americans.

Similary, much of the early scholarship about African Americans in U.Shistory textbooks sought to expose and challenge stereotypical construc-tions about the history and experiences of African Americans (Banks,1969; Reddick, 1934; Woodson, 1928; Woodson, 1933/2000). Thesescholars found that traditional history textbooks often provided trun-cated and/or historically inaccurate perspectives about AfricanAmericans (Bontemps, 1948; Woodson, 1922, 1928; Woodson &Wesley,1935). In some cases, these same scholars created their own textbooksthat provided what they saw as a more accurate portrayal of AfricanAmerican experiences and historical contributions. However, through-out the 20th century, scholars continued to challenge the content, repre-sentations, and inaccuracies of textbooks’ treatment of African Americanhistory (Allen, 1971; Anderson, 1986; Alridge, 2006; King, 1992; Swartz,1992; Wynter, 1992). From this critique, multicultural educators and oth-ers worked tirelessly to reform curriculum, arguing that U.S. textbooksrequired more inclusive and accurate historical narratives (Banks, 2004;Gay, 2004). Yet in spite of these changes, scholars continue to critiquetextbooks for providing monolithic and simplistic narratives of AfricanAmerican history (Alridge, 2006; Hess, 2005). In addition, social studiesscholars have pointed out that such problems are not simply a reflectionof racial or ethnic histories but also illustrate a larger problem within thesocial studies curriculum that often avoids controversy and provides one-dimensional stories about people and events in American history(Epstein, 2009; Wineburg, 2000)

Given these deficiencies, it stands to reason that contemporary socialstudies textbooks, although presenting a more inclusive story of AfricanAmerican history, may simultaneously present the history of racial vio-lence against African Americans and the concomitant racism that sup-ported these acts in ways that distort, minimize, or oversimplify the story.Indeed, if this is the case, such deficiencies not only curtail the overallintended goals of multicultural curriculum reform but also representwhat critical race theorists have argued are the limitations of racialprogress achieved in the post–Civil Rights era.


THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

This study draws from both the historical lens of cultural memory(Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995; Le Goff, 1977/1992, Flores, 2002;Lowenthal, 1997) and critical race theory (Bell, 1987, 1995; Dixson &Rousseau, 2006; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Cultural memory refersto the narratives, symbols, and discourses that help inform how one cansee and think about his or her social worlds in the past and present. Inthis context, the official school curriculum helps to contain culturalmemory into an enclosed narrative. For example, the official social stud-ies textbook offers the reader a conceptual and historical map to makesense of what the United States once was and what it is today—a kind ofimagined or constructed past (Anderson, 1991). Thus, whenever a histor-ical narrative is committed to paper, the architects (e.g., textbook editors,consultants, historians) of that narrative create a specific cultural mem-ory or memories about the past. From this, we argue that K–12 socialstudies textbooks are perhaps one of the most important artifacts thathelp construct the cultural memory(ies) held by students about AfricanAmericans. In recent years, legal scholars interested in concerns withsocial justice have turned to legal narratives of the past to make sense ofstructural conditions in the United States. What many found were gapsin the way that race and the history of racism in the United States wereunderstood. Working under the framework of critical race theory, thesescholars challenged the cultural memory(ies) held about racial progressin the United States (Bell, 1987; Crenshaw, 1988; Delgado, 1992).

Critical race theory maintains that the efforts of the civil rights move-ment have not changed longstanding social and educational inequalitiesfor African Americans and other groups of color (Chapman, 2005;Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano, 1997). In particular, critical racetheory scholars in education have troubled common-sense historical nar-ratives about the so-called triumphant legal victories of racial equalityoffered through Brown v. Board of Education and the inclusion of multicul-turalism in schools. These authors note such efforts as valiant and note-worthy, but as fundamentally having little effect on changing thestructural and material conditions in schools and society (Dixson &Dingus, 2007; Ladson-Billings, 2004; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Somecritical race theory scholars in education have also noted the kinds ofinclusions and exclusions, with respect to issues of race and racism, thatexist within official school knowledge (Ladson-Billings, 2003b; Yosso,2002).

Akin to critical race theorists (Bell, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 2003a, 2004)who argue that the school integration efforts of the 1960s and 1970s only


served as symbolic markers of progress, we would argue that creating his-tory textbooks that are more “inclusive” and racially balanced—yet fun-damentally flawed because of limited and/or oversimplified perspectiveson racism—gives the false impression of a myth of racial progress. Inaddition, we draw from critical race theory scholars in education whomaintain that social studies education is an important place for teachersand students to explore the saliency of race in racism in schools and soci-ety (Howard, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 2003b; Tyson, 2003).

METHODOLOGY AND METHODS

The purpose of this study was to examine if and how social studies text-books portray racial violence against African Americans in the UnitedStates. In our initial reading across an interdisciplinary body of scholar-ship about the history of racial violence against African Americans in theUnited States, we found that scholars concurrently examined both acts ofviolence and the response to those acts of violence (Aptheker, 1969;Davenport, 2005; Kelley, 1993; Shapiro, 1988; Tyson, 1998). This sug-gested to us that in order to understand racial violence, one must concur-rently account for how victims of violence respond to such acts.2 Further,this body of work also points to the systematic and institutional ties thatacts of violence—even those done by individuals—had to official govern-ing bodies or the state. These authors suggest that in many instances ofracial violence, individuals who committed these acts either had directlinkages to local and state officials, or they were ignored and protectedby state officials and the legal process. Thus, the following questionsguided this examination: How is racial violence against African Americansdepicted social studies textbooks adopted by the state of Texas for Grades 5, 8, and11? How is resistance by African Americans to acts of violence depicted social stud-ies textbooks adopted by the state of Texas for Grades 5, 8, and 11?

Our choice to examine textbooks in the state of Texas is twofold. Thefirst acknowledges the important role that large states like Texas andCalifornia have in shaping the national textbook scene (Apple & Oliver,1996). Second, the state of Texas has a persistent recorded history ofracial violence directed toward African Americans. At the turn of the20th century, Texas was one of the leading states for lynching and otheracts of racial violence (Raper, 1969/2003). Additionally throughout the20th century, the state of Texas recorded some of the most gruesome,brutal, and publicly recognized acts of racial violence in the nation’s his-tory: the Jesse Washington lynching (see Bernstein, 2005; Carrigan,2004), the Henry Smith lynching (see Goldsby, 2006) and the James Byrddragging (see King, 2002). For these two reasons, we viewed the state of


Elementary—5th grade Middle—8th grade High—11th grade High AP—11th grade

Teachers’ CurriculumInstitute: History Alive! 2002

Authors: Bert Bower andJim Lobdell

Teachers’ CurriculumInstitute: History Alive! TheUnited States ThroughReconstruction System. 2002

Authors: Diane Hart

History Alive! TwentiethCentury United States HistorySystem. 1999

Author: Teachers’Curriculum Institute

Pearson Education, Inc.publishing as Prentice Hall:America Past and Present APedition. 2003

Authors: Robert Devine, T.H. Breen, George M.Friedrickson, & R. HallWilliams

Pearson Education, Inc.publishing as ScottForesman: Scott ForesmanSocial Studies 2003

Authors: Dr. Candy Boyd,Dr. Geneva Gay, RitaGeiger, Dr. James B. Kracht,Dr. Valeri Ooka Pang, Dr.Frederick Risinger, & SarahMiranda Sanchez

Pearson Education, Inc.publishing as Prentice Hall:The American Nation:Beginnings through 1877—TX Ed. 2003

Author: J. W. Davidson

Pearson Education, Inc.publishing as Prentice Hall:America: Pathways to thePresent: Modern AmericanHistory. 2003

Authors: Andrew Cayton,Elisabeth I. Perry, LindaReed, & Allan M. Winkler

McDougal Littell: TheAmerican Pageant. 2002

Authors: David Kennedy,Lizabeth Cohen, & ThomasA. Bailey

Harcourt SchoolPublishers: HarcourtHorizons-TX Ed. 2003

Authors: Robert Green,Tom McGowan, & LindaSalvucci

McDougal Littell: CreatingAmerica: A History of theUnited States: Beginningsthrough Reconstruction. 2003

Authors: Jesus Garcia,Donna Ogle, C. FrederickRisinger, Joyce Stevos, &Winthrop Jordan

McDougal Littell: TheAmericans: Reconstruction tothe 21st Century TX Ed. 2003

Authors: Gerald A. Danzer,J. Jorge Klor de Alva, LarryS. Krieger, Louis E. Wilson,& Nancy Woloch

Glencoe/McGraw-Hill:American History: A Survey:AP United States History.1999

Author: Alan Brinkley

Macmillan/McGraw-Hill:Our Nation—TX Ed.

