Keith A. Erekson
Seeing through the Culture
Warfare to Teach Students about
Historical Change
T
he self-described “true Christian conservatives” on the Texas
State Board of Education who oversaw revisions to the state’s
K–12 social standards wanted voters to believe that they were
engaged in a holy culture war by standing up to experts and excising liberal bias from textbooks. Journalists ate up the metaphor with
delight, putting out a steady stream of headlines about the culture
wars’ “new front” in classrooms, or the “war on history,” or the “war
on Christmas.” Such stark headlines regularly described the debates
over what to teach children about civil rights, especially after one of the
appointed “expert reviewers,” a minister by training, urged the removal
of César Chávez for being a poor role model. The conservative school
board wanted to “Strip Cesar Chavez from school books” while Hispanic lawmakers called for “More Hispanics . . . or else” (1).
The net result of this approach to history education was a misplaced focus on who was on and who was off the laundry list. Dozens
of journalists from across the state, nation, and world took the bait and
wrote countless articles along this line, often with photographs of the
people in question. No one in the media asked the more important
questions: Why have politicians reduced history education to a laundry
list? Will memorizing a list of names—whether liberal, conservative,
or otherwise—have any real value in life? What does it really mean to
teach and learn about history?
This brief essay aims to articulate one way that a good history
teacher might move from politicized media coverage toward uncovering the skills and understanding needed to teach and learn history. It
looks at changes to the civil rights standard in Texas for several reasons:
the proposed and debated changes received much attention in the culture war coverage; throughout the process the standard expanded dramatically; and, most importantly, underneath the mass of new names
there is a compelling lesson about the nature of historical change. At
the end of the day, and with a few caveats, I think one can call the
changes to this standard a success but not for the reasons immediately
apparent on the surface.
CHANGES TO THE TEXT OF THE SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARD
In 1998 a moderately conservative Texas State Board of Education
approved a ninety-three-word statement of expectations for eleventh-grade
students on the history of the civil rights movement. The standard contains a stem emphasizing the “impact” of the civil rights movement followed by four clauses that 1) trace the development of civil rights through
U.S. history, 2) identify significant leaders in the 1960s, 3) evaluate government efforts, and 4) identify resulting changes. The first three clauses
were modified by the word “including” to indicate that some specific
information was required of students—the Reconstruction amendments
(Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth), Martin Luther King Jr., and the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. The fourth clause was modified by the phrase
“such as” to indicate that the resultant change of increased political participation of minorities was optional, illustrative information.
During 2009–2010, the standard passed through a process that
included a review committee, six expert reviewers, and fifteen politicians on the board. The resulting revision tripled to 283 words with
nine total clauses, elevating minority participation to required information, adding required emphasis on civil rights organizations and opponents, and providing optional information about approaches, writings,
and court cases. The full text of both versions appears next page.
One way to help students get a handle on the changes would be to
have them as individuals or groups conduct a little research—in textbooks, in the school library, or on the Internet—on each of the persons,
groups, and court cases named in the standard. The first part of an
ensuing discussion might follow questions such as these:
• Were the new people/organizations/cases already in your textbook?
(Remember, the politicians claimed they were restoring the truth to
liberal textbooks.)
• If not, where did you find them?
• What difference does it make to add new individuals?
• Was the civil rights movement only about African American rights?
• Can you summarize the nature of the changes in a sentence or two?
CHANGING HISTORICAL STORY LINES
A comparison of the past and current civil rights standard also illuminates the ways that storytelling about the past changes. We can see how
politicians enshrined “balance” as the dominant value in their finished
product. We can also tease out the ideological emphasis they embedded
on the standard under the guise of balance.
First, several additions to the standards reveal that “balance” outweighed any discussion of change, causation, or context. The balance
of two—and only two—sides produced a standard that now “balanced”
five civil rights leaders (Martin Luther King Jr., Chávez, Rosa Parks,
Hector P. Garcia, and Betty Friedan) with three southern governors;
and “political organizations” in favor of civil rights with “groups” that
“sought to maintain the status quo.” The balancing act continued later
in the text. As “balance” to the perceived liberalness of the civil rights
movement, the board emphasized the “leadership” of Richard M. Nixon
and Ronald Reagan and added Phyllis Schlafly and four ideologically
conservative organizations to the section on the 1980s and 1990s.
OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 39–41
doi: 10.1093/oahmag/oas044
© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
40 OAH Magazine of History • January 2013
In this highly politicized reading of history, the Reagan Revolution of
the 1980s brought balance to the excesses of the civil rights movement.
Aside from increasing the word count of the civil rights standard to
three times its original size, these changes also demonstrate the subtle way that ideological spin crept into a standard that was quantitatively “balanced.” At the very end of the revision process, the politicians
added the Civil Rights Act of 1957—a bill proposed by Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower and filibustered (the longest in history) by
South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, a leader of the also named
“Congressional bloc of southern Democrats.” Thus, read at face value,
the standard suggests that the reformation of civil rights was initiated
by Republicans and opposed by Democrats. In neither the civil rights
standard nor in the 1980s standard does the board explain the electoral shift of opponents to civil rights (including Thurmond) from the
Democrat to the Republican party under the latter’s southernization
strategy. The net result spins the advances in civil rights into Republican territory and opposition to it toward the Democrats.
