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NOVEMBER 30, 2021Â
The Tennessee state legislature tried to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools in May by passing Tennessee House Bill 580 (later Tennessee Senate Bill 623) to amend Title 49, Chapter 6, Part 10 of the Tennessee Code Annotated. The Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit organization, filed an 11-page complaint against the Tennessee Department of Education in June 2021 claiming Critical Race Theory is being incorporated into the curriculum through, among other books, a children's book about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Tennessee Department of Education decided to not investigate the alleged violations after declining to do so on November 23. The alleged violations happened before Tennessee SB 623, amending Title 49, Chapter 6, Part 10. There was no determination made about the merits of this complaint.
Also, there have been uproars in Georgia, Utah, and Virginia that are similar to this one in Tennessee. Can we expect groups like Moms for Liberty and other organizations to revive Lost Cause ideologies once promoted by groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the near future? Is it just a matter of time before they have a counter-campaign to the removal of the Confederate monuments, starting, Heaven forbid, with the removal of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial?
Also, there have been uproars in Georgia, Utah, and Virginia that are similar to this one in Tennessee. Can we expect groups like Moms for Liberty and other organizations to revive Lost Cause ideologies once promoted by groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the near future? Is it just a matter of time before they have a counter-campaign to the removal of the Confederate monuments, starting, Heaven forbid, with the removal of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial?
THE GLOSS
- The book, "Martin Luther King Jr and the March on Washington" by Frances E. Ruffin (ISBN: 0448424215) was called "Anti-American, Anti-White, and Anti-Mexican" by Moms for Liberty.
- The Tennessee Dept. of Ed. wouldn't do anything about something that happened prior to the anti-CRT law being passed. They didn't say the complaint against the MLK book was wrong: just that they wouldn't investigate.
- The United Daughters of the Confederacy served on school boards to ban textbooks, and wrote textbooks themselves to rewrite the history of slavery as something positive.
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