It Didn’t Begin With Trump: The Attack on Public Education – A Timeline

After the Civil War, Republican President Andrew Johnson reneges on President Lincoln’s promise of granting every formerly enslaved person 40 acres of land and returns the lands to their prewar Southern owners. Freed Blacks are forced to sharecrop for white landowners with low wages and restrictive contracts.

At the same time, the Equal Rights League, founded by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, advocates for equal rights – full citizenship, the right to vote, and, crucially, access to education. One of the biggest achievements is the creation of the first public education system in the South, made possible by the actions of Black communities who raise funds, give land, and build schools, along with the Freedman’s Bureau, established in 1865 to aid formerly enslaved African Americans, and Northern aid. By 1870, all Southern states had incorporated a provision for a free public school system into their state constitutions.

Throughout this period, Southern Blacks advocate for public education and compulsory education laws in the South, which hadn’t existed prior to the Civil War (a crusade for educational justice that benefits poor white families as well).* [*Nikole Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True,” The New York Times, August 14, 2019.] Between 1865 and 1869, the Thirteenth Amendment ends slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment ensures African Americans the rights of citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment guarantees the right to vote for Black men. Political activism by Black Southerners puts more than 2000 Black men in public office, from local seats to the U.S. Senate, which exerts pressure on white legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, entitling all, regardless of race or color, to “full and equal benefit of all laws.”

When the federal government fails to enforce the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Southern states seize the opportunity to enact “Black codes” that restrict the movements, rights, and advancement of Black people. African Americans are prohibited from voting, serving on juries, owning guns, and assembling in “groups of six or more after sundown, using insulting gestures or language toward whites,” among other oppressive and unconstitutional restrictions.* [*Amrita Johal, “The Change in Status of African Americans During Post-Civil War Reconstruction,” HiPo 1, March (2018) 65-67.] Most consequential, for our purposes, is the prohibition on attending public schools, either the all-white schools or schools developed by African Americans. White supremacist groups, mainly the Ku Klux Klan, enforce these codes through a campaign of intimidation and terror. President Andrew Johnson, a former owner of enslaved people, ignores the racist Black codes and vetoes numerous bills meant to promote civil rights.* [*Sarah Fling, “The Formerly Enslaved Households of President Andrew Johnson,” The White House Historical Association, March 5, 2020.]

In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes buys Southern Democrats’ votes by pulling the last federal troops out of the South, a decision that gives Southern whites carte blanche in their assault on the advances Black Southerners had gained during Reconstruction. The fallout from Hayes’s decision has a devastating impact on the lives of Black Americans.

After graduating from Howard University Law School in 1933, Thurgood Marshall, whose mother was a schoolteacher, litigates unequal-salary cases for Black teachers, who are paid 50% of what white teachers earn. National Education Association data shows that, by the period of public-school desegregation, 85 percent of Black teachers held advanced degrees (as opposed to 75 percent of white teachers), and yet Black teachers are denied higher salaries because of their race.* [*Greg Toppo, “Thousands of Black Teachers Lost Jobs,” USA Today, April 28, 2004.] By 1945, Marshall had won nearly all of his unequal-salary cases, resulting in more equitable pay for Black teachers. Ultimately, Marshall's efforts ended salary disparities across 10 Southern states.

For the first time in 15 years, Republicans win control of the House and the Senate by exploiting fears about mounting Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and by falsely accusing Democrats of being tools of the Red Menace – “pink puppets.”* [*Robert Reich, “My Father and Senator Joe McCarthy,” in The Roots of Trumpism, Robert Reich (August 26, 2022)] Republicans use red-baiting to scare voters by falsely linking communism with former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policy successes, liberal initiatives such as the New Deal, social-welfare programs such as Social Security, and FDR’s support of organized labor. Aside from calls for a rhetorical counterattack by FDR’s former vice president Henry Wallace, who dismisses Republicans’ anti-communist rhetoric as a “deliberately created crisis,” progressive voices on the political left remain silent.* [*“Henry Wallace Criticizes Truman’s Cold War Policies,” in This Day in History, History.com, accessed February 17, 2024.]

Democrat Harry S. Truman panders to escalating anti-communist hysteria on the right by backtracking from FDR’s social welfare agenda and issuing Executive Order 9835, which requires federal workers to proclaim a loyalty oath and be subject to investigations into their political beliefs. EO 9835 inspires the Attorney General, the FBI, and the State Department to create a massively publicized blacklist of “subversive organizations” such as the National Negro Congress and the Council on African Affairs. The list is then shared with and adopted by state and local governments. When the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) gets hold of The List, young politicians eager for power and influence like Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy see an opportunity to scapegoat others for political gain.* [*Albert Wertheim, “The McCarthy Era and the American Theatre,” Theatre Journal 34, no.2 (May 1982): 212.] By conflating communism with “subversive,” “un-American,” and “immoral” threats, such as civil rights activism, union activism, and “homosexuality,” the HUAC and its many subcommittees launch what amounts to a cultural offensive to preserve the racial, heteronormative, capitalist order.* [*J. Woods, Black struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004).] McCarthyism launches an era of political paranoia, now considered a betrayal of America’s democratic principles.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450 tasked the FBI to hunt out and identify federal employees who posed “risks” to “national security,” including any “sexual perversion.” EO 10450 sets in motion the removal of gay men and lesbians from serving in the federal government on the baseless grounds that their closeted sexuality put them “at risk” of being blackmailed by Soviet agents who, the story went, would threaten them with exposure if they didn’t agree to spy for the Soviet Union. Otherwise known as the Lavender Scare, this offshoot of the anti-communist Red Scare forces thousands out of their jobs.

