Former UNF professor: Florida on wrong side of history as college diversity studies killed
I finally got to check off an item on my bucket list recently when I joined about 1,000 folks for the 59th Jubilee commemoration of the of the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.
After two failed attempts to march for voting rights, and the gruesome events on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday” (March 7, 1965), civil rights advocates finally crossed the bridge two weeks later when the National Guard was brought in to protect them as their numbers swelled to 25,000 during the historic 54-mile walk to the steps of the Alabama State Capitol. Six months later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
I suggest that the Republican majority of the Florida Legislature do a field trip to Selma for next year’s 60th Jubilee. While there, they should also take a drive to visit the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, an extraordinary interactive exhibition that tells the true history of slavery, segregation and the quest for voting rights and civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
This quest is carried on today by members of Black Lives Matter and others. The legislative field trip should also drop in on the nearby National Peace and Justice Memorial, which chronicles the gruesome reality of over 4,000 lynchings of African Americans well into the mid-20th century.
I would hope that such a legislators' field trip would be cause for them to reconsider the continued assault on the supposed ideology of “wokeism.” The experience might clear their heads of the delusion they seem to be suffering.
The recent passage of HB 1291 prohibits curriculum from addressing issues that impact diversity education, racism, sexism and oppression in educators’ preparation courses. It is the final nail in the coffin created by last year’s “Stop WOKE Teacher Training” bill to remove curriculum in higher education that suggests that systemic racism is in fact part of our American story.
This new legislation outrageously and specifically prohibits teaching anything about “identify politics based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and (white) privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequalities.”
The bill belies the truth of Selma, the history that led up to it and beyond. It constrains the ability to convey honest, accurate teachings and facilitate classroom discussions about our past in hopes of creating a better future.
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As a retired professor at UNF and former assistant director of its Taylor Leadership Institute, I regularly taught courses in Race, Gender and American Politics, as well as Inter-Group Dialogue. Neither were grounded in ideology but in indisputable history and lived human experience.
Those courses opened the blinders of many students as they came to “see” with new eyes and to know the truth. We do students a disservice by now denying their exposure to the reality of systemic racism and the critical thinking it elicits.
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I can only hope that history will show that the current policy is shortsighted and is itself evidence of the continued reality of systemic racism in our day. Perhaps the folks who run the Legacy Museum in Montgomery might soon add an exhibition on the contemporary assault on the dignity of African Americans and other minorities, as evidenced by Florida’s HB 1291 and similar legislation in other states.
May truth be told and may it be learned. I’d be happy to serve as a chaperone on that Florida legislators’ field trip to Selma.
Dr. John W. Frank, St. Johns
This guest column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times-Union. We welcome a diversity of opinions.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Florida lawmakers should visit Selma for dose of real racial history
