Harvard historian examines how textbooks taught white supremacy
Historian Donald Yacovone, an associate at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, was researching a book on the legacy of the antislavery movement when he came across some old history school textbooks that stopped him cold — and led him to write a different book. Yacovone, who co-authored “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” with Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2013, is now writing the “Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History.” The Gazette interviewed Yacovone about the origins of his research, his findings, and why he thinks it’s necessary to teach the difficult story of slavery and white supremacy and their legacies. Q&A Donald Yacovone GAZETTE: How did you start examining history textbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries? YACOVONE: I had begun a different book about the legacy of the antislavery movement and the rise of the Civil Rights era. I had spent several months at...