Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed a law (House Bill 2497) creating “The Texas 1836 Project,” intended to teach the true history of Texas and demonstrate its core values and patriotism.
Historians across the country worried that yet another state was trying to rewrite history and to prevent students from debating controversial issues, especially around the issues of racism and slavery.
Brian Franklin is a native Texan who teaches Texas history at Southern Methodist University. He has a very different take on the 1836 Project. He sees it as “a blessing in disguise for history teachers.” The Governor wants students to read the founding documents of the state of Texas and Professor Franklin says, “Bring it on!” The real history of Texas is right there in the founding documents.
Franklin at first responded on a Twitter thread. Then he wrote an article for Slate.
The text of H.B. 2497 is itself relatively tame. It wants to promote history education—a cause that every history teacher would champion. But the context of the bill is much more troublesome. Abbott and much of the Republican-led Texas Legislature have joined a battalion of state leaders across the country who have declared war on ideas they believe aim to destroy society. They’ve identified two scapegoats: the New York Times’ 1619 Project and critical race theory, or CRT, a set of ideas coming from legal academia that is rarely directly taught in K–12 and college classrooms but has become a favorite dog whistle for the right. (If you’ve lost track of the many anti-CRT/1619 bills in play across the country, the situation is outlined in this New York Times piece from earlier this month.)
Enter the 1836 Project, and Greg Abbott’s rallying cry as he signed the bill: “Foundational principles” and “founding documents”! As a history professor, I say we take Abbott up on that challenge, especially the “documents” part. Time to start reading!
Let’s read the 1836 Texas Declaration of Independence. It not only exposes the tyranny of Mexican leader Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, but also describes how Anglo Texans consistently bent and broke Mexican laws. In class, we can talk about how one of the laws that Texans violated was Mexico’s decade-old abolition of slavery. The declaration also describes Stephen F. Austin’s incarceration. In discussing what happened there, we can discover that Mexican officials rightly suspected Texans of fomenting illegal revolutions for
Let’s read Texas’ single most foundational document, the 1836 Constitution of the Republic of Texas. We will find several values familiar to present-day Texans: divided government, religious freedom, and the right to bear arms. But we will also find some “values” that don’t track very well in 2021. That it was illegal for either Congress or an individual to simply emancipate a slave. That even free Black people could not live in Texas without specific permission from the state. That “Africans, the descendants of Africans, and Indians” had no rights as citizens.
Let’s read Republic of Texas President Mirabeau Lamar’s message to the Texas Congress in December of 1838, where he calls for the “total extinction or total expulsion” of all Indigenous peoples in Texas. This included the Texas Cherokee, who had long-standing land rights recognized by Mexico and by Texas’ previous president, Sam Houston. In class, we can talk about how Lamar would make good on his proposal by sending a Texan army to massacre and drive out the remaining Cherokee in July 1839.
Finally, let’s take a close look at the “Declaration of Causes,” the document an elected Texas convention published in February 1861 to explain why the state was seceding from the United States. Here, no reader needs the 1619 Project or CRT to help them conjure the spirit of systemic racism. The document’s writers aren’t shy about their intentions. They believed in some “undeniable truths”: Their beloved state of Texas had been established “exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity.”* In Texas, Black people had “no agency” and were “rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race.” This enslavement was not just a temporary necessary evil; it was a positive good, “the revealed will of the Almighty Creator” to “all Christian nations.” This is “Christian heritage,” but not necessarily the kind the bill establishing the 1836 Project says it wants to promote.
Like Professor Franklin, I am a Texan. I studied Texas history, along with all of my classmates. We never read the founding documents. Governor Abbott has just opened a genuine opportunity for history teachers to grapple with difficult issues.
Thank you, Governor Abbott!
Ed reform scorecard so far in the pandemic and post-pandemic:
Mandate more standardized testing
Lobby for and expand voucher and charter funding, marketing and promotion
Use public schools to launch a Republican political campaign against “CRT”
When do we get to the part where they improve public schools? What’s the upside for public school families and students? Any reason we should still be hiring and paying these folks?
