Tea Party Wants to Erase Slavery From History Books

Tea Party Wants to Erase Slavery From History Books

Tea party activists in Tennessee are gearing up again to radically alter the way history is taught to school-aged children, including removing references that the Founding Fathers were slave owners, which is a known fact.

This comes just a year after the right-wing-controlled state board of education in Texas signed off on making wholesale changes in order to put a more positive spin to slavery (whatever that means).


“There has been an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another,” said Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney in Tennessee and spokesman for the group

“The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,” Rounds added, according to reports stated in the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, Tenn.


As laughable and ridiculous as that rationale is, this tea party group is very serious about its ill intentions. A coalition of minority organizations have closed ranks in order to try to block the measure.

“There is some method to the madness besides vindicating white privilege and making white students feel as though they are superior and privileged and that that it is the natural order of things,” said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State NAACP at the time of Texas’ approved changes. “The agenda being pushed and the ultimate impact intended is to make young people automatically identify with one political party.”

Tennessee wants to duplicate the Texas revisions which include the following: the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery; lifting the stature of Jefferson S. Davis to that of Abraham Lincoln, and amendments to teach the value of the separation of church and state were voted down by the conservative cadre. Another controversial amendment approved is the study of the “unintended consequences” of affirmative action. Total it all up and the Texas board approved more than 100 amendments affecting social studies, economics and history classes for five million students in the Lone Star State.

Tennessee tea party faithful wants to be next.

During the news conference, more than two dozen tea party activists disseminated propaganda and blatant misinformation, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

Again, whatever that means.

terry shropshire

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