CHANGE IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT
A skillful history teacher will perceive that something important is
happening beyond specific individuals, groups, and court cases. From
a conceptual standpoint, the 1998 standard described civil rights in
terms of change and causation, a long story of expanding civil rights
from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. This story line of
change is, in fact, a particular narrative of a more generalized story
of American progress—few rights in the past to more in the present
(which explains what the Republicans sought to capture in their interpretation of civil rights history). Historians are not likely to dispute
the stated element of this narrative that more Americans possessed
civil rights at the end of the twentieth century than at the beginning of
the eighteenth. They would, however, challenge the unstated corollary
of the progress narrative that because of American progress all of the
“bad” injustices are things of the past and no one experiences racism or
discrimination in the twenty-first century (2).
But we must also pay attention to the agents of historical change.
In one sense, the laundry list approach to history complements the
progress story line by implying that “Great Men” (or women) change
history. Indeed, the 1998 version effectively attributes the entire civil
rights movement to Martin Luther King Jr. The revised standard adds
more names (more “great” men or women), but it also mentions groups
of organized citizens. This does not simply add diversity to the list but
it actually changes the story line. A few questions might lead students
in this direction:
• What difference does it make to add organizations?
• Do ordinary Americans have to wait for someone (like King or
Friedan) to come and solve their problems or can citizens effectively
participate in the political process?
• How is it different to think of the Montgomery bus boycott not
as the result of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks but instead
as the result of thousands of Americans—black and white—who
printed over fifty thousand leaflets in the first weekend and who
boycotted city busses for over a year?
Thus, the new version of the Texas standard on civil rights moves
away from seeing historical change as the work of one or a few great
men or women. Sociologist Michael Eric Dyson has characterized that
older approach as the “Lone-Ranger Theory of Historical Change”
because it implies that the masses of black, Hispanic, and female
Americans waited helplessly for someone to come and save them. The
question took on political significance during the presidential election
of 2008 when Hillary Clinton made a statement that was interpreted
to suggest that Lyndon B. Johnson had done more than King for civil
rights by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Barack Obama’s supporters cried foul and Clinton was forced to explain, but the argument that
whites or men “granted” rights to helpless blacks or women retains currency in some political circles. In recent years, historians have labored
to uncover many more participants in the civil rights movement and
have pushed the timeline in the 1950s and 1960s backward to find a
“long civil rights movement” beginning in the 1930s and 1940s (3). The
new standard does not merely add diversity; it also changes the model
of historical change from “great men” to one in which many Americans
have effectively participated in America’s democratic process.
INVITE CULTURE WARS INTO THE CLASSROOM
How does a standard end up revealing both conservative spin and a
potentially richer narrative of civil rights, historical change, and human
agency? The answer lies in the fact that the standard was created in a
public process that involved many people over many years. Historians
on the review committee, it turns out, were thinking about historical
change and were particularly pleased that the concept of organizations
driving historical change survived the revision process (4). Republican
politicians likewise pushed their agenda to domesticate civil rights and
reclaim it for their party’s agenda.
Thus the 283 words in the new Texas social studies standard on
civil rights reveal the valuable fact for teachers that history and culture
wars are never singular clashes, never a duel between two opponents
from which only one survives. History wars are processes that unfold
in public—the revision of standards, the opening of an exhibit, or the
construction of a new monument. Even when the result of the formal
process is implemented or launched or dedicated, it will invariably bear
the signs of having passed through a public process. Victors cannot
write history any differently than any other author who must search
for sources, draw out information, and construct story lines that make
sense of the findings. Even in the best of stories good teachers—and
good students—can find the evidence for alternate viewpoints. History
wars always deserve an invitation to history classrooms. ❑
Endnotes
1. Stephanie Simon, “The Culture Wars’ New Front: U.S. History Classes in
Texas,” Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2009; April Castro, “Conservatives: Lesson
Plan a ‘War on Christmas,’” Houston Chronicle, Sept. 11, 2009, http://www
.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Conservatives-Lesson-plan-a
-war-on-Christmas-1721640.php; Bill Ames, “The Left’s War on U.S.
History,” 3 parts, Texas Insider, Nov. 9–11, 2009; Brian Thevenot, “The
American History Wars,” Texas Tribune, Jan. 14, 2010; Bryan Rupp, “State
Board of Education Wants to Strip Cesar Chavez from School Books,” News
KBMT [Beaumont, TX], July 16, 2009; Dave Montgomery, “Lawmaker:
More Hispanics in Social Studies Curriculum or Else,” Fort Worth StarTelegram, Nov. 18, 2009.
2. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and
the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Lanham, 2009); James W.
Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York, 2007), 280–300.
3. Beth Bailey and David Farber, “The Histories, They Are A-Changin’:
Sources for Teaching about the Movements of the 1960s,” OAH Magazine
of History, 20 (Oct. 2006): 8–13; Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There
with You: The True Martin Luther King Jr. (New York, 2000), 297; David J.
Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It:
The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville, 1987); Herbert Kohl, She
Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery
Bus Boycott (New York, 2005).
4. Laura K. Muñoz and Julio Noboa, “Hijacks and Hijinks on the U.S. History
Review Committee,” in Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over
Standards in Texas and the Nation, ed. Keith A. Erekson (New York, 2012),
40–58.
Keith A. Erekson is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas
at El Paso and the founder and director of the university’s Center for History
Teaching & Learning. He is the contributing editor for this issue.
OAH Magazine of History • January 2013 41