They’re either wholly irrelevant to public school students and families or an actual detriment.
We really can do better. There’s no requirement that we have to continue to take direction from an echo chamber that returns no value to public schools or public school students.
I would like to see pro-public school politicians put NYC charter school leaders on the spot about CRT. Are those charter CEOs bashing the teaching of racism and bashing the African American scholars who supported the 1619 project as evil, just like the politicians funded by the same people who give their charters very large donations say they are?
If the Republicans and their billionaire funders are going to get Republican votes by demonizing Nikole Hannah-Jones as some dangerous anti-American whose writing would ruin the lives of so many white children if they read it, then those who support public schools should use it to demonstrate how the real loyalties of white charter CEOs is to their funders who often support the politicians trying to get people to hate and fear Nikole Hannah-Jones. When it comes to criticizing their funders or those politicians their funders like who are demonizing Nikole Hannah-Jones, I suspect they would change the subject.
It’s really funny in a lot of ways. The same people who actively promote completely unregulated charters and vouchers spend the rest of their work day micro-managing everything that happens in a public school and devising lists of punishments for public schools.
Their sole contribution to public schools is policing and punishing them. 100% negative agenda.
Ohio lawmakers haven’t lifted a finger on behalf of public school students in YEARS- yet they RUSHED to promote the new public school speech laws. It’s the only “work” they’ve accomplished that is even relevant to public school students all year.
exactly stating that painful reality: “Their sole contribution to public schools is policing and punishing them.”
One of the saddest lessons of history is this:
If historians bamboozle long enough, they tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. They’re no longer interested in teaching the truth. The bamboozle has captured them. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to themselves, that they’ve been taken.
Hence the high priests of historical bamboozle may use the
repubs as a serviceable scapegoat in stopping the 1619 Project or critical race theory, or actual history.
Too much candor, either individually or institutionally,
is not a pro-survival strategy for the bamboozle and it
would expose the complicit members of the foundational
cornerstone of the mythology surrounding the government.
The “good-guy” act would go poof…
I went through the public school system in Texas (aside from a couple side trips to a parochial school and a military school in New Mexico) back in the 50s and 60s when a half-year of Texas History and a half-year of Texas Government were required by the State and we got a fairly good grounding in both subjects — if a bit deadly dull in the second case.
The Texas State Historical Association maintain a fairly good Handbook of Texas I often find useful in setting Texans and others straight about the facts of thrilling and not-so-thrilling yester-years.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/anglo-american-colonization
Thanks for the link. I enjoyed the history lesson. I knew some, but not the details. My daughter lived in Brazoria, TX for about ten years so I’ve visited the area many times. When coming from Houston down Hwy. 288 south, there is a gigantic statue of Stephen Austin along side the highway.
I learned Texas history the way Greg Abbott wants it taught now. White heroes.
“Every semester that I teach Texas history at Southern Methodist University, we read these documents (and many more). And every semester, without fail, I have students respond in two ways: frustration and enlightenment. After reading the 1836 Texas Constitution’s enshrinement of racialized citizenship, they’re exasperated: ‘Why didn’t anyone teach us this before? I thought the Alamo was all about freedom.'”
I remember thinking that when I took undergrad history classes: Why didn’t anyone teach me this before? I love scholars like Professor Franklin who teach the real truth. I think about them often when I teach middle school history classes, and when I delve into historical literature in my English classes. Why not teach the unvarnished truth? Why not teach it in the primary grades, for that matter? I am not sure if there is an age at which it is developmentally appropriate to teach hard truths. I think about Piaget a lot. I don’t know. But I do know that at some point, whether it’s in 1st grade, 10th grade, or higher education, students need and want to be enlightened by the mistakes of the past. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is mania.
Texas history in a nutshell
“Remember the Ammo!”
Remember the ammo
The buckshot and slugs
Remember the Alamo
Mexican thugs!
It needs to be taught! I was taught the native Americans and pilgrims shared a feast to celebrate their friendship.
My husband took a course in college and he would tell me how horrible the slaves were treated. How the slave children were sold, fathers separated, slave children fed to alligators….