The United States Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision ends school segregation. In retaliation, white school boards across the Southern states orchestrate changes so that all-Black schools close and all-white public schools with all-white administrators and faculties take in Black students.* [*L.T. Fenwick, Jim Crow's Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership, (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2022).] As a result, between 1954 and 1979, over 100,000 highly credentialed Black teachers and principals, many of whom hold master's degrees or doctorates, are demoted or lose their jobs as white school boards and legislators stripped the resources of all-Black public schools to maintain the supremacy of white public schools.* [L.T. Fenwick, “White Media Barely Noticed When 100,000 Black Educators Were Displaced,” Kappan, November 16, 2022.] The ranks of Black educators are decimated, a calculated as- sault whose effects are still felt today. According to a federal survey from 2020-2021, only six percent of public school teachers in the United States are Black.* [*Soheyla Taie and Laurie Lewis, “Characteristics of 2020-21 Public and Private K-12 School Teachers in the United States,” Institute of Education Sciences, December 2022.] In 1955, the Supreme Court responds to requests for aid in facilitating desegregation by ruling in Brown II that district courts oversee compliance with "all deliberate speed." The ambiguity in not calling for more urgent action leads to increased Southern resistance.

In his 1955 essay "The Role of Government in Education,"Milton Friedman, an economist, outlines his vision for transforming K-12 education by providing parents who opt out of public schools with government-issued vouchers that will underwrite the cost of sending their children to private schools, whether religious or secular, non-profit or for-profit. While cloaked in the language of free-market fundamentalism and parental choice, Friedman’s proposal aids and abets segregationist defiance of Brown.

The 1955 Gray Commission, 32 white-male-legislators commissioned by Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley, issues a report calling for a state tuition grant program for parents who would prefer that their children attend private segregated academies rather than integrated public schools.

In 1956,19 Southern Senators and 82 Representatives (97 Democrats and 4 Republicans) sign the “Southern Manifesto criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court for its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and pledging to “use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision.”* [*“The Southern Manifesto,” Professor Daniel Levin’s Federalism page, 1956, accessed February 17, 2024.]

Conservative Democrat Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. of Virginia advocates for a policy of “Massive Resistance” with proposals for Southern state laws blocking public school segregation. The state legislature passes a law allowing districts to withdraw funding from public schools that integrated Black and white students.* [*Chris Ford, Stephanie Johnson, and Lisette Partelow, “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers,” Center for American Progress, July 12, 2017.] In a final act of defiance, in 1959, Prince Edward County, Virginia, closes its public school system without provisions for African American students, leaving them to devise their own alternatives, such as relocating their children with northern relatives, or going without schooling. White students attend the Prince Edward Academy, an all-white private school set up through a private fund drive. This effectively delays, by over a decade, the desegregation of public schools in Virginia.

In 1956, during the second wave of anticommunist witch-hunting, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (aka the Johns Committee) is established as the Florida version of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In hopes of making political hay from the white Southern panic over school desegregation, the committee investigates alleged links between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and communism in Florida.

After this proves fruitless, the committee investigates and persecutes gay men and lesbians, including public school teachers, claiming, without evidence, that they’re a threat to national security. By 1963, the Johns Committee has revoked 71 teacher certificates.* [*K. Graves, K. and M.A. Nash, “Academic Freedom Protects Both LGBTQ Topics and LGBTQ Teachers,” The Washington Post, October 24, 2022.] Antigay rhetoric about “predatory gays” and the conflation of Marxism, LGBTQ+ people, and pedophilia are a tired refrain of the right-wing’s baseless accusations of “moral perversion,” often conflating “Communists and queers,” during the McCarthy era.* [*D.K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 3 and 116.]

Economist Milton Friedman becomes an advisor to the 1964 presidential campaign of the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who runs on an archconservative platform whose goals include opposition to Brown and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Though Goldwater was defeated, his voucher-based vision continues to motivate the Republican Party's support for the privatization of K-12 schooling (and, not incidentally, the demolition of public education).

In the 2000s, vulture capitalists such as Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (who has donated to Christian schools and voucher programs since 1989) have redoubled their attempts to divert taxpayer dollars to voucher funding for private charter schools, private online schooling, and homeschooling. As of 2016, nearly two-thirds of the 1.7 million homeschooled kids were Christians.* [*Jaweed Kaleem, “Homeschooling Without God," The Atlantic, March 30, 2016.] Homeschooling became more diverse since the pandemic, with families citing school shootings, dissatisfaction with special learning instruction, children no longer have access to books and instruction in states with “divisive concepts” laws, and Black families concerned with systemic racism.

Organizations such as the EdChoice, a “scholarship program” co-founded by Friedman in 1996 use public funds to create vouchers to, presumably, send public school students from “underperforming public schools” to private schools. However, studies show that, across states, 69 to 95 percent of those students receiving vouchers were already enrolled in private schools.* [*Jan Larson McLaughlin, “Vouchers Siphon Taxpayer Dollars from Public Education to Private Schools,” BG Independent News, March 24, 2022.] All of these options siphon tax dollars out of the public school system, degrading public schools and depriving their students – who are more likely to be nonwhite than those attending private schools – to the equal education guaranteed by Brown. This conservative strategy of slow death by defunding has the effect of making public schools less desirable, thereby bolstering support for free-market alternatives. As of February, 2024, 29 states and the District of Columbia have all implemented at least one “private school choice program,” in which families can use public funding toward private school.* [*Libby Stanford, Mark Lieberman, and Victoria A. Ifatusin, “Which States Have Private School Choice?,” Education Week, January 31, 2024.]

As recipients of federal funding, public schools must provide education free of discrimination. However, voucher programs created by states don’t rely on federal funding.* [*Kevin G. Welner and Preston C. Green, “Private School Vouchers: Legal Challenges and Civil Rights Protections,” UCLA Civil Rights Project, March 5, 2018.] Less than half of the nation’s 62 voucher programs have built in the necessary statutory protections to prevent racial discrimination, and even fewer states’ voucher programs offer protections based on sex, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability status. For example, a private school with a dress code banning cornrows, braids, or extensions may expel a student, leaving the student with no recourse to challenge this action.* [*B. Fiddiman and J. Yin, “The Danger Private School Voucher Programs Pose to Civil Rights,” American Progress, May 13, 2019.]