Authors: James A. Banks,Richard G. Boehm, KevinP. Colleary, GloriaContreras, A. Lin Goodwin,Mary A. McFarland, WalterC. Parker, & The NationalGeographic Society

Holt, Rinehart andWinston, a division ofHarcourt, Inc.: Holt Call toFreedom, Beginnings to1877—TX Ed. 2003

Authors: Sterling Stuckey &Linda Kerrigan Salvucci

Holt, Rinehart andWinston, a division ofHarcourt. Inc.: HoltAmerican Nation in theModern Era—TX Ed. 2003

Authors: Paul Boyer &Sterling Stuckey

Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning: Liberty,Equality, Power: A History ofthe American People. 2002

Authors: John M. Murrin,Paul E. Johnson, James M.McPherson, Gary Gerstle,Emily S. Rosenberg, &Norman L. Rosenberg

Glencoe/McGraw-Hill: TheAmerican Republic to 1877.2003

Authors: Joyce Appleby,Alan Brinkley, AlbertBroussard, James M.McPherson, Donald Richie,& The NationalGeographic Society

Glencoe/McGraw-Hill: TheAmerican Republic Since1877. 2003

Authors: Joyce Appleby,Alan Brinkley, AlbertBroussard, JamesMcPherson, DonaldRitchie, & The NationalGeographic Society

Oxford University Press: AHistory of US v. 1–7. 2003

Author: Joy Hakim

Table 1. Textbooks Examined


Texas as an ideal site to explore how racial violence is rendered withinstate-adopted K–12 textbooks.

In this study, we examined a total of 19 textbooks with 4 targeting fifthgrade, 6 targeting eighth grade, and 9 targeting eleventh grade. Four ofthe 11th-grade textbooks were designed for the Advanced Placement(AP) course. Table 1 provides a list of each of the textbooks examined inthe study.3

Textbooks for Grades 5, 8, and 11 were selected because they are theprimary grades in which U.S. American history is taught. With regard tosections used in data analysis, multiple aspects of each textbook wereexamined, including narrative text, the glossary, and the index. It isimportant to note that with regard to the history of African Americans inU.S. history, it is common for fifth-grade textbooks to cover the time peri-ods leading to the Middle Passage and up to contemporary times. Eighth-grade texts, however, focus on the Middle Passage, the introduction ofslavery, and Reconstruction. Eleventh-grade texts, similarly to the fifth-grade texts, cover the whole span of U.S. history, up to the present. Wetook these under consideration during our examination of how K–12social studies textbooks characterize racial violence and resistance toracial violence in the history of African Americans in the United States.

We drew our methodology, approach to methods, and presentation offindings from the work of other education scholars who have conductedsimilar kinds of social studies curriculum research (Alridge, 2006; Hess,2005). For example, this study, similar to a previous textbook analysis thatexamined how master narratives of an African American icon get ren-dered in history curriculum (Alridge, 2006), employs the methodologyof literary analysis. Drawing from the work of historian Richard Beringer,Alridge suggests that literary analysis is a primary methodology used foranalyzing intellectual history, in which the researcher focuses on (1)reading the literature, (2) noting the themes, (3) discussing the themes,and (4) supporting conclusions with examples.

Data analysis took place across three phases and employed a constantcomparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The first phase focusedon identifying relevant narratives of African American history across eachof the textbooks. We decided to do this by first identifying places in thetext where key time periods in African American history were present(Marable & Mullings, 2000). The time periods we identified were: Slavery(including the Middle Passage), Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Black Power,and Post–Civil Rights/Black Power Movement. From here, we, along witha graduate research assistant, used the table of contents, index, and page-by-page perusal of the textbooks to locate sections for analysis. Allmarked sections were photocopied and bound together according to the


specific textbook from which they derived. Each bound set of photo-copies was labeled by textbook and placed in large folders according tograde level (i.e., fifth-grade folders, eighth-grade folders, and eleventh-grade folders).

The second phase of data analysis consisted of two parts. The first partfocused on outlining how to make meaning of the acts of violence pre-sented in the text. We (the authors of this article) created a thematic cod-ing scheme informed by the theoretical perspectives of social scientistsand historians that measure acts of state violence and terror (Davenport,2005; Shapiro, 1988). It should be understood, however, that this codingscheme served as a conceptual tool rather than as a strict frame. It wasnot our intention to quantitatively measure how many acts of violenceoccurred, nor to quantitatively measure the specific nature of the acts of vio-lence that occurred (Hess, 2005). To make sense of how acts of violencewere characterized, we developed the following questions to use when“reading” acts of violence and resistance found across the textbooks:

° Is the violent act (e.g., V) done by an individual (e.g., I) or group ofindividuals (e.g., G)?

° Is the violent act portrayed as haphazard (e.g., H)—that is, an actionaroused by passion or irrationality—or as strategic (e.g., S)—that is,an action aroused by rational thought, purpose, and/or planning?

° If the act is strategic, is it understood as possessing struc-tural/institutional links (e.g., S/I) to the past or present—forexample, (1) sponsored by or ignored by state/governmentalofficials and (2) advancing the sociopolitical and/or economicinterests of Whites or some other group in a power position?

° Does the passage include a discussion of resistance (e.g., R) to theviolence that occurred?

° If yes:• Is the resistant act done by an individual (e.g., I) or group

of individuals (e.g., G)?• Is the resistant act portrayed as haphazard (e.g., H) or

strategic (e.g., S) in nature?

During Part 2 of the second phase, we, along with the research assis-tant, selected a grade level and read all the sections found in the corre-sponding grade level textbooks. Each person read through the acts andincidents found in individual textbooks and listed these on a mastergrade-level sheet. Included in these notations was how the violenceand/or resistance was represented using the questions just listed. Thegrade-level master sheets also included the specific page number and


textbook title where the violence and/or resistance was found. An exam-ple of this process is shown using a passage found in one of the eighth-grade textbooks:

Throughout the South, whites formed secret societies to driveAfrican Americans out of political life. The most infamous ofthese groups was the Ku Klux Klan. Dressed in long, hoodedrobes and armed with guns and swords, Klansmen did their workat night. They started by threatening black voters and officehold-ers. African Americans who did not heed their threats werebeaten, tarred and feathered, and even murdered. (p. 318)

When locating and reading the following example, the reader woulduse the previously outlined questions to list the relevant themes thatemerged on the master grade-level sheet:

° Describes the violence used by White individuals, some of whom werein the Ku Klux Klan to threaten black voters and officeholders(VGS); no resistance is noted. (p. 318)

Here, the themes identified through the code—VGS—reflect the vio-lent acts (e.g., beatings, tarring, feathering, threatening behavior) thatwere inflicted by a group of individuals (e.g., southern Whites; Ku KluxKlan members) who strategically engaged in the act (e.g., not clear whatthe specific purpose was or whether it had structural/institutional ties,but the acts strategically targeted Black voters and Black officeholders).

After all of the data were read, we (the authors) selected and read thephotocopied narratives of a set of grade-level textbooks that we did notinitially read. As we read, we looked at how the first reader noted acts ofviolence and/or resistance on the master grade-level sheet. We noted anyinterpretations that did not correspond to our own reading. In doingthis, each set of grade-level textbook data was read by two readers. Thethird phase focused on us (the authors) sharing our findings with oneanother to improve interrater continuity. Incongruent and/or inconsis-tent findings (of which there were very few) were reread and reanalyzed.

FINDINGS

We found that in all of the 19 textbooks examined in this study, violenceagainst African Americans, along with resistance from African Americansto such acts of violence, received attention. Given the saliency of thesefindings, in this section, we present the data across two related categories.


The first category illustrates how acts of violence toward AfricanAmericans are depicted across the texts, and the second category showshow the textbooks, in general, portray African American resistance toracial violence.

DEPICTIONS OF ACTS OF VIOLENCE TOWARD AFRICAN AMERICANS

All the textbooks discuss some level of violence inflicted against AfricanAmericans, but these acts receive varied treatment across the texts.Whereas fifth-grade textbooks focus almost exclusively on violent actsthat occurred during Slavery (including events leading up to and duringthe Middle Passage) and Reconstruction, in general, most eighth-gradetexts limit the discussion of violence primarily to the Reconstruction era.Additionally, 11th-grade texts were often the only ones that discussed theviolence that occurred during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights/BlackPower eras. Here, limited attention is offered to violence enacted duringSlavery and Reconstruction. This pattern of representations of violenceis perhaps less related to a lack of willingness on the part of textbook writ-ers to address such concerns, and more to the areas of focus historicallytackled by grade-level texts. With respect to the portrayal of violence dur-ing the Civil Rights/Black Power period, the textbooks present violentacts concurrently with simultaneous acts of resistance on the part ofAfrican Americans. Although we found that 11th- grade textbooks mostfrequently presented this recursive pattern of violence and resistance, itis also present in a less systematic fashion in the narratives of Slavery andReconstruction found in the fifth- and eighth-grade texts. Here, the 11th-grade texts present a narrative of violence that includes the act of vio-lence enacted in relation to, or in retaliation for, an act of resistance. Forthis reason, we present most of the examples of violence enacted againstAfrican Americans during the Civil Rights/Black Power era in the sectiontitled, “Constructions of Resistance by African Americans Against RacialViolence.” An interesting finding was that few textbooks address the vio-lence against African Americans during the Post–Civil Rights/BlackPower era. When discussed, however, this acknowledgment is given onlyin the context of the Rodney King incident.