I was so upset that we were lied to. My husband was born in Mexico and came to the US when he was 13. He was very knowledgeable about Mexican history. He told me the Alamo was a farce and we were not taught the truth. So yes, I felt stupid about my Texas history! We knew nothing!
An outstanding post, Diane!
People were already being driven away, in droves, from teaching by insane “accountability” mandates that require using lame “[de]personalized learning” software and test-preppy curricula generally, by the steadily decreasing autonomy in their jobs, by excessive evaluation (all evaluation all the time), by absurd demands on their time outside the classroom, and, ofc, by relatively low pay and benefits.
No, this wave of attempted thought control from Repugnican morons across the country.
Enough. If I were going to teach in K-12 today, it would be with the following understanding: I would dedicate myself to countering this BS and teaching kids PRECISELY WHAT THE REPUGNICANS DON’T WANT THEM TO KNOW and be ready, at any time, to be fired and have to move on with Plan B.
Now, this wave of attempted thought control from Repugnican morons across the country.
So, I’m sitting here wondering whether I need to found a secret organization for teachers called something like TOAST: Teachers of and about Subversive Truths–a place for idealistic educators of all ages who will dedicate themselves to freedom of expression for teachers and to the teaching, under the radar, of real history and science and health and so on–to the teaching of precisely what the Repugnicans don’t want their kids to learn. That would be worth doing, and, hilariously, would give all those morons on the right something really to burst a gut about. I can just see Tucker Carlson (spell that with an “:F”) and Ronald DeSatan puffed up and fuming and looking like radishes, all round and red-faced, now.
The name is a nod, ofc, to Neil Postman, who is in heaven with Kurt Vonnegut now.
Yesterday on the Fresh Air podcast (from WHYY, public radio), the guest was Bryan Burroughs talking about his new book “Forget the Alamo,” the TRUE story of what happened there–and it wasn’t like the John Wayne movie. Burroughs and his co-authors describe in the book how the real story was known and unquestioned for many years, but then got changed in the 1960s to become basically a legend of heroic Americans fighting for freedom–without the messy truths about slavery, decimation of indigenous peoples, etc. It’s a good episode and I’m looking forward to reading the book now.
It’s amazing to me that now it doesn’t take decades for history to be distorted–we now have people trying to bamboozle us about what happened before our eyes on January 6 of this year.
Tangentially related- Tucker Carlson’s recent guest, Charles Murray, is identified in a bio as a W H Brady Scholar at AEI. AEI is Frederick Hess’ employer.
Charles Murray was one of the “40 scholars and public intellectuals” who discussed, “America’s Post Secular Future…religion in relation to politics…”, at an AEI session in 2006. To frame the issue, AEI invited a former President of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera.
The article summarizing the event quoted 15 attendees. All 15 were men.
AEI is a monolith that protects a demographic segment.
“Faith-washing Right-Wing Economics”- excerpts from the 2015 article by Political Research Associates follow-
“The Koch bros., the Kern family and the DeVoses now fund a caravan of Christian social scientists, theologians and scholars to serve as their free market evangelists….AEI’s president spoke at Georgetown for the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit…(there’s been) a decades long training that capitalism is a Christian system.”
“The Christian Right is increasingly turning to …Jay W. Richards: The free market culture warrior…reconciling biblical economics with homophobic white nationalist-tinged Producerism…(he is) a conservative Catholic assistant research professor at the Catholic University of America and formerly a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Koch).”
The book, “To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise”, is discussed in the PRA article. One conclusion drawn from the article, the white middle class which is in economic peril was steered by powerful influencers to look to religion instead of unions and government for their security and it’s left them powerless.
Excerpt from a different site,
In the spring of 2017 Charles Murray (yesterday, he was on Tucker Carlson’s program) spoke at Notre Dame’s program, Constitutional Studies, Toqueville Program for inquiry into religion and public life, the College of Arts and Science. Murray’s speech title was, “Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010”.
Never was I taught the truth in school. History is so very important! They want us ignorant of the truth! Teach it so we won’t repeat those same horrible mistakes! Look what’s happening now!!