In Keefe v. Geanakos, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rules that an Ipswich, Massachusetts public high school teacher’s classroom lesson about the origins and varying cultural and social contexts of the word “motherfucker” was proper because the word was already accessible in several books in the school library and in spoken language in common use. Chief Judge Aldrich, in writing that the teacher’s speech was protected, surmises that most students are familiar with the word and, in considering the question of whether the “shock” of the language was too great for high school seniors to stand, wrote, “If the answer were that the students must be protected from such exposure, we would fear for their future.”* [*Keefe v. Geanakos (1969) 418 F.2d 361.] Fifty-two years later, on May 5, 2021, Tennessee social studies teacher MATTHEW D. HAWN is dismissed because, among other things, he affronted high-school students’ delicate sensibilities with a recital of Kyla Jenee Lacey’s poem White Privilege, which contains six curse words. (see Trouble in Censorville pp 111-124)

Exploiting opposition to school desegregation and the Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party whips up race-based fear to attract white Southern voters. Dubbed the “Southern Strategy,” it’s an appeal to the ugliest elements in American society; Richard Nixon employs it in his 1968 presidential campaign.

Anita Bryant, a pop singer of the squeaky-clean Pat Boon variety who found Jesus, learns that Miami-Dade has amended its Human Rights Ordinance to prohibit housing and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. As well, public school teachers can no longer be fired for being gay. Bryant, inspired by her pastor saying that he would rather burn a school down than allow children to be taught by “homosexuals,” launches the “Save Our Children” campaign to overturn the Miami-Dade anti-discrimination ordinance.* [*“Anita Bryant Confronted in 1977,” SuchIsLifeVideos, YouTube, Accessed February 11, 2024.] Her crusade receives major media attention, providing a platform for Bryant to spread her wildly false claim that schoolchildren need to be protected from “deviant” gay “recruiters of children.” As a mother and Christian, she has the right to control “the moral atmosphere in which her children grow up,” she says.* [*Jillian Eugenios, “How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped Spawn Florida’s LGBTQ culture war,” NBC News, April 13, 2022.] “Save Our Children” is successful in its efforts to rally conservative voters, who repeal Miami-Dade’s Human Rights Ordinance. Antigay conspiracy theories and homophobic smears similar to those used by Bryant in 1977 are still part of the far right’s arsenal: Moms for Liberty and other ultra-conservative groups calling for the removal of LGBTQ-themed books from school libraries often employ them.

On March 15, 1978, the Oklahoma Senate unanimously passes H.B. 1629. Conceived by lawmakers John Monks (Democrat) and Mary Helm (Republican), the law allows “school boards to fire teachers who engage in public homosexual conduct.” Following Oklahoma’s lead, John Briggs, a Republican senator from California ardently supported by Anita Bryant, sponsors Proposition 6, aka the Briggs Initiative, which seeks to ban gay people from working in California’s public schools despite evidence showing that “the overwhelming majority” of crimes involving child molestation “are committed by heterosexuals.”* [*James Peron, “Ronald Reagan on Rainbow Rights,” The Radical Center, December 4, 2018.] Opposed by San Francisco Councilman Harvey Milk (who is gay), President Jimmy Carter, and, despite his rock-ribbed conservatism, former California Governor Ronald Reagan (who had been warned that any student with a failing grade could accuse his or her teacher of being gay, causing chaos in classrooms), the ballot initiative is defeated on November 7, 1978. Oklahoma H.B. 1629 is ruled unconstitutional by the Oklahoma Supreme Court on March 26, 1985.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling for Island Trees School District v. Pico upholds the idea that a student’s right to a plurality of viewpoints trumps a school board’s right to determine the curriculum. In 1975, three members of the Island Trees School District Board of Education went outside their community to meet with a conservative group called Parents of New York United (PONYU), who gave them a list of 33 “objectionable” books, which they described as “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy.”* [*Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982).] Most of the books on the list were by or about racialized people. Without reading the books in their entirety, the Island Trees School Board members went into one of the public schools in the middle of the night and removed all of the “objectionable” books listed in the catalog.* [*Tyler Engel, “Overzealous: The Harm Caused by Parental and Administrative Censorship of Books in an Intellectually Freed Education,” Outstanding Gateway Papers 21 (2023): 4.] Justice Brennan, writing on behalf of the majority, argues that “local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’”* [*West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 642.]

There are many parallels between the Island Trees episode and present-day attacks on public school libraries: agitators from outside the community attempting to influence local policy, conservative book-banners who can’t be bothered to fully read the books they want banned, the flouting of official policy by covertly removing books rather than petitioning for their removal through official channels, and the racist characterization of writing by racialized authors as “obscene.”

After the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to ban gay couples from marriage, and San Francisco begins issuing marriage licenses, President Bush fears that “activist courts” may strike the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. He attempts to write homophobia into law by resurrecting the Alliance for Marriage Act as a constitutional amendment, the Federal Marriage Amendment, defining marriage as “between one man and one woman.” Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the leading Democrat in the presidential campaign, calls Mr. Bush’s endorsement a campaign ploy seeking "a wedge issue to divide the American people."* [*David Stout, “Bush Backs Ban in Constitution on Gay Marriage,” The New York Times, February 24, 2004.] On July 18, the motion fails in the House of Representatives. It will be reintroduced by Republican legislatures in 2008, 2013, and 2015.

The first social media platform, initially intended to assess the attractiveness of women, launches. During the COVID pandemic, many right-wing parents and activists will use the platform to spread misinformation about curricula, stoke moral-panic fears about nonexistent perils to students in public education, and to harass, troll, and dox teachers to intimidate them into resigning or to chill their speech and restrict their freedom to teach diverse perspectives. Conservative parents form groups with names like “Concerned Parents” or “Parents Against a Rogue Teacher.” (see the Trouble in Censorville pp. 225-238) Meanwhile, teachers’ freedom to express themselves on social media is often limited by their district.