Additionally, depictions and descriptions of physical violence divergeacross the texts, with a few offering vivid, rich details of the horrors facedby some African Americans. These passages evoke what one might haveseen, heard, and felt during the infliction of the violent act, thus provid-ing the reader with a means to vicariously experience the violence. Onesuch example is found in the fifth-grade History Alive text: “The survivorswere marked with hot branding irons and loaded on slave ships for the


voyage to America” (p. 81). In a similarly descriptive fashion, the nextexample—taken from an 11th-grade text (History Alive)—describes howthe KKK inflicted violence on African Americans during Jim Crow:

The Klan conducted “swift justice” on people they believeddeserved punishment. Klansmen, dressed in white sheets withtheir trademark pointed caps, rode through black neighbor-hoods at night flogging people and dumping them at garbagesites, yanked and beat romantic couples from cars on “lovers’lanes,” and tarred and feathered whites who supported racialequality. (p. 12)

Other texts, specifically those at the eighth- and eleventh-grade levels,include firsthand accounts of violent acts taken from primary source doc-uments. In the example that follows, a passage taken from an eighthgrade-textbook illustrates how the text conveys detailed informationabout violence using the voice and memory of a person who experiencedthe act.

The inhuman part of the triangular trade, shipping enslavedAfricans to the West Indies, was known as the Middle Passage.Olaudah Equiano, a young African Forced onto a ship toAmerica, later described the voyage: I was soon put down underthe decks . . . . The closeness of the place, and the heat of the cli-mate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowdedthat each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocatedus. . . . The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying,rendered [mad] the whole a scene of horror. (bold in original, p.102; The American Republic to 1877)

Aside from the degree of detail or description provided across the var-ious narratives, in general, all the textbooks position acts of violence asstrategic, or purposefully inflicted on one or more African Americans.Texts highlight individuals and/or group(s) of individual(s) as the per-petrators of such acts. This is the case in an example taken from theeighth-grade text, The American Nation: “Some white southerners formedsecret societies to help them regain power. The most dangerous was theKu Klux Klan, or KKK. The Klan worked to keep African Americans andwhite Republicans out of office” (bold in the original, p. 527). Here, thereader is told that a group of White Southerners intent on possessingpolitical power engaged in violent activities specifically targeting AfricanAmericans and White Republicans. In another example taken from the


11th-grade text, American Nation in the Modern Era, a specific violent inci-dent that took place during Reconstruction is recounted. Here, the focusis on identifying the events that led to the killing of many AfricanAmericans by a group of White rioters:

Race riots were becoming increasingly common in the South.On May 1, 1866, two carriages collided on the streets ofMemphis. When police officers arrested the African Americandriver but not the white one, a group of African American veter-ans protested. A white mob soon gathered. The resulting conflictled to a three-day spree of violence in which white rioters—con-sisting mainly of police officers and firefighters—killed 46African Americans and burned 12 schools and four churches. “Ifanything could reveal . . . the demoniac spirit . . . toward thefreedmen,” one reporter noted, this violence would. (p. 139)

What stands out in this example is the cause-and-effect relationshipthat frames the retelling of this narrative. The reader is left to assumethat because the police officers arrested the African American driver andnot the White driver, a group of Black veterans were outraged andprotested. This response then led a group of White individuals—includ-ing city officials such as the police and firefighters—to initiate violenceon the African American protestors. It is not exactly clear why the Whiteindividuals chose to attack the African Americans, as well as their schoolsand churches, but the quotation used to conclude this passage suggeststhat it was because the White people were possessed with a “demoniac”spirit.

Looking closely at both of the cited examples, as well as the previouslyhighlighted examples shared so far, a pattern is denoted. Although thetexts do not render these acts of violence as haphazard occurrences, justhappening to befall African Americans, they discuss these acts in waysthat ignore, undermine, or misrepresent the larger institu-tional/structural ties that supported (through actions and/or inactions)and, more important, benefited from, their enactment. Here, a reader istold (or left to assume) that in some instances, violence occurred becausesome White Southerners wished to disenfranchise African Americans oftheir political power, or because some Whites were “demoniac,” orbecause some vague group of people wanted to enslave Africans as partof the nebulous slave trade system. Indeed, one of the key findings in thisstudy was the consistent portrayal of violence against African Americansas deinstitutionalized acts undertaken by “bad” men or, at best, “bad”people—for example, slaveholders, ship captains, slave drivers, masters,


owners, Southerners, the Ku Klux Klan, and Northern workers.For example, in the fifth-grade Harcourt Horizons textbook, the text

states, “Slaves were treated well or cruelly depending on their owners” (p.244). Later, the text notes, “There was little protection, however, forslaves who had cruel masters” (p. 244). In these examples, slavery is rele-gated to the province of the individual “owner” or “master.” Further,from these and other such passages, the experiences faced by enslavedAfricans depended wholly on the degree of benevolence or cruelty pos-sessed by individual owners. In this way, textbook narratives do not posi-tion slavery as a fully institutionalized system that afforded a foundationof economic stability and wealth that can traced to contemporary institu-tions and families, but rather as the actions of a few “bad” (or less “bad”men).

In saying this, however, we do not mean to suggest that all textbooksunequivocally fail to acknowledge the involvement of national, state, andlocal officials in the acts of violence targeting African Americans. Indeed,as we will illustrate later, several textbooks do in fact discuss how theinvolvement of officials (or the lack thereof, which is still a form ofinvolvement) occurred concurrently with acts of violence targetingAfrican Americans. Rather, what we do wish to argue is that such acts, andthe seeming benefits accrued because of them, are characterized as lim-ited only to the individuals directly involved in the violence. Thus, thecumulative effect of the violence touches only the lives of the individu-als/groups who inflicted the act, and the lives of the individuals/groupswho were victims of the act. Acts of violence portrayed in this way situateviolence as seemingly disconnected from the very institutions and struc-tures that made it possible for such acts to occur and, perhaps moreimportant, that served to disenfranchise African Americans and helpedto fasten in place the existing status quo, socially, economically, culturally,and politically.

For example, let’s take a look at a passage taken from the fifth-gradetextbook Scott Foresman Social Studies about the violence inflicted onAfrican Americans during Reconstruction:

Some white Southerners also objected to the rights gained byAfrican Americans. After the new state governments repealedblack codes, a group of white southerners formed the Ku KluxKlan. The Klan’s goal was to restore white control over the livesof African Americans. Members of the Klan burned AfricanAmerican schools and homes, and attacked Blacks for trying tovote. (p. 518)


In this passage, readers find that a vague group of White southernersdid not want a vague group of African Americans to enjoy the rightsafforded to them through the abolishment of slavery (13thConstitutional Amendment), the acknowledgement of due process andequal protection under the law (14th Constitutional Amendment), andthe granting of male suffrage (15th Constitutional Amendment). Itseems that the passage of the Black Codes (which is spoken of previouslyin the text) was done to curtail the enactment of these rights. Once theBlack Codes were repealed (also spoken of previously in the text) by stategovernments run by Black and White Republicans, African Americanswere seemingly in a position to again exercise their due rights. Thesesame White southerners organized into a group called the KKK, whosepurpose was to use violence to maintain control over the actions ofAfrican Americans. What this passage highlights is that violence served asa mechanism of control and was employed by any person or group want-ing to meet such ends.

This suggests, then, that “White” “Klan” violence that targeted “AfricanAmericans” during Reconstruction was enacted with the vague intentionof “controlling the actions” of Blacks and helping to gain back “politicalcontrol” from the Republican Party that comprised both Black and Whitemembers. What the textbooks leave out of this narrative, however, is a dis-cussion of what constitutes “political control.” Why did the possession of“political control” matter? What kinds of things could one engage in byholding “political control”? Was it the Klan members who wanted con-trol? Or were they acting in the interests of themselves and/or others?Further, why did the Klan members burn down churches and schools?What was the significance of these acts? Was the effect of these actsgreater than simply the loss of material buildings that, over time, couldbe built again?

Though one could raise many other questions about the points raisedin the narrative, what seems clear from the questions we pose here is thelack of discussion in the passage about the institutionalized nature of theKlan—how this organization was supported (either outright or throughsilence) by people who had an economic and political interest in keep-ing African Americans in a politically, socially, and economically sub-servient position. Without schools, it would be difficult to educate youngpeople and those formerly enslaved African Americans who had not beenallowed to gain literacy skills. Without a church building, the AfricanAmericans had lost a vital physical space for meeting and potential orga-nizing, as well as a symbol of progress, hope, and faith in a social systemthat seemed, under such violent conditions, fully against them.


Reading across the text, we did find instances in which narrativesoffered more discussion on the use of violence as a means to gain politi-cal power and drew a tighter linkage between the two. These examples(with only a few exceptions), however, also failed to highlight the institu-tional/structural factors that supported the violence, the interests ofthose who specifically benefited from, but may not have actually engagedin, the acts, and the implications that such acts had for the livelihood ofWhites and African Americans who lived in areas where this violence tookplace.

