Southern Textbooks Teach White Supremacy as Scientific Fact to Generations of Children

Textbooks used in Southern white public schools in the early twentieth century taught scientific racism as established fact, depicted slavery as benevolent, characterized Reconstruction as a period of corrupt 'Negro rule' requiring the restoration of white supremacy, and presented lynching as occasional justified responses to Black criminality. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, through the 'Lost Cause' curriculum they promoted, shaped the historical consciousness of white Southern children for generations. Black children were subjected to similar textbooks in separate, underfunded schools where they learned their own inferiority.