Schoolbook Nation: Battling Over Portrayals of the American Community in Pre-Collegiate History Textbooks, 1865-2000

Joseph Moreau

In 1966 California tentatively adopted a United States history called Land of the Free for eighth-graders. Co-written by noted African-American scholar John Hope Franklin, the textbook represented one of the first conscious efforts by the educational publishing industry to integrate people of color, particularly African-Americans, into mainstream history. Hailed by liberals in the state as a welcome change from lily-white texts of the past, Land of the Free also inspired a conservative backlash led by the politically ambitious state superintendent of public instruction, Maxwell Rafferty. The ensuing battle over adoption did not revolve around the question of whether nonwhites should become a part of schoolbook history (as many expected), but how they would fit into the nation’s story. Franklin favored a discussion of African-Americans’ accomplishments leavened with a relatively blunt and honest treatment of slavery, Jim Crow, and the ongoing drive for civil rights. Rafferty, in contrast, thought Land of the Free would best serve the cause of race relations in a post-Brown v. Board America by touting Black contributions to the nation-state and sidestepping more thought-provoking and troubling questions raised by the country’s long history of racism. California eventually chose a fate for this textbook, but the underlying conflict between Franklin and Rafferty could not be resolved so neatly. It continues to divide state legislators, curriculum experts, publishers, and teachers. An inability to synthesize the worldviews of Franklin and Rafferty has led to a sort of “unraveling” of the national narrative that has only a few precedents in the country’s educational history.

About Joseph Moreau

Joe Moreau earned a Ph.D. in American culture from the University of Michigan in 1999. His dissertation, Schoolbook Nation, explored how debates over history teaching have shaped the content of texts for pre-collegiate students from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1920s. With the support of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, he has revised that manuscript and expanded it into a full-length book to be published by the University of Michigan Press next summer. Since leaving graduate school, Joe has taught history and English at a technical college in Manhattan. He lives in Queens with his wife, Julie Wiener, a journalist.