White Supremacy’s Educational Terror: The Impact of the Lost Cause Disinformation Campaign on North Carolina’s Public Education System

• In Event: Student Perspectives on North Carolina History

Abstract

“History repeats itself,” is a simple phrase that speaks for the regression of North Carolina’s public education system. It seems that teaching race, specifically slavery, is a never-ending battle and there are constant pushback movements. These movements are fighting against the inclusion of slavery and its legacies through a Critical Race Theory perspective. These unjust and racist limitations are in response to the efforts by Democrats, academics, and activists to undo the whitewashing of history. However, this pattern of historical disinformation is not new. This project seeks to show the origins of whitewashing slavery in N.C. education during the early Jim Crow Era (1900-1920s) and compare this suppression of information to today’s CRT teaching crisis. To understand this history of whitewashing, I investigated the Lost Cause Movement which involved institutions like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), N.C. governors, and N.C. Textbook Commission. I trace the workings of this power nexus through an investigation of key textbooks from the era, newspaper articles, and UDC documents. This power nexus influenced the education system and institutionalized the Lost Cause perspective. Rhetoric similar to the Lost Cause theory was found in my analysis of contemporary textbooks, educational policies, and backlash movements. The articles of both eras emphasize positive descriptions of slavery and rarely discuss race. These findings demonstrate that the Lost Cause Theory has continued to influence education and works to uphold white supremacy via modulating educational material. If this problem persists, education systems will continue to distort the atrocities of racism in America and limit the construction of anti-racist institutions.

Author

• Lauren Bordeaux, North Carolina Central University