For instance, the Creating America eighth-grade text offers a moredetailed description of, and explanation for, the violence targetingAfrican Americans. Here, lynching is illuminated as one act of violenceused to restore Democratic power in “the South”:

African Americans in the South faced other problems besidespoverty. They also faced violent racism. Many planters and for-mer Confederate soldiers did not want African Americans tohave more rights. In 1866, such feelings spurred the rise of asecret group called the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan’s goals were torestore Democratic control of the South and keep former slavespowerless. The Klan attacked African Americans. Often it tar-geted those who owned land or had become prosperous.Klansmen rode on horseback and dressed in white robes andhoods. They beat people and burned homes. They even lynchedsome victims, killing them on the spot without a trial as punish-ment for a supposed crime. The Klan also attacked whiteRepublicans. Klan victims had little protection. Military authori-ties in the South often ignored the violence. President Johnsonhad appointed most of these authorities, and they were againstReconstruction. The Klan’s terrorism served the DemocraticParty. As gun-toting Klansmen kept Republicans away from thepolls, the Democratic Party increased their power (p. 528)

What stands out about this narrative is the way it ties together Black-tar-geted violence and racism and acknowledges that political officials chosenot to put an end to violent conditions.4 It is also clear that political andmilitary authorities failed to protect African Americans against Klan vio-lence. However, what is less clear is why such authorities responded inthis way. Why were they against Reconstruction? Was it because they feltpsychologically defeated by the war and just simply displaced their feel-ings on recently emancipated African Americans? Was it because they justdid not like African American people? Or was it because they viewed


African Americans as a threat to the existing economic, political, andsocial structure?

In another example, taken from the 11th-grade textbook America:Pathways to the Present, the following is stated about the goals of the Klan:

During Radical Reconstruction, the Klan sought to eliminate theRepublican Party in the South by intimidating Republican vot-ers, both white and black. The Klan’s long-term goal was to keepAfrican Americans in the role of submissive laborers. The Klan’sterror tactics varied from place to place. (p. 219)

Here, the reader is told in a more pointed fashion that the intendedlong-term goal of the Klan’s (i.e., “bad” people) violence toward AfricanAmericans was to subjugate this group into a submissive laborer role.

Although these narratives go beyond many of the examples foundacross the texts, they too fall short of clearly identifying the institutionalnature and effects of violence in this context. When reading this text,both teachers and students are left to fill in the gaps left by the textregarding to the structural nature of violence and the initial desired andcumulative effects (e.g., economic, social, political, cultural) of acts suchas lynching and the burning of schools and churches. Teachers and stu-dents are also left to ponder unanswered questions such as: Why did theKlan members target African Americans “who owned land or hadbecome prosperous”? Was it out of jealousy? Was it because the Klanwanted to live a segregated life that did not include living around peoplethey considered inferior? Was it because the White Klan members wantedthe land that African Americans owned? If so, why would the White Klanmembers want land? Why was land so important? Why did the Klan mem-bers want African Americans to remain powerless? Further, what is meantby the term power? Does it refer to the capacity to exert physical force? Ordoes it refer to possessing the capacity to influence conditions in a man-ner that benefits and impacts oneself and others? How, then, is “power”gained and used? To what ends does it serve?

CONSTRUCTIONS OF RESISTANCE BY AFRICAN AMERICANSAGAINST RACIAL VIOLENCE

Across all the textbooks examined, we found narratives of AfricanAmericans exerting resistance against racial violence. Such acts, however,received differing treatment across the time periods covered in the texts.For instance, slavery (particularly in the fifth- and eighth-grade text-books) and the Civil Rights/Black Power eras (in the 11th-grade text-


books) were the primary sites for discussing African American resistance.Discussions of African American resistance during Reconstruction werevirtually nonexistent across all grade levels, and in the case of the JimCrow era, such acts were relegated generally to the work of antilynchingcoalitions led by Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist.5

In general, characterizations of resistance are situated in relation to ahistoric event or a historic person who led and/or organized some resis-tant act. Textbooks for all grade levels cite the Amistad Rebellion, andeighth-grade and 11th-grade texts note the Stono Rebellion. Notable fig-ures such as Cinque (from the Amistad Rebellion), Denmark Vesey,Harriet Tubman, and Nat Turner receive varied treatment across all thereviewed texts. For example, in the fifth-grade Our Nation text, the readerencounters the following description of the rebellion led by Nat Turner:

The number of slave rebellions also grew. One of the most seri-ous took place on August 21, 1831. Nat Turner led a small bandof enslaved people in Southhampton County, Virginia. For twodays, they went from farm to farm and killed nearly 60 men,women, and children from slave-holding families. Turner hid inthe woods for six weeks before he was caught. All the rebels werehanged. After Turner’s rebellion, many slave owners feared fortheir lives. As one planter said, “I have not slept without [worry]in three months.” Terrified whites in the South killed more than100 innocent enslaved and free blacks in 1831. Some statespassed laws forbidding African Americans from gathering inpublic places and holding religious services. (p. 412)

In this passage, readers find that enslaved Africans fought back againstthe conditions of slavery. This resistance could be violent in nature and,as noted here, served the purpose of inciting fear among Whites in theSouth. What stands out in this example is how the passage purposefullypresents the Nat Turner incident in a cause-and-effect relationship. Thereader is told that because of the violence inflicted on Whites during theslave insurrection, Whites became afraid. This fear led to the killing ofmany enslaved Africans and to the passage of legislation that made it ille-gal for these individuals to gather and meet.

In the next example, taken from the fifth-grade Scott Foresman SocialStudies textbook, the reader learns that although some acts of resistanceby enslaved Africans were unsuccessful, others led to the intended out-come of freedom. Here the text begins by describing the events leadingup to and following the rebellion led by Nat Turner. This discussion is fol-lowed by a description of the Amistad incident:


A later rebellion had a different ending. In 1839, a group of 53captive Africans seized control of the Amistad a Spanish slave shipcarrying them from one port to another in Cuba. The Africanswere led by a farmer from West Africa who became known asJoseph Cinque. He told the Africans: “We may as well die in try-ing to be free.” (p. 472)

Resistance to slavery by enslaved Africans did not only take the form ofviolent insurrections. Across all the texts examined, there was some ref-erence to acts of resistance that were more subtle and enacted in day-to-day plantation life. The acts refer to work stoppages, the breaking oftools, and, according to the eighth-grade History Alive text, even “pre-tend[ing] to be dumb, clumsy, sick or insane to escape work” (p. 265). Anexample of this is found in the eleventh-grade text The Americans, whichdiscusses several nonviolent ways that enslaved Africans resisted the vio-lence of slavery. “Slaves also resisted their position of subservience.Throughout the colonies, planters reported slaves faking illness, break-ing tools, and staging work slowdowns. A number of slaves tried to runaway, even though escape attempts brought severe punishment” (p. 33).

In a similar manner, nonviolence as a strategy of resistance was exten-sively discussed in sections of the textbooks on the Civil Rights/ BlackPower Era. However, our findings illustrate that the bulk of these narra-tives of resistance were presented across 11th-grade textbooks. Whatstands out in these narratives is the recursive manner in which resistanceis discussed in relation to acts of racial violence. In this context, and sim-ilar to how resistance is discussed in relation to slavery, textbooks repeat-edly highlight the actions of various civil rights leaders and organizationsthat employed nonviolence as a strategy of resistance, in spite of theoccurrence (or threat) of violence. The following passage, taken fromthe 11th-grade textbook America: Pathways to the Present, illustrates thispoint:

The riders escaped before the bus burst into flames, but manywere beaten by the mob as they stumbled out of the vehicle,choking on the smoke. They had anticipated trouble, since theymeant to provoke a confrontation. The level of violence, how-ever, took them by surprise. As a result of the savage response,Farmer considered calling off the project. SNCC leaders,though, begged to go on. Farmer warned, “You know that maybe suicide.” Student activist Diane Nash replied, “If we let themstop us with violence, the movement is dead! . . . . Your troops


have been badly battered. Let us pick up the baton and run withit.” (pp. 711–712)

This example is indicative of how 11th-grade textbooks generally char-acterized nonviolent resistance. Whole sections dedicated to the civilrights movement descriptively highlighted how leaders and activistsemployed the strategy of nonviolence in the midst of aggressive acts ofviolence used to thwart the efforts of the civil rights movement. Sometextbooks took the narrative of resistance a bit further by highlightingthat nonviolence was often calculated and used to incite local and stateofficials to use violence. The following passage from American Nation illus-trates how civil rights leaders purposely employed this strategy:

After the events in Albany, SCLC focused its attention onBirmingham. Protesting in Birmingham meant danger and pos-sibly even death. Ralph Abernathy later explained the civil rightsactivists’ strategy. “As for [police chief] Bull Connor and City ofBirmingham, it was true that they constituted the hardest andmost mean-spirited establishment in the South. Yet if we beatthem on their own home grounds, we might be able to prove tothe entire region that it was useless to resist desegregation, thatits time had finally come. To win in Birmingham might well beto win in the rest of the nation. So in the long run the gamble[of confronting violence in Birmingham] might actually savetime and lives in our struggle for equality.”— Ralph Abernathy,And the Walls Came Tumbling Down. (p. 653)

Similar to the depictions of resistance during Slavery in the textbooks,the 11th- grade texts present resistance during the Civil Rights/BlackPower era as strategic. However, resistance during this time was also char-acterized as highly organized, as opposed to depictions during Slavery,which positioned these acts as less formally organized and sometimes ran-dom in nature. It appears that during the Civil Rights era, resistance wasused as a means for achieving social justice.

