Lies My Teacher Told Me Read Online Free PDF

“Those in favor of
     segregation finally lost support in the administration. Their policies gradually were
     ended.” This is simply not true.
    Omitting or absolving Wilson's racism goes beyond concealing a character blemish. It is
     overtly racist. No black person could ever consider Woodrow Wilson a hero. Textbooks that
     present him as a hero are written from a white perspective. The coverup denies all
     students the chance to learn something important about the interrelationship between the
     leader and the led. White Americans engaged in a new burst of racial violence during and
     immediately after Wilson's presidency. The tone set by the administration was one cause.
     Another was the release of America's first epic motion picture.
    The filmmaker David W. Griffith quoted Wilson's two-volume history of the United States,
     now notorious for its racist view of Reconstruction, in his infamous masterpiece The Clansman, a paean to the Ku Klux Klan for its role in putting down “black-dominated” Republican
     state governments during Reconstruction. Griffith based the movie on a book by Wilson's
     former classmate, Thomas Dixon, whose obsession with race was “unrivaled until Mein Kampf.” At a private White House showing, Wilson saw the movie, now retitled Birth ofa Nation, and returned Griffith's compliment: “It is like writing history with lightning, and my
     only regret is that it is all so true.” Griffith would go on to use this quotation in
     successfully defending his film against NAACP charges that it was racially inflammatory.
    This landmark of American cinema was not only the best technical production of its time
     but also probably the most racist major movie of all time. Dixon intended “to
     revolutionize northern sentiment by a presentation of history that would transform every
     man in my audience into a good Democrat! . . . And make no mistake about itwe are doing
     just that.”' Dixon did not overstate by much. Spurred by Birth of a Nation, William Simmons of Georgia reestablished the Ku Klux Klan. The racism seeping down from
     the White House encouraged this Klan, distinguishing it from its Reconstruction prede
     cessor, which President Grant had succeeded in virtually eliminating in one state (South Carolina) and discouraging nationally for a time. The new KKK quickly became a national phenomenon. It
     grew to dominate the Democratic Party in many southern states, as well as in Indiana,
     Oklahoma, and Oregon. During Wilson's second term, a wave of antiblack race riots swept
     the country. Whites lynched blacks as far north as Duluth.
    If Americans had learned from the Wilson era the connection between racist presidential
     leadership and like-minded public response, they might not have put up with a reprise on a
     far smaller scale during the Reagan-Bush years.“ To accomplish such education, however,
     textbooks would have to make plain the relationship between cause and effect, between hero
     and followers. Instead, they reflexively ascribe noble intentions to the hero and invoke
     ”the people“ to excuse questionable actions and policies. According to Triumph of the American Nation: ”As President, Wilson seemed to agree with most white Americans that segregation was in
     the best interests of black as well as white Americans.
    Wilson was not only antiblack; he was also far and away our most nativist president,
     repeatedly questioning the loyalty of those he called “hyphenated Americans,” “Any man who
     carries a hyphen about with him,” said Wilson, “carries a dagger that he is ready to
     plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.” The American people responded to Wilson's lead with a wave of repression of white ethnic
     groups; again, most textbooks blame the people, not Wilson. The American Tradition admits that “President Wilson set up” the Creel Committee on Public Information, which
     saturated the United States