Civil Rights, Culture Wars: The Fight over a Mississippi Textbook - Softcover

Eagles, Charles W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1469654806 ISBN 13: 9781469654805

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019

Synopsis

Just as Mississippi whites in the 1950s and 1960s had fought to maintain school segregation, they battled in the 1970s to control the school curriculum. Educators faced a crucial choice between continuing to teach a white supremacist view of history or offering students a more enlightened multiracial view of their state's past. In 1974, when Random House's Pantheon Books published Mississippi: Conflict and Change (written and edited by James W. Loewen and Charles Sallis), the defenders of the traditional interpretation struck back at the innovative textbook. Intolerant of its inclusion of African Americans, Native Americans, women, workers, and subjects like poverty, white terrorism, and corruption, the state textbook commission rejected the book, and its action prompted Loewen and Sallis to join others in a federal lawsuit (Loewen v. Turnipseed) challenging the book ban.

Charles W. Eagles explores the story of the controversial ninth-grade history textbook and the court case that allowed its adoption with state funds. Mississippi: Conflict and Change and the struggle for its acceptance deepen our understanding both of civil rights activism in the movement's last days and of an early controversy in the culture wars that persist today.

About this title

About the Author

Charles W. Eagles is William F. Winter Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Mississippi.

Review

Eagles] builds his narrative around primary sources. . . . He not only sets the stage for the story, he gives us succinct biographical information on the players.--Jackson Clarion-Ledger
Eagles helps us recognize the significance of . . . cultural action through his detailed and clearly written account of the conflicts over Mississippi: Conflict and Change.--Educational Policy
Eagles deserves our gratitude for bringing a landmark case back into the limelight.--American Historical Review
Eagles's imaginative recovery of a civil rights moment informs readers about the accomplishment of two courageous professors from Tougaloo and Millsaps Colleges. . . . Congratulations to Eagles and the University of North Carolina Press on their splendid achievement in this pathbreaking publication. Essential.--Choice

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1469654806
• ISBN 13: 9781469654805
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 312