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court rules 5-4 in favor of marriage equality, writing that “same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry in all States,” and that “there is no lawful basis for a State to refuse to recognize a lawful same-sex marriage performed in another State.”* [*Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015).] 

Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th president of the U.S. A real-estate mogul and reality-TV star with no prior public or military service, Trump campaigns on the slogan “Make America Great Again,” a promise to return to a time when racism, misogyny and homophobia were facts of everyday life in America and white supremacy and the patriarchy reigned supreme. Trump, who during Barack Obama’s presidency had promoted the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya (rather than Hawaii, as documented on his birth certificate) and was therefore not eligible for the presidency, kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign with yet another racist lie: the vile falsehood that Mexican “rapists” were swarming over the southern border. During the campaign, Trump regularly traded in Islamophobia, racism, homophobia, and misogyny. His campaign rhetoric and, after his election, tweets, rallies, and policies normalize unabashed bigotry and intolerance, inspiring a wave of hate speech and hate crimes across the country.* [*Haas Institute Staff, “International Tolerance Day,” Other & Belonging Institute, November 16, 2016.] During his four years in office, Trump “fueled already smoldering racist animosities,”* exploiting the right-wing “whitelash”** of racist hostility to mounting demands for social justice and racial equity. [*D.G. Embrick, W.L. Moore, & M.A. Ramirez, ”Tearing down to take up space: Dismantling white spaces in the United States,” American Behavioral Scientist 66, no. 11 (2022)1582–96.] [**D.G. Embrick, S.C. Carter, & C. Lippard, “The Resurgence of Whitelash: White Supremacy, Resistance, and the Racialized Social System in Trumptopia,” in Protecting Whiteness: Whitelash and the Rejection of Racial Equality, eds. C.D. Lippard, J.S. Carter, and D.G. Embrick (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020), 3-24.]

MARK JOHNSON, a non-white high-school principal of color interviewed in this collection (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 263-274), believes Trump’s “racist fearmongering” gave far-right extremists “permission to speak what they've felt for so long.” WILLIE EDWARD TAYLOR CARVER JR., a former English and French teacher from Tennessee (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 147-171), observes that “after Trump’s election, the dial on bigotry of all kinds got turned up. Suddenly, hatred became protected political speech.”During his presidency, Trump deploys tactics familiar from autocratic regimes: he demonizes asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants, claiming that America is being “unfairly victimized by foreigners,”* threatens military force against BLM protesters, referred to veterans of American war as “losers,” and attacks the media as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.”** [*J.R. McNeill, “How Fascist is President Trump? There’s Still a Formula for That,” The Washington Post, August 21, 2020.] [** Ezra Klein, “’Enemy of the People’: How Trump Makes the Media into the Opposition,” Vox, October 30, 2018.]

Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project reimagines 1619 – the date marking the arrival of the first enslaved people in the United States – as the year of the nation's birth. By doing so, Hannah-Jones re-centers America’s historical narrative around the impact of slavery and, in telling that story from an anti-racist perspective, highlights the previously neglected or downplayed contributions of Black Americans.* [*Nikole Hannah-Jones, “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times, August 4, 2019.]

On January 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms the first case of COVID-19 in the U.S. By March, many cities go into lockdown, requiring or encouraging people to stay at home to reduce the spread of the virus, and many businesses require patrons to wear masks. Public schools shift online during the early days of the COVID pandemic, giving parents a front-row seat to their children’s classes. Some conservative parents are outraged by discussion topics and reading materials that question “essential facts,” such as the myth that America, in the 21st century, is a “race-blind” meritocracy. As well, they’re dismayed by the recognition of non-binary gender identities or the teaching of perspectives on U.S. history that challenge the whitewashed versions they were taught. Far-right parents use school board meetings as political platforms to decry these trends, in effect resisting a changing world. MARK JOHNSON, a high-school principal (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 263-274), tells us that “far-right disruptors really used the pandemic and the havoc it caused us to their advantage because, while we were focused on giving their kids the best possible education, they were focusing on spewing nonsense and whipping up people’s fears.” MISTY L.C., a middle school social studies teacher (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 173-184), adds, “Those trying to privatize education saw this parental dissatisfaction over how COVID was handled – the school closures, the mask mandates, the online learning – as their moment to mobilize parents against public schools and toward private education. They moved as swiftly as possible to whip up as much fear as possible about what was happening in the schools.”

Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who recently enrolled in college to become an electrician, is chased, then shot to death by two white men while jogging in a suburb of Brunswick, Georgia. As with many hate crimes and racially motivated murders, the white men falsely claim that Arbery was a suspect in a recent burglary. On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and an award-winning EMT is fatally shot by police in her home in Louisville, Kentucky. Based on flawed intelligence, the police raid Taylor’s home late at night, spraying it and two neighboring apartments, with occupants, with 32 rounds. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, beloved by his family and Minneapolis community for his gentleness and generosity, is murdered by a white police officer who kneels on his neck for more than nine minutes while arresting him on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill. The murder is recorded and widely broadcast; international audiences watch Floyd struggle to breathe and then die while witnesses plead for the officers to release him.

May 27, 2020, is the date cited as the first protest leading to a worldwide uproar about systemic violence against Black people. Black-led organizing and mass protests for racial justice continue through the summer of 2020. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, also known as the racial reckoning, advocate for more counselors and fewer cops within police departments, increase turnout of voters of color, and call for public-school curricula that tell the full story of Black history, teaching the origins of racism so that students can analyze, contest, and ultimately overturn white supremacy.* [*“2020 Impact Report,” Black Lives Matter.] Many public school educators trying to teach American history, engage with current events, and be responsive to communities grappling with racialized violence develop lesson plans that allow for research and discussion about the murder of these and other African Americans by white cops and white vigilantes.

