hence “rebels.” But Pageant did “exceptionally well” in Southern states, so
who cares? Only after the civil rights movement did Pageant revert to “the
Civil War.”^35 Alabama law used to require that schools avoid “textbooks
containing anything partisan, prejudicial, or inimical to the interests of the
[white] people of the State” or that would “cast a reflection on their past
history.”^36 Texas still requires that “textbooks shall not contain material which
serves to undermine authority.”^37 Such standards are astounding in their
breadth and might force drastic cuts in almost every chapter of every textbook,
except that authors have already omitted most unpleasantries and
controversies.
Many states have rewritten their textbook specifications to strike such
blatant content requirements. Since at least 1970 Mississippi’s regulations, for
example, have consisted of a series of clichés with which no reasonable
textbook author or critic could disagree. Publishers might be forgiven if they
believe that the spirit of the old regulations still survives, however, for the
initial rejection of Mississippi: Conflict and Change proves that it does. I was
senior author of the book, a revisionist state history text finally published by
Pantheon Books in 1974. I say “finally” because Pantheon brought it out only
after eleven other publishers refused. The problem wasn’t with the quality of
the manuscript, which won the Lillian Smith Award for best Southern
nonfiction that year. The problem was that trade publishers said they could not
publish a textbook, while textbook publishers said they could not publish a
book so unlikely to be adopted. Some publishers even feared that Mississippi
might retaliate against their textbooks in other subjects. Textbook publishers
proved partly right—the textbook board refused to allow our book. It
contained too much “black history,” included a photograph of a lynching, and
gave too much attention to the recent past, according to the white majority on
the rating committee. My coauthors and I, joined by three school systems that
wanted to adopt the book, sued the state in a First Amendment challenge,
Loewen et al. v. Turnipseed et al., and in 1980 got the book on the state’s
approved list.
Despite the value of Turnipseed as a precedent, publishers still fear right-
wing criticism. And with reason. In 2006 Florida passed a law that states,
“The history of the United States shall be taught as genuine history and shall
not follow the revisionist or postmodernist viewpoints of relative truth....
American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed.” This law is