Lies My Teacher Told Me

Lynch mobs often posed for the camera. They showed no fear of being
identified because they knew no white jury would convict them. Mississippi:
Conflict and Change, a revisionist state history textbook I co-wrote, was
rejected by the Mississippi State Textbook Board partly because it included
this photograph. At the trial that ensued, a rating committee member stated that
material like this would make it hard for a teacher to control her students,
especially a “white lady teacher” in a predominantly black class. At this point
the judge took over the questioning. “Didn’t lynchings happen in Mississippi?”
he asked. Yes, admitted the rating committee member, but it was all so long
ago, why dwell on it now? “It is a history book, isn’t it?” asked the judge, who
eventually ruled in the book’s favor. None of the eighteen textbooks in my
sample includes a picture of a lynching. I hasten to reassure that no classroom
riots resulted from our book or this photograph.