In June 2020, Tom Cotton, Republican Senator for Arizona, introduces the “Saving American History Act” in the Senate. The proposed bill prohibits the use of federal funds to teach The 1619 Project in elementary and secondary public schools. State governments can withhold funds proportional to the expense and time a teacher spends teaching The 1619 Project. This act is not voted on and therefore is never enacted.

Jacob Blake Jr., a 29-years-old Black man and father of six who was training to become a mechanic, is shot in the back by a white police officer executing a warrant for domestic violence offenses in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Blake survives but is paralyzed from the waist down and endures excruciating pain. The Kenosha prosecutor chooses not to bring charges against the police officer, Rusten Sheskey, who returned to work in April 2021.

Kyle Rittenhouse, a white Trump fan and self-appointed security for local businesses, shoots three protestors, two fatally, during the Kenosha uprising in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake. He is taken into police custody peacefully and later acquitted of all charges, including two counts of homicide.

In what Kimberlé Crenshaw describes as “a post-George Floyd backlash,”* the “far-right propagandist”** Christopher F. Rufo weaponizes the term “Critical Race Theory (CRT),” which he encounters in the footnotes of books on anti-racism. [*Benjamin Wallace-Wells, “How A Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory,” The New Yorker, June 18, 2021.] [**Jason Wilson, “Colorado Springs: Far-Right Influencers Made LGTBQ People into Targets,” Southern Poverty Law Center, November 22, 2022, para. 31.] CRT is a form of academic analysis, developed by legal scholars, which studies how racial inequality is perpetuated through housing, banking, the legal systems, and, of particular relevance to the issues discussed in this book, education.* [*Christopher F. Rufo, “Cult programming in Seattle,” City Journal, July 8, 2020.] Rufo recognizes the obscure term’s ideological potential when used as “political kindling” to play on right-wing fears of “radical” and “Marxist” indoctrination.* [*Wallace-Wells, “Conservative Activist.”] During the summer of 2020, he spins the concerns raised by BLM protests – specifically, the role of slavery in American history, the continuing legacy of racism, and calls for historical literacy and racial justice – as “leftist indoctrination” being taught in K-12 public schools and workplaces. Publicized by right-wing media, Rufo’s disinformation campaign incites outraged opposition on the right.

Christopher Rufo catches President Trump’s interest when he appears on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on September 1, 2020. Imploring Trump to abolish critical race theory-based workplace training from all branches of the federal government, he denounces “Black Lives Matter and neo-Marxist rhetoric.” Rufo’s manufactured threat of “CRT indoctrination” – an “un-American” plot to brainwash schoolchildren with leftist ideologies – proves effective at revving up Republican Party energy and mobilizing conservative white, suburban voters.

President Trump wades into the anti-CRT fray by sending a memorandum to federal agencies claiming that “according to press reports” government workers are being trained “to believe anti-American propaganda.”* [*Russell Vought, “M-20-34, Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,” Executive Office of the President, September 4, 2020.] The Trump memo prohibits spending on training programs used in federal workplaces and the armed services if the programs in question incorporate CRT, critique “white privilege,” or suggest that institutional racism is a fact of American life or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist (a claim that CRT does not, in fact, endorse).* [*V.E. Hamilton, “Reform, retrench, repeat: The campaign against Critical Race Theory, through the lens of Critical Race Theory,” William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice 28, no. 1 (2021) 64.] Later in the month, Trump’s executive order will identify phrases used in four federal training sessions in which discussants acknowledged their privileges, considered how racism is “interwoven” into American systems, and questioned the relevance of concepts, such as “the nuclear family.” Critics of the Trump memo contend that such topics provoke useful questions for government and military employees considering American society critically. CRT, it bears noting, was not mentioned in any of these sessions.* [*D.J. Trump, “Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” Trump White House, September 22, 2020.]

Burlington, Wisconsin parents start a “Parents Against a Rogue Teacher” Facebook group to harass fourth-grade teacher MELISSA GRANDI STATZ (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 225-238),condemning her as a “Marxist,” a “terrorist,” and an indoctrinator and calling for her firing because she led a class discussion about protests in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, sparked by the shooting of Jacob Blake. She and her students discussed the Black Lives Matter movement and systemic racism in American society. Members of the Facebook group post pictures of their guns and encourage others to arm themselves, presumably to intimidate Ms. Grandi Statz into resigning.

Seeing an opportunity to manufacture further moral outrage for political gain, President Trump announces a new committee to promote “patriotic education,” the “1776 Commission.”* [*A. Wise, “Trump Announces ‘Patriotic Education’ Commission, a Largely Political Move,” NPR, September 17, 2020, para. 5.] Warning of innocent white children being corrupted by leftist ideologues “portraying American as racist” in public schools, he calls upon parents to revolt, predicting that “patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country.”* [*Wise, “Trump Announces,” para. 3.]

The Trump White House issues EO 13950, “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” to prohibit U.S. Armed Forces and federal agencies from so-called “divisive concepts” training. The EO defines “divisive concepts” as the idea that the U.S. is fundamentally racist or sexist, that an individual may be racist or sexist, “whether consciously or unconsciously,” and that “an individual should feel discomfort [or] guilt … on account of his or her race or sex.” Assuring Americans that “racialized views of America” were “soundly defeated on the blood-stained battlefields of the Civil War” and that “in the 57 years since Dr. [Martin Luther King Jr.] shared his dream with the country,” America has attained a state of racial harmony and equality, the order warns patriots to beware racist indoctrination that “some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors” who bear responsibility for past actions committed by members of the same race or sex.* [*D.J. Trump, “Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” Trump White House, September 22, 2020.] The EO purports, in the name of a principled opposition to such “divisive concepts,” to unify the nation. In reality, Trump’s executive order is designed to suppress speech about the historical origins and present-day effects of race-, gender-, and sexuality-based inequities, and to retain white, patriarchal power.