Although these constructions of resistance offer a strong illustration ofthe concomitant relationship between resistance and racial violence(Aptheker, 1969; Kelley, 1993; Shapiro, 1988), they also situate instigatorsof violence in particular ways. Here, textbooks often targeted a few keyplayers as the consummate protagonists of violence, acting in anautonomous fashion and disconnected from larger social, political, andeconomic interests in the region. One of the main characters in the civil


rights narrative was Eugene “Bull” Connor. He is portrayed as a lonecrazed and racist man fully committed to crushing African Americanactivists. The following passage from the textbook The American RepublicSince 1877 illustrates this point:

The head of the police in Birmingham, Public SafetyCommissioner Theophilus Eugene (“Bull”) Connor, explainedthat there had been no police at the bus station because it wasMother’s Day and he had given many of his officers the day off.FBI evidence later showed that Connor had contacted the localKu Klux Klan and told them he wanted the Freedom Ridersbeaten “until it looked like a bulldog got a hold of them.” Theviolence in Alabama made national news, shocking manyAmericans. The attack on Freedom Riders came less than fourmonths after President John F. Kennedy took office. The newpresident felt compelled to do something to get the violenceunder control. (p. 755)

This passage illustrates the contrast made between the “bad” BullConnor, the “shocked” unknowing Americans, and the “benevolent” and“caring” President Kennedy. This relationship is commonly narratedacross the 11th-grade textbooks and conveys to the reader that racial vio-lence and resistance to that violence were limited only to the actorsinvolved. Here, violence is read as a deviation from true American demo-cratic ideals—those presumably held by the “shocked” Americans andthe president.

Finally, with regard to the portrayal of resistance against violence dur-ing the era of Black Power, all the 11th-grade textbooks juxtapose thisresponse with the nonviolent approach adopted by the civil rights move-ment. To do this, textbooks often highlight the growing frustrations thatAfrican Americans had with Southern racism and the racial discrimina-tion and police brutality experienced in some northern, midwestern, andwestern U.S. cities.

According to the textbooks, African Americans working in the civilrights movement also became frustrated with the increasing levels ofracial violence and the concomitant lack of social change taking place inthe United States. Some of these individuals began looking at the politi-cal discourse of the burgeoning Black Power. One such example isStokely Carmichael, who is cited in the 11th-grade textbook America:Pathways to the Present as a former member of the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee (SNCC). The following text discusses how he


became frustrated with the approach and direction of the civil rightsmovement and, along with SNCC, took an increasingly radical approachto social change:

As Carmichael rose to SNCC leadership, the group became moreradical. After being beaten and jailed for his participation indemonstrations, he was tired of nonviolent protest. He called onSNCC workers to carry guns for self-defense. He wanted to makethe group exclusively black, rejecting white activists. . . .Carmichael, just out of jail, jumped into the back of an opentruck to challenge the moderate leaders: “This is the twenty-sev-enth time I have been arrested, and I ain’t going to jail no more!. . . . The only way we gonna stop them white men from whippin’us is to take over. We been saying freedom for six years—and weain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start saying now is ‘blackpower!’”—Stokely Carmichael, public address, June 1966.(p. 724)

Across the 11th-grade texts, Carmichael is highlighted as a vocal advo-cate for the changing terrain of Black political discourse during the late1960s. Carmichael’s call for radical change in the civil rights movementis often presented in parallel with discussions about the Black PantherParty (BPP). Across the texts, however, notably less attention is given tothe BPP than to the civil rights movement. Most notably, the textbookspoint to the violent tensions between the BPP and state and local offi-cials. American Nation illustrates this point:

The platform also called for the creation of “black self-defensegroups that are dedicated to defending our black communityfrom racist police oppression.” Black Panther members oftenappeared in public carrying firearms—at the time a legal activityin California. They participated in a number of highly publicizedgun battles with police. (p. 664)

Although this text clearly provides a broader ideological perspectiveabout 1960s Black political struggles, the way the narrative is renderedcan be misleading. Though the BPP had several gunfights with localpolice, scholars have documented how local and federal authorities usedviolence with the sole purpose of repressing the political efforts of theBPP members (Churchill, 1988). Very little mention is made aboutthe Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) COINTELPRO program,which used various (often violent) repressive tactics to dismantle the


organization. Many members were killed as a result of the COINTELPROprogram, including one of the most popularly known members, FredHampton. Thus, by suggesting that the BPP and police officers were in a“gun battle” without providing the historical context needed to under-stand why such conflicts may have occurred, students and teachersreceive misrepresented depictions of violence directed toward radicalBlack political organizations. (see Davenport, 2009)

DISCUSSION & IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY

Findings from this study illuminate that knowledge about racial violencetoward African Americans is present, in some form, at all levels across theK–12 social studies textbooks. Given the long history that U.S. social stud-ies textbooks have played in presenting marginalized knowledge aboutAfrican Americans (Allen, 1971; Alridge, 2006; Banks, 1969; King, 1992;Swartz, 1992; Woodson, 1933/2000; Wynter, 1992), some may perceivethis finding as racial progress. We suggest, however, that although thisfinding points to the important gains made due to the tireless critiquesof multicultural scholars and curriculum theorists, there is still muchwork to accomplish.

At one level, although contemporary textbooks include the stories toldabout racial violence targeting African Americans and their responses tothis violence, certain patterns emerge in these narratives. Racial violenceis acknowledged across all the main time periods of African American his-tory, including Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the CivilRights/Black Power era. Resistance to violence, however, is often rele-gated to Slavery and the Civil Rights/Black Power era—with the excep-tion of brief mention of the efforts of antilynching leagues during JimCrow. This pattern, then, gives the impression that African Americans satback and willingly accepted the violence (and the threat of violence) as acondition of their existence. Historian Herbert Shapiro (1988) pre-sented evidence that challenges this notion, pointing to the armed resis-tance that African Americans in the Greenwood section of Tulsa,Oklahoma, took against Whites in 1921. Additionally, sporadic attentionis paid to the more commonly recognized narratives of racial violencewithin the public discourse, including the brutal murder of Emmett Tilland the Alabama bombings that killed four African American girls. Yeteven more surprising is that the textbooks give little attention to racialviolence and resistance in the Post–Civil Rights/Black Power era. Onlysome of the 11th-grade texts address these events, few mention theRodney King incident, and no reference is made to the MovePhiladelphia bombing, Atlanta child murders, the Bensonhurst and


Howard Beach beatings, the Bernard Goetz killings, the dragging andlynching of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, and the murder of AmadouDiallo.

In spite of these gaps, perhaps the most insidious finding in this studyconcerns the overwhelming portrayal of acts of violence against AfricanAmericans in ways that render these events as the acts of autonomousimmoral agents rather than systematic acts that had direct and long-termeffects. Acts of racial violence, such as the physical brutality of slavery, theunrelenting torture and lynching of thousands of African Americansfrom the late 1800s to the first half of the 20th century, and the strongphysical resistance leveled against African Americans during the 1950sand 1960s, were presented as strategic in nature and enacted by actorswho were immoral (e.g., KKK, those against the Republican Party) oroverzealous and crazed (e.g., Eugene “Bull” Connor). These strategicacts, however, were also simultaneously presented in ways that strippedthem of their institutional ties, leaving students and teachers responsiblefor making these vital connections.

