John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, writes here about a book that is important in Oklahoma history and American history. He writes: When I first read Victor Luckerson’s Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street, I was stunned by his beautiful prose. Watching Luckerson on CSPAN Book T.V., I was reminded of his eloquence. And I was even more impressed by the timeliness of the story of the communities and families who built and rebuilt Greenwood after the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, and who then had to repeatedly fight to ke ..read more

All are welcome to a very important lecture at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Admission is free. Join me! The speaker is a pioneer of critical race theory. Professor Soo Hong, chair of the Education Department at Wellesley, released the following announcement. We are thrilled to announce that our 2024 Ravitch Lecture in Education will be presented by Professor Patricia Williams ’72, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University. Professor Williams’s talk is titled, “Burying the Bodies: Book-Banning and the Legacy of Anti-Literacy Laws ..read more

All are welcome to a very important lecture at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Admission is free. The speaker is a pioneer of critical race theory. Professor Soo Hong, chair of the Education Department at Wellesley, released the following announcement. We are thrilled to announce that our 2024 Ravitch Lecture in Education will be presented by Professor Patricia Williams ’72, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University. Professor Williams’s talk is titled, “Burying the Bodies: Book-Banning and the Legacy of Anti-Literacy Laws in Constr ..read more

Shirley Moody-Turner wrote in the Washington post about a forgotten hero of American education: Dr. Anna J. Cooper. Cooper was the principal of the M Street School in the District of Columbia, one of the most successful schools in the city. She insisted on a demanding academic curriculum for her Black students. Despite the school’s success, she was removed on trumped-up charges. The Black community fought back but lost. The M Street School eventually became the celebrated Dunbar High School. Moody-Turner begins: In January 1902, Anna Julia Cooper, one of the most highly educated Black women in ..read more

The North Carolina NAACP petitioned the state courts to remove a Confederate statue from the front of the Alamance County courthouse. The News & Observer reported: An appeals court has rejected the NAACP’s arguments for removing the Confederate monument standing outside the Alamance County courthouse, citing state law that prohibits its removal. Both the state and Alamance branches of the civil rights group filed suit in 2021, arguing that the 30-foot rebel soldier’s statue is an enduring symbol of white supremacy and should be relocated to a “historically appropriate location.” The suit f ..read more

At DeSantis’s urging, the Florida legislature passed a law known as “Stop Woke.” The law restricts teaching about race and gender in the state’s classrooms and bans “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs in the workplace. Several employers sued to block the law, calling it a restriction on free speech. The employers won in the federal District Court, and the state appealed the decision. Today the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the Stop Woke Act as applied to employers. It remains in effect for schools. The Orlando Sentinel reported: TALLAHASSEE — A federal appeals court Monday r ..read more

When an education story is featured by a major media outlet like CNN, you can bet it’s captured mainstream attention. Many educators have worried about the pernicious agenda of “Moms for Liberty,” which arrived on the scene in 2021 with a sizable war chest. What is that agenda? Defaming public schools and their teachers. Accusing them of being “woke “ and indoctrinating students to accept left wing ideas about race and gender. Banning books they don’t like. Talking about “parental rights,” but only for straight white parents who share their values. M4L got started in Florida, as do many wacky ..read more

A new commenter on the blog ssserted recently that real scholars don’t express their views about current events. Our reader “Democracy” here excerpts a recent article by a genuine scholar, David Blight of Yale University. Professor Blight is an eminent scholar of African American history, who recently edited a volume of Frederick Douglass’s writings for the Library of America. The following excerpt cited was published in the New York Review of Books. Incidentally, the Washington Post reported that Trump responded to Nikki Haley’s concern about his age by saying that he took a mental test of 35 ..read more

Thom Hartmann continues to amaze me, with his steady production of powerful articles. This one is especially important for the readers of this blog, whose primary purpose is to strengthen and protect our public schools. Thom Hartmann writes: In 1776, British economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, a book that laid out the principles that modern economies have operated under for centuries (with the exception of the Reagan Revolution years of 1981-2021). In addition to arguing for a strong domestic manufacturing base and high taxes on the wealthy, Smith pointed out that one of ..read more

No matter how many times he is caught lying, no matter how many top-secret documents he squirreled away, no matter how lavishly he praises dictators, no matter how many porn stars he has partied with, no matter how many millions he took from foreign governments during his term, no matter how many criminal counts he faces, no matter how many times he was indicted, the base of the GOP loves him. Trump owns the Republican Party. It used to be the party of “family values,” but that pretense has been tossed aside. Trump, a thrive-married philanderer, has never talked about family values. Dana Milba ..read more