Republican state legislators begin drafting bills banning “divisive concepts” in K-12 public school curricula, with language borrowed – in 78 out of 99 national bills – from model legislation crafted by staffers at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.* [*Steven Brint, “The Political Machine Behind the War on Academic Freedom,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 28, 2023, para. 22.] In turn, public schools begin to self-censor, avoiding any reading materials or discussion topics related to race or gender that conservatives might deem “divisive.” The barely concealed intent of “divisive concept” laws is the marginalization or erasure altogether of the historical narratives and contemporary perspectives of non-white and/or non-heterosexual/non-cisgendered students and teachers. As the authors of “Educational Gag Orders” note, the chilling effect of “divisive concepts” legislation disproportionately affects the First Amendment rights of “students, educators, and trainers who are women, people of color, and LGBTQ+.”* [*Jonathan Friedman and James Tager, “Educational gag orders,” PEN America (November 2021): 4.] In fact, the whitelash in the decades following Brown v. Board had, in large part, already accomplished these racist goals. The whiteness of public education has played a key role in aiding and abetting this reactionary agenda. The firing of 100,000 Black teachers in the 1950s through 1960s [see the entry, Brown v. Board of Education:May 17, 1954] had a chilling effect on generations. As of 2018, 79 percent of all teachers in public education were white.* [*Katherine Schaeffer, “America’s Public School Teachers are Far Less Racially and Ethnically Diverse than Their Students,” Pew Research Center, December 10, 2021.] U.S. public schools are run mainly by white educators whose approach to curricula and pedagogy view American history and current events, more often than note, from a white perspective, reaffirming the white-dominated social order, consigning non-white voices to the margins, and depriving all students of a diversity of viewpoints and critical challenges to received truth.

MISTY L.C.(see Trouble in Censorville pp. 173-184), a middle school social studies teacher in Censorville, is accused by two conservative school board candidates, in their campaign fliers, of teaching “critical race theory, a Marxist ideology.” As their smears spread, conservative parents join the uproar on social media.

Tina Descovich, Tiffany Justice, and Bridget Ziegler, wife of Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler, found Moms for Liberty (M4L), a right-wing group whose “anti-woke” activism the Southern Poverty Law Center later characterizes “as "extremist.”* [*“Moms for Liberty,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed February 17, 2024.] Well-organized and well-funded, the group leads the charge to discredit, defund, and dismantle public education. M4L is especially effective in influencing school board policy and races. With the assistance of political PACs such as the 1776 Project, M4L funds school board candidates running on a “pro-parents’ rights” platform.* [*T. Alexander, L.B. Clark, K. Reinhard and N. Zatz, (2023) “Tracking the Attack on Critical Race Theory,” CRT Forward: UCLA School of Law (2023): 13.] The group uses the term “parental rights” to argue that they’re providing parents with more control over school library books and classroom instructional content. In reality, they’re not only attempting to limit classroom discussions and students’ access to informational materials about race, gender identity, and sexual orientation; they’re infringing on the rights of parents who want their children to be taught critical, factually accurate history and sociology that takes into account the experiences, perspectives, and dissenting views of marginalized peoples.

A violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol marks an end to a presidency organized around the politics of white grievance. In the run-up to the election, Trump questions the legitimacy of the voting process. After losing the election to Joe Biden, he continues to circulate baseless lies about election fraud and attempts to use his position to pressure officials to alter voting results. On January 6, Trump directs hundreds of his supporters to storm the Capitol Building to prevent Congress from counting votes certifying Joe Biden as the next president. About 150 officers are injured in the attack and five who defended the Capitol die, one from injuries sustained during the confrontation and four from suicide, in the days and months that follow. On August 1, 2023, a grand jury votes to charge Trump and six co-conspirators with four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S.

In one of his first official acts, on the day of his inauguration, President Joe Biden rescinds Trump EO 13950. Nonetheless, the whitelash it has already inspired will have ripple effects for years to come.* [*Joseph R. Biden, “86, 7009, Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” Biden White House.] In May 2023, a parent at a Miami-Dade school will complain about the “hate messages” in a book of poems by the African American poet Amanda Gorman, who spoke at Biden’s inauguration. At Biden’s swearing-in as President, Gorman read “The Hill We Climb,” a poem about the Insurrection, the “harsh truths” of the United States, and the potential for unity, even in a nation wracked by racism and political polarization: “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it,” she declares. “Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.”* [*Jennifer Liu, “Read the Full Text of Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural Poem ‘The Hill We Climb,’” CNBC, January 20, 2021.] In response to the Miami-Dade parent’s objections, the elementary school removes Gorman’s book from its library.* [*Madeline Halpert, “Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Poem Moved by School After Parent’s Complaint,” BBC, May 24, 2023.]

High school art history teacher SALLY MIDDLETON (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 101-109) is accused, by a Facebook group of “concerned parents,” of advancing an ideological “agenda” because she assigned a video exploring how an activist or cultural changemaker made a difference in his, her, or their community. In a related project, students are asked to make an award for an agent of positive change in their community. This, too, enflames conservatives.

Tennessee legislators give final approval to SB 623, which gives lawmakers the power to deny state funding to public schools whose curricula incorporate, and/or teachers whose courses discuss, “divisive concepts” such as systemic racism, white privilege, and unconscious bias. During the debate, Democratic Senator Brenda Gilmore argues against SB 623, pointing out that the law “robs teachers of the ability to teach true history. And, contrary to what some people may think, being an African American, I do not cast blame, but I think we do have to admit that slavery did occur. It was a dark period in our history. We have to acknowledge the wrongs of our society, even when it's a difficult conversation to have. And as a result of slavery, that today, in 2021, racism still does exist.”* [*Andy Sher, “Tennessee Republicans Pass Bill That Punishes Public Schools That Teach Systemic Racism Concepts,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, May 5, 2021.]