For example, when considering how the textbooks depicted acts of vio-lence that occurred during the Middle Passage and Slavery, one findsthat slavery was a system that involved individual actors that possessed adesire to maintain control over the enslaved Africans immediately undertheir control. These narratives, however, do not illustrate the systematic,institutional basis of this violence, nor do they allude to the long-termeffects of such violence on maintaining a system that provided the socioe-conomic and political infrastructure of the United States (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) and the financial wealth and stability of somefamilies and corporations (e.g., Fleet Bank, Aetna Insurance Company)that continue to reap social and economic benefits of these past events(Biondi, 2003; Martin & Yaquinto, 2004).6

When considering how acts of violence targeting African Americanswere characterized during Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rightsera, a similar pattern existed. And, even in those instances in which thetexts did note that local, state, and/or federal officials turned a blind eyeto such events, it was not made clear for the reader that these acts couldnot have occurred without the expressed support (either overtly orcovertly) of sociopolitical institutions that ultimately benefited from thisviolence. In this manner, acts of violence went beyond simply the actorswho engaged in the actual act by simultaneously providing a social envi-ronment that deprived African Americans of their political rights andeconomic livelihoods in the communities where they lived. The effects ofthis disenfranchisement went beyond a loss of votes, the ushering in of anew political party, or simply the racial segregation of society. What it


meant was that most (but not all—e.g., see Note 5 on the Greenwood sec-tion of Tulsa, Oklahoma) African Americans were unable to collectively,on a national scale, access the vital elements needed to create and sustaina thriving sociopolitical and economic subcommunity in the UnitedStates.7

Yet simultaneously, Whites who engaged in violent acts against AfricanAmericans, as well as those who quietly ignored these actions, all bene-fited (whether materially or symbolically—for example, White skin privi-lege) from these acts of violence. For example, what happened to theland that was taken from African Americans or left behind when they fledthe South in response to intimidations of violence? What happened whenschool buildings and churches built by African Americans weredestroyed? In recent years, several prominent attorneys have pushed stateand federal governments to repay African Americans who lost propertybecause of violent and racist conditions during the 20th century in theSouth (Ogletree, n.d.; Tulsa Reparations Coalition, n.d.).

Thus, we suggest that the textbooks generally depicted acts of violenceagainst African Americans as aberrational, or temporary exceptions, inthe narrative of American democracy. Here, violence becomes a“moment of darkness” in which specific people (e.g., ship captains, slaveowners, KKK members, Northern workers, Southern officials) living inspecific spatial contexts (e.g., the South, the North) acted in ways thatwere abnormal and inconsistent with the American ideals of democracy.Yet what gets left out of the narrative is how the creation of U.S. democ-racy (and capitalism) occurred simultaneously with the violence used torepress and cause fear in African Americans and lock in place an institu-tionalized system of political, economic, and social inequality. Also leftout is the recognition that out of these actions, a system of White privi-lege was nurtured and sustained.

In accounting for why contemporary textbooks fail to address issues ofrace in ways that position it as a fully structural and institutional factor inthe history of the United States, we recognize that a confluence of factorsplays a role. The first is a point that numerous scholars of curriculumhave noted: School knowledge is political (Apple, 1993; Banks 1993;Buras, 2008; Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995). This body of work has illus-trated that school curriculum debates become entrenched within theinterests of several political entities and ideological perspectives that dis-agree on how school texts should render U.S. history. Scholars(Cornbleth & Waugh) suggest that these “cultural wars” have led officialtexts (Giroux, 1997, Ladson-Billings, 2003b) to present historical narra-tives in line with a traditional, uncontroversial form of consensus history(Hoffer, 2004).8 These practices inevitably impact the way that race gets


depicted and represented in mainstream textbooks. Given the controver-sial nature of race as it is situated within the context of American history,racial violence as a topic of inquiry in U.S. social studies textbooks standsas a counternarrative and a challenge to the typical narrative of U.S.history.

Although we agree with this explanation, there are other factors thatinform how African American racial violence is presented in the officialschool text. For example, there is a general discontinuity between howscholarly discourse conceptualizes African American history and itsdepiction in official school texts (e.g., see Hess, 2005). There is a time lagbetween how history is reconceptualized in the scholarly discourse andhow it eventually trickles into K–12 educational discourse. For example,during much of the 20th century, scholars rarely recognized how AfricanAmericans resisted during the Middle Passage and Slavery. By the 1960s,a significant body of slave historical scholarship emerged that illustratedthe way African Americans revolted and resisted (Aptheker, 1969;Genovese, 1980; Stampp, 1965). Over time, these changing narratives ofslave resistance—although sometimes narrowly rendered—eventuallybecame part of traditional school knowledge. Thus, while school textsgenerally present a truncated version of the history of race and racism inthe United States, we might understand this gap as related to the grow-ing attention paid by social scientists to race as a systematic feature of U.S.history. For the last couple of decades, historians (Dray, 2003; Kelley,1993; Shapiro, 1988; Tyson, 1998), sociologists (Fitzhugh-Brundage,1997; Tolnay & Beck, 1995), political scientists (Davenport, 2005, 2007,2009), and literary scholars (Goldsby, 2006) have addressed the materialand structural implications of racial violence in the United States, includ-ing how African Americans resisted racial violence throughout most ofthe 20th century. Over time, it is our hope that this body of scholarshipwill impact the construction of sociocultural and historical knowledgefound in official school texts.

The findings of this study have several implications. First, if the histor-ical narratives of racial violence in the United States are understood onlyas a few fleeting moments in which immoral, crazed, or even racist indi-vidual actors behaved in a manner unbecoming of American democraticnorms, students fail to understand the manner in which racist acts wereinstitutionally supported and how they accrued benefits to those Whiteswho both engaged in and ignored the acts. Second, the presentation ofsuch narratives in textbook curricula help to sustain the ideologicalbelief that racism, whether overt or insidious, only existed (or continuesto exist) because of the actions of a few unscrupulous individuals ratherthan as acts embedded within larger institutional and structural systems.


These acts, unfortunately, do not go away with history. Rather, theireffects—materially, symbolically, and discursively—impact contemporarylife. Thus, we contend that the manner in which the history of racial vio-lence against African Americans is rendered and acknowledged withinthe official curriculum fails to construct a cultural memory of institution-alized inequality and racism. Such a memory is vitally needed in the workof education policy makers, educators, and teacher educators—particu-larly those who prepare teachers who will teach social studies. We furtherargue that schools and teachers must draw from students’ interpretationsof these histories (see Epstein, 1998, 2009) because they inform theirsociocultural knowledge about race and racism.

These findings highlight the limitations associated with trying to sim-ply make the school curriculum more inclusive for historically underrep-resented communities. Although well intentioned, such goals often fallshort of the intended aim of transforming curricular knowledge (King,2004). Throughout the late 20th century, multicultural education schol-ars fought difficult battles to change incomplete, and often inaccurate,historical knowledge (Ladson-Billings, 2003a). Though these efforts ush-ered in some improvement by making K–12 social studies textbooks moreinclusive regarding the knowledge presented, they have not changed thestructural ways that racial violence is discussed and framed in the historyof African Americans in the United States.

These findings also have implications for developing preservice teach-ers who will eventually provide such historical knowledge to their stu-dents. One of the most difficult challenges faced by teacher educators ishelping preservice teacher candidates understand the historical andinstitutional nature of race (along with other social constructs) in schoolsand society (Gay, 2002; Milner, 2003; Tyson, 2003). Students enterteacher preparation programs armed with, and likely to draw from, expe-riences (Lortie, 1975) and knowledge (e.g., historical and sociocultural)gained in their K–12 schooling. These individuals will draw from thisknowledge and eventually have the responsibility of providing it to theirstudents. We suggest that the deinstitutionalized historical narratives ofracial violence that teachers receive in their K–12 social studies educationhave direct implications for how they approach their teacher educationcoursework, how they understand and interpret racial violence andracism, and how they will eventually teach these subjects in their class-rooms.

With regard to preservice teachers’ perspectives on race, existing liter-ature points to the unexamined and often privileged social locationsfrom which many reside (e.g., White, middle class) as the cause of theirseeming resistance to recognize the power of race. Indeed, it is not


uncommon for scholars to point to such knowledge as the most difficultto shift when trying to prepare teachers to embrace a commitment tosocial justice teaching (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Howard, 1999; King, 1991;McIntyre, 1997; Sleeter, 2001, 2008). We argue that what these studentsmay lack, in addition to sitting in a privileged social location, is both anunderstanding of the “cultural memory” of race in the history of theUnited States and an understanding of how this history continues tomanifest in the present (Ladson-Billings, 1991; Sleeter, 2008). Thus, wenote that most students come to teacher education programs lacking his-torical knowledge and the conceptual tools needed to make sense of theelusive, complex, and institutionalized nature of race inequality.Although some may have varying degrees of personal/experientialknowledge about the role of race in U.S. history and society—particularlyif they are of color—they, along with their White counterparts, will likelyhave fragmented historical knowledge about the powerful role of race.

Finally, we assert that the way textbooks portray racial violence has sig-nificant implications for how social studies and historical discourse aretaught in schools. We offer that social studies knowledge must reexaminethe nexus between racial violence and democracy. Several social scientistshave already noted that violence and state repression are inextricably tiedto the tensions, internal struggles, and contradictions of being a citizenwithin a democratic nation (Davenport, 2005, 2007; Tolnay & Beck,1995). In other words, racial violence is embedded in group and individ-ual interests while concomitantly tied to local, state, and federal actors’collective material and political interests. This seeming symbiotic rela-tionship between racial violence and democracy relates to what Goldsby(2006) referred to as a “cultural logic” of American life. This culturallogic, according to Goldsby, demarcates the vital, necessary role thatracial violence has played in framing the history of the United States. Ifthis is the case, we propose that paying closer attention to these relation-ships in the K–12 curriculum will help to alter the perception that racialviolence is—as we stated earlier—simply “bad men doing bad things.”

