Juneteenth’s divisive history

This year’s Juneteenth will mark the first June 19th—the date commemorating the emancipation of the last enslaved people in the U.S. in 1865—that will be formally recognized by Minnesota as a state holiday, after the bill was signed by Governor Walz in February. But in states where classrooms have become battlegrounds for the political warfare surrounding how race is discussed in school, educators planning lessons about “Freedom Day” could be forced to navigate legislation that seeks to censor American history. 

In Virginia, teachers are prohibited by the state’s Republican governor via executive order from discussing “divisive” or “inherently racist concepts,” including critical race theory. Gov. Glenn Youngkin also set up an email tip line for parents to report instances in which they feel schools are engaging in so-called “divisive” practices. “We should not be teaching our children to see everything through the lens of race,” said Youngkin last year in a state that has had a long legacy of slavery.

In Florida, similar rules under Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Stop WOKE Act limit race-related conversations in schools. Dozens of states have introduced or adopted laws that restrict conversations about race in schools, according to a 2022 report by Chalkbeat. 

The burden of these laws falls especially heavy on teachers, said Yohuru Williams, distinguished professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. 

“Teachers are under assault right now,” Williams said. “I do a lot of talks for teachers. They have to be very cautious. We’re living in a moment where there are ramifications for an educator who is actually trying to teach their students to think critically about history, then finding themselves on the wrong side of history.”

The dangers of censorship of history in the classroom extend beyond the walls of American schools and have major societal consequences, according to Williams. Without confronting the horrors of the country’s bloody history through education, we run the risk of losing “the willingness to go deep to do the work necessary to dismantle systems of inequality,” he said.

“They’re trying to argue that it is in some way psychologically damaging or traumatic for White students to be exposed to [how the] racial underpinnings of our society and culture have, in some sense, frustrated democracy, created pockets of inequality and injustice and remain impediments to the realization of the founding fathers’ well-articulated but not fully realized values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, particularly for African American and Black folks,” Williams said. 

Williams is the founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative and specializes in supporting racial justice education. The University of St. Thomas launched the Racial Justice Initiative in June 2020 to drive reform that reduces racial inequity in the Twin Cities. 

In May, Williams and other scholars from across the country convened in St. Petersburg, Florida, for a 24-hour “Teach-In for American Democracy,” a public statement against attempts to “silence truth in education” hosted by the Institute for Common Power. During the teach-in, professors lectured about Black history and related topics via live streams accessible to the public as a counter to policies like the Stop WOKE Act. The lectures remain available on Common Power’s YouTube channel.

Williams calls the racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd an “emancipatory moment” that follows similar pivotal moments marking breakthroughs in the pursuit of racial equity in American history, including the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

“But we know that if people don’t know that history, this simply becomes one of these moments where the argument for why it didn’t work will simply be, “Well, this didn’t work because Black folks didn’t work hard enough or weren’t prepared,’” Williams said.

He stressed the importance of supporting teachers, running for local school board positions, pushing back against book bans, and taking interest in schools’ curriculums. 

In January, Dylan Saul, then managing editor of the Minnesota Law Review, noted in a piece published by the journal that critical race theory (CRT) is not actually being taught in K-12 schools, despite the urgent politicization of the issue.

“Anti-CRT crusaders, nevertheless, have primed the American public to equate CRT with perceived anti-White bias. These activists allege CRT is being used to indoctrinate school children into hating the United States and feeling discomfort over their own race,” Saul wrote, ultimately concluding that critical race theory deprives students of their First Amendment rights.