On May 5, 2021, MATTHEW D. HAWN (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 111-124), a social studies teacher and a baseball coach in Northeast Tennessee, is dismissed for discussing white privilege and racial equity in a high school class on contemporary issues.

The Howard Zinn Education Project, dedicated to providing students with instruction of U.S. histories that includes the role of racialized peoples, working people, women, and social movements, invites teachers to sign its pledge as a way of publicly declaring their refusal to be intimidated from teaching factual U.S. history and examining current events from a critical perspective. The pledge commits teachers to “develop critical thinking that supports students to better understand problems in our society, and to develop collective solutions to those problems.” As well, signatories to the pledge affirm, “We are for truth-telling and uplifting the power of organizing and solidarity that move us toward a more just society.”* [*“Pledge to Teach the Truth,” Zinn Education Project, January 12, 2022.]

ELLEN BARNES (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 201-213), a middle school history teacher, learns that some of her colleagues have been doxed by a website called “Granite Grok,” which describes itself as a “gun-toting conservative political forum.” Rated a “Questionable Source” with “extreme bias and “consistent promotion of propaganda” by MediaBiasFactCheck.com, The Granite Grok publishes a list of names and locations of teachers who signed the Zinn Pledge.

In his last campaign debate against Glenn Youngkin (R), Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe (D) affirms, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” He is referring to a 2017 bill that proposed labeling books as sexually explicit in ways that ignored literary merit and context; McAuliffe, then governor, vetoed the bill.* [*Eva McKend and Dan Merica, “Virginia Republicans seize on parental rights and schools fight in final weeks of campaign,” CNN, October 7, 2021, para. 2.] He goes on to note that Youngkin only resurrected the topic to stoke parental fears, a campaign tactic that uses children and public schools “as political pawns” to win an election. McAuliffe calls the silencing of Black authors “a racist dog whistle designed to gin up support from the most extreme elements of his [Youngkin’s] party – mainly his top endorser and surrogate, Donald Trump.* [*Laura Vozzella and Gregory S. Schneider, “Fight over Teaching ‘Beloved’ Book in Schools Becomes Hot Topic in Virginia Governor’s Race,” The Washington Post, October 25, 2021, paras. 7 and 8.]

Far-right parents challenge five books, all with LGBTQ+ themes, in the library at North Hunterdon High School, New Jersey, where MARTHA HICKSON is the librarian. (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 79-98) Armed with district policy, Hickson rallies the community and authors to fight the ban challenges.

MARK JOHNSON (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 263-274),an educator and the first non-white principal of Censor City high school, is put on leave after talking with the media about not being publicly supported by an all-white administration after a white, far-right parent railed against him at a school board meeting for “destroying schools” and promoting “critical race theory.” In fact, the initiative Johnson was promoting had “nothing to do with CRT,” he notes. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, at a high school where half the student body is non-white, he had called for the community to come together to dismantle systemic racism.

Texas State Representative Matt Krause sends a list of 850 books to the Texas Education Agency and to superintendents of school districts around the state, asking them to confirm whether any of the books are in their libraries or classrooms. The list provides no descriptions, qualifications, or assessments of the books listed, just their titles. In his cover letter, Krause directs the agencies to identify other books that “contain the following topics: human sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), sexually explicit images, graphic presentations of sexual behavior that is in violation of the law, or contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”* [*Matt Krause, “School District Content Inquiry,” Texas House of Representatives: Committee on General Investigating, October 25, 2021.]

CAROLYN FOOTE, a retired Texas librarian (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 241-250), notes that, “Krause had aspirations to run for Attorney General of Texas, and the release of the letter seemed to be ... a play for attention.” Infuriated by right-wing book-banners, Foote and her public-school library colleagues use a hashtag parodying the Texas legislative hashtag to organize a Twitter counterattack. On November 4, their Freedom to Read hashtag (#FReadom) goes viral, drawing national media attention to the right-wing assault on the First Amendment in public education.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott sends a letter to the Texas Education Agency directing them to scour public schools to “prevent the presence of pornography and other obscene content in Texas public schools.”* [*Greg Abbott, “Letter to Texas Education Agency Commissioner,” The State of Texas: Governor’s Office, November 10, 2021.]

Moms for Liberty offers a $500 bounty for “the first person that successfully catches a public school teacher breaking New Hampshire’s anti-divisive subject matter law.”* [*Peter Greene, “New Hampshire and Moms for Liberty Put Bounty on Teachers’ Heads,” Forbes, November 12, 2021.]

Section 251.4 of the American Model Penal Code outlines the prohibition of the distribution of obscene materials but allows an “affirmative defense” if disseminated by “institutions or persons having scientific, educational, governmental or other similar justification for possessing obscene material.”* [*American Law Institute. (1985). Model penal code: official draft and explanatory notes: complete text of model penal code as adopted at the 1962 annual meeting of the American Law Institute at Washington, D.C., May 24, 1962. Philadelphia, Pa.: The Institute. Page 238.] “Affirmative defense” means that, for example, a librarian loaning a book of literary and educational merit with anatomy, sex ed, or sexual themes, would not be criminally liable. In 2022, Oklahoma and Tennessee pass laws removing “educational purposes,” “education,” and “libraries” from the list of workplaces or professions exempted from these obscenity laws. School employees can face prison time or fines for violating these laws. In 2023, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, and Missouri follow suit.