All this leads us back to the question implied in this article: Is it thatteachers won’t teach about racial violence, or is that they can’t teach aboutracial violence to its fullest extent because they—in concert with the offi-cial curriculum—lack the cultural memory to do so? In this article, wehave approached this question from the standpoint of whether the offi-cially sanctioned historical discourse in school textbooks addresses thehistory of racial violence against African Americans in the United States.We have also considered the implications of these histories in how we talkabout and enact “race” in a contemporary schooling context. We furthernote that although this analysis illustrates the problematic way that


textbooks portray racial violence, some revisionist historians, school dis-tricts, and communities have challenged the way African American his-tory is presented in school texts.9 Additionally, we contend that furtherresearch should explore how teachers in traditional schools and non-school settings pedagogically address how issues of race and racism areconstructed within school curriculum.

It is our hope that the findings of this study and further research willchallenge us all to reconsider what we think we know about the history ofracial violence in the United States, for we acknowledge that in forgettingabout this “spectacular secret” (Goldsby, 2006), we only distance our-selves even further from realizing a true, socially just U.S. democracy.

Notes

1. In this article, we use the term African American and sometimes the term Black torefer to people of African descent who live in the United States. Please note that we alsochoose to capitalize the term Black, and the term White when we use it to refer to people ofEuropean descent who live in the United States.

2. It is not surprising, then, that one of the earliest critiques leveled against portrayalsof African American history in the United States focused on the lack of attention paid toresistance by Blacks during intense periods of violence—for example, the Middle Passageand Slavery (Stampp, 1965). Narratives of the “happy slave” abound in historical accountsand social studies textbooks, paying little attention to the daily acts of resistance engaged inby enslaved African Americans. Thus, in this study, we wanted to examine not only how actsof violence against African Americans were rendered in K–12 textbooks but also how thiscommunity of people resisted these conditions.

3. The official list of Texas-adopted U.S. history social studies textbooks included 24titles; this study examined only those textbooks (19) that were available on site at the offi-cial state office were we retrieved data.

4. Scholars have noted previously that textbooks often diminish or ignore the linksbetween race and power—notions that are embedded in the use of the term racism (King,1992; Swartz, 1992).

5. Two notable exceptions to this deserve attention. The first is found in one of thetexts that situate Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist movement as a response to racial violenceagainst African Americans. The second is the Greenwood Incident, which took place inTulsa, Oklahoma, on May 31 and June 1, 1921. The 11th-grade text American Nation states,

In June 1921 at least 30 people died during a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One residentdescribed attacks on the African American section of town, “People were seen to flee fromtheir burning homes, some with babes in their arms.” The violence prompted AfricanAmerican soldier with World War I combat experience to attempt to defend their commu-nities. “The colored troops fought nobly,” wrote one African American to a friend inWashington, D.C. after the riots in that city. “We have something to fight for now.” (pp.403–404)

In this passage, the text makes reference to the race riots that took place in theGreenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Although not addressed in the text, portions ofGreenwood housed prosperous African American commercial interests that were destroyedduring the 1921 attacks. Historian Herbert Shapiro (1988) stated that “it is distinctly


improbable that the assault upon the black community [in Greenwood] could have beenmounted without the approval of police and other authorities” (pp. 183–184).

6. In recent years, scholars have uncovered ties between the system of slavery andexisting U.S. companies that “knowingly benefited” from this institution (e.g., see Biondi,2003; Martin & Yaquinto, 2004).

7. When saying this, we do not mean to suggest that African Americans were not ableto build strong communities throughout the South and in other parts of the U.S. Indeed,scholars have noted that in spite of discrimination, racial violence, and threats of racial vio-lence, many African Americans were able to pursue education, create businesses, and culti-vate strong communal relations (Anderson, 1988; Walker, 1996). However, even in some ofthese communities, like the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, African Americanswere still vulnerable to attack by the larger White community.

8. Hoffer (2004) recognizes consensus history as a skewed historical narrative thatplaces predominant historical representation on European Americans and positions allother populations in the United States as living harmoniously under the rule of Whites.

9. There have been some efforts by revisionist historians such as Eric Foner, HowardZinn, and Manning Marable to change how African American history is presented inschools. For example, Manning Marable and the Columbia University Center forContemporary Black History (CCBH) was recently awarded $91,219 from the FordFoundation to develop a prototype Web-based multimedia program called the AmistadDigital Resource for Teachers. In addition, the School District of Philadelphia has recently man-dated for all students to take a comprehensive Black history course before receiving theirhigh school diploma.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies for theirfinancial support for this research. We also want to thank Jennifer Lawton for her assistance in locat-ing and organizing the data used for this study, as well as Jaelyn Hamilton for her help in editing thefinal document. We express our gratitude to Lyn Corno and the anonymous reviewers for their thought-ful critique and suggestions on the final draft of the manuscript, as well as, to those who read andoffered us feedback on previous drafts of this manuscript, including: Herman Brown, ChristianDavenport, William Hamilton, Timothy Lensmire, Deborah Palmer, Allison Skerrett, Cynthia Tysonand Luis Urietta, Jr.

References

Allen, V. S. (1971). An analysis of textbooks relative to the treatment of Black Americans.Journal of Negro Education, 40, 140–145.

Alridge, D. (2006). The limits of master narratives in history textbooks: An analysis of rep-resentations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Teachers College Record, 108, 662–686.

Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.London: Verso.

Anderson, J. D. (1988). The education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press.


Anderson, J.D. (1986). Secondary school history Textbooks and the black history. In D.C.Hine (ed.), The State of Afro-American History: Past, present and future. (pp. 253-276). BatonRouge, LA: Louisiana State University.

Anyon, J. (1979). Elementary social studies textbooks and legitimating knowledge. Theoryand Research in Social Education, 6, 40–55.

Apple, M. (1993). The politics of the official knowledge: Does a national curriculum makesense? Teachers College Record, 95, 222–240.

Apple, M., & Oliver, A (1996). Becoming right: Education and the formation of conserva-tive movements? Teachers College Record, 97, 419–445.

Aptheker, H. (1969). American Negro slave revolts. New York: International.Assmann, J., & Czaplicka, J. (1995). Collective memory and cultural identity. New German

Critique, 65, 125–133.Banks, J. (1969). A content analysis of the Black American in textbooks. Social Education, 33,

954–957.Banks, J. (1993). The Canon Debate, knowledge construction, and multicultural education.

Educational Researcher, 22(5), 4–14.Banks, J. (2004). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and prac-

tice. In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee (Eds.), Handbook of research in multicultural education(2nd ed., pp. 50–65). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bell, D. (1987). And we are not saved: The elusive quest for racial justice. New York: Basic.Bell, D. A. (1995). Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma. In K.

Crenshaw (Ed.), The key writings that formed the movement (pp. 20–29). New York: NewPress.

Bernstein, P. (2005). The first Waco horror: The lynching of Jesse Washington and the rise of theNAACP. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.

Biondi, M. (2003). The rise of the reparations movement. Radical History Review, 87, 5–18.Bontemps, A. (1948). Story of the Negro. New York: Knopf.Buras, K. (2008). Rightist multiculturalism: Core lessons on neo-conservative school reform. New

York: Routledge.Carlson, D. (2003). Troubling heroes: Of Rosa Parks, multicultural education, and critical

pedagogy. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies. 3, 44-66.Carrigan, W. D. (2004). The making of a lynching culture: Violence and vigilantism in central

Texas, 1836–1916. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Chapman, T. (2005). Peddling backwards: Reflections of Plessy and Brown in the Rockford

schools de jure desegregation efforts. Race ethnicity & Education, 8, 29-44. Churchill,W. (1988). Agents of repression: The FBI’s secret wars against the Black Panther Party and theAmerican Indian Movement. Boston: South End Press.

Churchill, W. (1988). Agents of repression: The FBI’s secret wars against the Black Panther Partyand the American Indian Movement. Boston: South End Press.Cochran-Smith, M. (1995).Blind vision: Unlearning racism in teacher education. Harvard Educational Review, 70,157–190.

Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity and social justice in teacher educa-tion. New York: Teachers College Press.

Cornbleth, C., & Waugh, D. (1995). The great speckled bird: Multicultural politics and educationpolicy making. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Crenshaw, K. (1988). Race, reform, and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation inantidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101, 1331–1387.

Davenport, C. (2005). Understanding covert repressive action: The case of the U.S. govern-ment against the Republic of New Africa. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 49, 120–140.

Davenport, C. (2007). State repression and the domestic democratic peace. Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press.


Davenport, C. (2009). Media Bias, perspective, and state repression: The Black PantherParty. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Delgado, R. (1992). Rodrigo’s chronicle. Yale Law Journal, 101, 1357–1383.Dixson, A. D., & Dingus, J. E. (2007). Tyranny of the majority: Re-enfranchisement of

African-American teacher educators teaching for democracy. International Journal ofQualitative Studies in Education, 20, 639–654.

