I’ll go to jail before I allow my son to return to a history class in which these objectionable text books are being used.” That’s what Imari Obadele said in 1962, preparing to rally 10,000 people to protest as the president of Detroit’s Group On Advanced Leadership (GOAL).
There’s an end to this story. But where did anti-Black textbooks even come from?
One key player was the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), founded in 1894. Their goal was to spread the Lost Cause ideology, which incorrectly pushes the idea that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, and Black Americans were contentedly enslaved.
They did this by writing, publishing, and vetting textbooks for children, targeting future generations.
For decades, Black parents protested these books. Academic historians like Carter Woodson and W.E.B. DuBois debunked lies about Black culture, enslavement, and Reconstruction.
By September 1964, the history book Obadele was referring to was thoroughly revised. Detroit’s victory inspired activists in other cities to demand new textbooks and win.
That history is the foundation we stand on. We must continue to fight for the truth about Black history to be taught in schools and acknowledged in the books in libraries and prisons today, and reject narratives like the UDC’s as fact.
We have the power to affect how students view the world. And our truth is even more powerful than Lost Cause lies.