At a town meeting in Censorville, Republican committee members and parents claim that JILL JAMES, a middle school language arts teacher (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 253-260), is “pushing books” that feature LGBTQ+ protagonists and “encouraging students to become trans, to come out as gay.” On January 10, 2022, Iowa’s Republican Senate President Jake Chapman accuses educators of a “sinister agenda occurring right before our eyes” in “disguising sexually obscene material as desired subject matter and profess[ing] it has artistic and literary value.”* [*David Pitt, “Iowa Senate President Jake Chapman says Press, Teachers Have ‘Sinister Agenda,’” Des Moines Register, January 10, 2022, para. 1.] In penal codes related to obscenity, Republican legislators begin challenging the assumption of “positive intent” on the part of educators. On January 19, 2022, Washington state middle school librarian GAVIN DOWNING (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 187-198) is notified by his principal, in flagrant violation of the district’s book-challenge process, of three books she wants removed from the library. All three books address the perspectives of LGBTQ+ kids and LGBTQ+-related issues.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits teachers at the pre-K to Grade 3 level from acknowledging sexual orientation or gender identity in their classes. This prohibition is later expanded to include Grades 4 through 12.

ELISSA MALESPINA, New Jersey high school librarian (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 215-223), is notified by her principal that she will not be rehired based on the unfounded perception that her book displays focus too much on LGBTQ+ students and racially diverse topics, which, according to the principal, “has created the perception that the library is about only two things.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs HB 7 (Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act or “Stop W.O.K.E. Act”) into law, banning teachers from discussing race or criticizing the U.S. “meritocracy” as racist. According to DeSantis, the law “gives businesses, employees, children, and families tools to stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination.”* [*Brendan Farrington, “Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs ‘Stop Woke’ Bill to Limit Discussion of Race,” L.A. Times, April 22, 2022.] In November 2022, in response to a lawsuit filed by eight Florida professors, a federal judge rules that the parts of the law that restrict conversations about race in public universities violate the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker refers to HB 7 as “dystopian,” noting, “the First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark."* [*Becky Sullivan, “With a Nod to ‘1984,’ a Federal Judge Blocks Florida’s Anti-‘Woke’ Law in Colleges,” NPR, November 18, 2022.]

2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year WILLIE EDWARD TAYLOR CARVER JR.(see Trouble in Censorville pp. 147-171) resigns from the high school where he’d taught for 15 years because recent state laws (SB 150 and SB 151) require teachers to misgender students and to prohibit them from using appropriate bathroom facilities, among other harmful directives.

Elementary school art teacher MONICA COLES (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 67-76) is placed on paid administrative leave without cause, after only four days in the classroom. Parents alarmed by Coles’ insufficiently “feminine” attire spread rumors that Cole was “lecturing” elementary kids on “gender and pronouns” and that drawings from an art course she’d taken in college, posted to her private Instagram, were nude drawings of minors. These charges were baseless as the drawings were created for assignments in a university figure drawing course that used adult models.

PEN America, a center for the protection of free expression, releases a report about national public-school book bans, reporting an increase in bans by 33 percent from the 2021-2022 school year. According to their report, Florida banned 1,406 books, accounting for 40 percent of nationwide book bans.* [*“New Report: Book Bans Spike by 33% Over Last School Year,” PEN America, September 21, 2023.] PEN America describes the bans and legislative efforts to restrict teaching subjects the right disapproves of as an “Ed Scare” intended to suppress free expression and critical thought in public education.

Clay County’s district reconsideration list, a list of books that parents, administrators, or community members have challenged between November 2021 and January 8, 2024, expands to over 745 titles. As a result, nearly 306 titles are permanently removed from school library shelves. According to the district, 94 percent of the challenges have come from one man: Bruce Friedman, founder and president of the Florida chapter of a far-right group called No Left Turn in Education, identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white, antigovernment, Christian-nationalist group. Of the 439 titles that the committee chose not to remove from school libraries, Friedman has appealed every decision. This includes a challenge to Marc Brown’s beloved children’s book Arthur’s Birthday because the monkey Francine suggests a game of spin-the-bottle at a birthday party.

In June 2023, JULIE MILLER (see Trouble in Censorville pp. 127-144), the lone Clay County school librarian who spoke out against Friedman’s book challenges, is unceremoniously reassigned to a teaching role in a subject she had never taught. The principal alleges that Miller violated the “parameters of allowed reading materials" defined by "Florida Statute" while working as a librarian. However, Miller believes that the reassignment is actually an act of retaliation for her resistance to the district's book bans.

Valentina Gomez, a candidate for Missouri Secretary of State affiliated with Trump’s MAGA movement, tries to advance her political career by posting a video of herself on X, Facebook, and Instagram setting fire to Queer: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens and Naked: Not Your Average Sex Encyclopedia, books meant to educate teens about their bodies.

Since January 2021, legislators in 44 states have passed or attempted to pass bills restricting the teaching of topics related to race and gender.* [*Ileana Najarro, “Teachers Censor Themselves on Socio-Political Issues, Even Without Restrictive State Laws,” Education Week, February 15, 2024.] On February 15, 2024, the 2023 State of the American Teacher Survey, published by the nonpartisan think tank RAND Corporation, reports that 51 percent of K-12 teachers across the nation are subjected to local and/or state restrictions prohibiting the discussion of racism and sexism in the classroom.* [*Najarro, “Teachers Censor,” para 6.] Most startlingly, 55 percent of respondents who aren’t subject to state or local restrictions are choosing to self-censor when it comes to social and political issues, reflecting the chilling effect that threats of public harassment and administrative pushback are having on the teaching of sociopolitical topics, even in ostensibly liberal school districts.* [*Ashley Woo, M.K. Diliberti, and E.D. Steiner, “Policies Restricting Teaching About Race and Gender Spill Over into Other States and Localities,” RAND, February 15, 2024.] One of the findings of the testimonials in Trouble in Censorville is that most educators who push back are alone in their fights. Being liberal or able to acknowledge bias and bigotry doesn't necessarily mean that a teacher will have the support, courage, stamina, or protections to push back when the administration may not have their back, their colleagues may ostracize them, and when many live in states with weakened teachers' unions.