Dixson, A. D., & Rousseau, C. (2006). Critical race theory in education: All God’s children got asong. New York: Routledge.

Dray, P. (2003). At the hands of persons unknown: The lynching of Black America. New York:Modern Library.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1935). Black reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Atheneum.Epstein, T. (1998). Deconstructing differences in African American and European-

American adolescents’ perspectives on U.S. History. Curriculum Inquiry, 28, 397–423.Epstein, T. (2009). Interpreting national history: Race, identity, and pedagogy in classrooms and

communities. New York: Routledge.Ernest, J. (2004). Liberation historiography: African Americans writers and challenges of history,

1794–1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Fitzhugh-Brundage, W. (1997) (Ed.). Under sentence of death: Lynching in the South. Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Flores, R. (2002). Remembering the Alamo: Memory, modernity and the master symbol. Austin:

University of Texas Press.Fraser, N. (2000). Rethinking recognition. New Left Review, 3, 107–120.Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53,

106–115.Gay, G. (2004). Curriculum theory and multicultural education. In J. A. Banks & C. A.

McGee (Eds.), Handbook of research in multicultural education (2nd ed., pp. 30–49). SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass.

Genovese, E. (1980). Rebellion to revolution: Afro-American slave revolts in the making of the mod-ern world. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Giroux, H. (1997). Pedagogy and politics of hope: Theory, culture and schooling. Boulder, CO:Westview.

Goldsby, J. (2006). A spectacular secret: Lynching in American life and culture. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Grant, C. A. (1988). The persistence significance of race in schooling. Elementary SchoolJournal, 88, 561–569.

Hess, D. (2005). Moving beyond celebration: Challenging curricular orthodoxy in theteaching of Brown and its legacies. Teachers College Record. 107, 2046–2067.

Hoffer, P. (2004). Facts, fictions, fraud—American history from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose,Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin. New York: Public Affairs.

Howard, G. R. (1999). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools. NewYork: Teachers College Press.

Howard, T. (2003). The Dis(G)race of the social studies: The need for racial dialogue insocial studies. In G. Ladson-Billings (Ed.), Critical race theory perspectives on social studies:The profession, policies, and curriculum (pp. 27–44). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Kelley, R. (1993). “We are not what we seem”: Rethinking Black working-class opposition inthe Jim Crow South. Journal of American History, 80, 75–112.

King, J. E. (1991). Dysconscious racism: Ideology, identity, and the miseducation of teach-ers. Journal of Negro Education, 60,133–146.


King, J. E. (1992). Diaspora literacy and consciousness in the struggle against miseducationin the Black community. Journal of Negro Education, 61, 341–355.

King, J. (2002). Hate crime: The story of a dragging in Jasper, Texas. New York: Random House.King, J. E. (2004). In culture-centered knowledge: Black studies, curriculum transformation

and social action. In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee (Eds.), Handbook of research in multicul-tural education (2nd ed., pp. 349–380). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Krug, M. (1961). On rewriting of the story of Reconstruction in the U.S. history textbooks.Journal of Negro History, 46, 133–153.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1991). Beyond multicultural illiteracy. Journal of Negro Education, 60,147–157.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2003a). New directions in multicultural education: Complexities,boundaries, and critical race theory. In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee (Eds.), Handbook ofresearch in multicultural education (2nd ed., pp 50–65). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2003b) (Ed.). Critical race theory perspectives on social studies: The profes-sion, policies, and curriculum. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2004). Landing on the wrong note: The price paid for Brown.Educational Researcher, 97(33), 47–68.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2005). Is the team all right? Diversity and teacher education. Journal ofTeacher Education, 56, 229–234.

Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. TeachersCollege Record, 97, 47–68.

Le Goff, J. (1992). History and memory. New York: Columbia University. (Original work pub-lished 1977)

Loewen, J. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong.New York: Touchtone.

Lortie, D. (1975). School teacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Lowenthal, D. (1997). The heritage and the spoils of history. New York: Viking.Marable, M., & Mullings, L. (2000). Let nobody turn us around: Voices of resistance, reform and

renewal. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Markowitz, J. (2004). Legacies of lynching: Racial violence and memory. Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota.Martin, M. T., & Yaquinto, M. (2004). Reparations for “America’s Holocaust”: Activism for

global justice. Race and Class, 45, 1–25.McIntyre, P. (1997). Making meaning of whiteness: Exploring racial identity with White teachers.

Albany: State University of New York.Milner, R. (2003). Reflection, racial competence and critical pedagogy: How do we prepare

pre-service teachers to pose tough questions? Race, Ethnicity and Education, 6, 193–208.Obidah, J. E., & Howard, T. C. (2005). Preparing teachers for “Monday morning” in the

urban school classroom: Reflecting on our pedagogies and practices as effective teachereducators. Journal of Teacher Education, 56, 248–255.

Ogletree, C. J. (n.d.). Tulsa reparations: The survivors’ story. Retrieved October 31, 2007, fromhttp://bc.edu/schools/law/lawreviews/meta-elements/journals/bctwj/24_1/03_TXT.htm

Raper, A. F. (2003). The tragedy of lynching. New York: Dover. (Original work published 1969)Reddick, L. (1934). Racial attitudes in American history textbooks of the south. Journal of

Negro History, 19, 225–265.Schomberg, A. (1925). The Negro digs up his past. In A. Locke (Ed.), The new Negro: An

interpretation (pp. 231–237). New York: Arnon.


Shapiro, H. (1988). White violence and Black response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery.Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Sleeter, C. E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools: Research and theoverwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education, 52, 94–105.

Sleeter, C. E. (2008). Preparing White teachers for diverse students. In M. Cochran-Smith,S. Feiman-Nemser, D. J. McIntyre, & K. E. Demers (Eds.), Handbook of research on teachereducation: Enduring questions in changing contexts (3rd ed., pp. 559–582). New York:Routledge/Taylor & Francis.

Sleeter, C. E., & McClaren, P. (1995). Multicultural education, critical pedagogy and the politicsof difference. New York: SUNY Press.

Solórzano, D. (1997). Images and words that wound: critical race theory, racial stereotyp-ing and teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 24(3), 5–9.

Stampp, K. (1965). The peculiar institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Vintage.Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and

techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Swartz, E. (1992). Emancipatory narratives: rewriting the master script in the school cur-

riculum. Journal of Negro Education, 61, 341–355.Tolnay, S. E., & Beck, S. E. (1995). A festival of violence: An analysis of Southern lynchings,

1882–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Tulsa Reparations Coalition. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2007, from

http://www.tulsareparations.org/TRC.htm.Tyson, C. (2003). A bridge over troubled water: Social studies, civic education and critical

race theory. In G. Ladson-Billings (Ed.), Critical race theory perspectives on social studies: Theprofession, policies, and curriculum (pp. 15–26). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Tyson, T. (1998). Robert F. Williams, “Black Power,” and the roots of the African Americanfreedom struggle. Journal of American History, 85, 540–570.

Van Sledright, B. (2002). In search of America’s past: Learning to read history in elementary school.New York: Teachers College Press.

Walker, V. S. (1996). Their highest potential: An African American school community in the segre-gated south. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

Woodson, C. G. (1922). The Negro in our history. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers.Woodson, C. G. (1928). Negro makers of history. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers.Woodson, C. G. (2000). The miseducation of the Negro. Chicago: African American Images.

(Original work published 1933)Woodson, C. G. & Wesley, C. (1935). The story of the negro retold. Washington, DC: Associated

Publishers.Wineburg, S. (2000). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future ofteaching the past Philadelphia, PA: Temple University.Wynter, S. (1992). Don’t call us Negroes: How multicultural textbooks perpetuate racism. San

Francisco: Aspire.Yosso, T. (2002). Toward a critical race curriculum. Equity and Excellence in Education, 35,

93–107.

ANTHONY L. BROWN is an assistant professor in the Department ofCurriculum and Instruction and affiliated faculty at the John WarfieldCenter for African and African American Studies and Cultural Studies inEducation (CSE) at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a former class-


room teacher and school administrator whose scholarly interests focus onthe educational experiences of African American males as well as howAfrican American history is constructed in K–12 social studies curriculaand within the larger societal discourses. Anthony’s work has recentlybeen published in the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: EnduringIssues in Changing Contexts, the American Behavioral Scientist and RaceEthnicity and Education.

KEFFRELYN D. BROWN is an assistant professor in the Department ofCurriculum and Instruction and affiliated faculty at the John WarfieldCenter for African and African American Studies at the University ofTexas at Austin. She is a former classroom teacher, school administrator,and curriculum developer/consultant whose research interests focus onunderstanding how preservice teachers and in-service teachers under-stand and draw from sociocultural knowledge. She is also interested inthe knowledge constructed about and the educational experiences ofAfrican American students. Her recent work has been published in theSage Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Researcher,Educational Studies and Teaching and Teacher Education, and the Journal ofResearch on Science Teaching.

strange fruit indeed: interrogating contemporary textbook representations of racial violence toward...

Documents