Tea Party in Tennessee: Slavery Did Not Happen?

The plot thickens: Apparently the clueless folks in another confederate southern state (remember Texas School Board) - Tennessee this time - wants to literally white wash American history to fit their Tea Party agenda/narrative. They want to remove all negative historical facts in the education curriculum that fails to show our American forefathers in a glowing light.

The Rebirth of a Nation: Directed by D. W. Griffith

Native American genocide - Get the white-out and presto - it never happened.
Brutality of Slavery - Gone With The Wind.
Terrorism of KKK - just some good ole boys expressing their 1st Amendment Rights.
Mexican/American War - apply the airbrush.


Yeah just like that. According to these folks, one can just pick-chose-ignore American history at one's discretion. If the portrait is disturbing just recast it to be more favorable - get rid of the inconvenient truth.

Read On:

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners.

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

"The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody -- not all equally instantly -- and it was their progress that we need to look at," Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal.

During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, "Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government."

And that further teaching would also include that "the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy."

The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership." source