Know Alabama: An Elementary History

Birmingham, Alabama: Colonial Press, (1961).

Price: $450.00

Hardcover. Revised edition. Revised by Frances Roberts and Viola Ayer. 319pp. Illustrated. Light soiling on several pages, foxing on page edges, moderate rubbing and edgewear, very good. Textbook, first published in the early 1950s, with study questions at the end of each chapter originally assigned to fourth graders in Alabama. Activist Winifred Green in her testimony before the Senate Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity in 1970 stated that the book was “one of the worst examples of the way textbooks are used to perpetuate false stereotypes held by the white community and cause black children to doubt their worth in society.” Owsley had previously contributed to a 1930 racist manifesto, *I’ll Take My Stand,* and brought his similar white supremacy viewpoints to the textbook claiming that the Ku Klux Klan only targeted people “doing bad, lawless things,” and referring to Antebellum plantation life as "the happiest ways of life in Alabama before the war between the states." It wasn't until the 1970s, due to protests, that *Know Alabama* was slowly removed from the Alabama public school curriculum.

Item #614726

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Item #614726 Know Alabama: An Elementary History. Frank L. OWSLEY, John Craig Stewart, Gordon T. Chappell.
Know Alabama: An Elementary History