No on House File 222

KKK in Peterson, Iowa

In the late 60’s, my dad didn’t like Martin Luther King. MLK, he used to say, was a “social agitator.” What’s more, he’d say, some of King’s friends were known communists. In Wisconsin, where I grew up, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who claimed he knew where every communist in America was hiding, held all kinds of political influence.

My dad was a loving and strong Christian man who had little knowledge of African-American history. In Oostburg High School during the years before WWII, I’m quite sure no one talked much about Bleeding Kansas or the Underground Railroad. I’m guessing he knew nothing of the hundreds, even thousands of lynchings during the Jim Crow era. Back then, in most cities, schools were still segregated. With him, that would have been fine. My grandpa was an elder in our church and a passionate Christian, but he cheered for the Philadelphia Phillies because they were the last team to integrate.

But then, how many of us know that at the turn of the century, the local KKK paraded through the streets of Peterson, Iowa (see above) and maintained a proud presence right here in the county?

Some history just isn’t taught, in part because we’d rather not hear it.

That’s good, says our own Iowa state rep, Skyler Wheeler. He wants to prohibit an African-American history project titled 1619 because it’s “a complete assault on conservatives, conservatism and Republicans.” The curriculum, created in part by an Iowan named Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer for her introductory essay, he says will “deny or obfuscate the fundamental principles upon which the United States was founded.”

His Republican-sponsored bill, House File 222, would ban schools as well as other institutions governed by the Board of Regents from teaching anything—anything!—from the 1619 project. Should they dare such treachery, their funding will be slashed.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970) became a best-seller, but infuriated loads of Euro-American readers because it dared attempt to tell our national history as a Native people might talk about it. For instance, you may want to think of what happened at Wounded Knee as a “battle”; after all, the government still does. But every Lakota person I know calls it a “massacre,” and there’s a difference.

Rep. Skyler Wheeler wants to make America great in the way it was in the days of my parents and grandparents. Rep. Skyler Wheeler believes he needs to tell history teachers around the state—elementary, middle-school, high school, college, and university—just exactly how they are to teach history.

I think he’s wrong.