• retrospectology@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Yerp, this is why people talk about the civil war never actually resolving, it just festered as confederates were allowed back into office and started undermining the union.

    You might be interested to read about the Wilmington massacre, which was a completely successful coup in North Carolina by white supremacists in which they burned black businesses and news papers and literally drove the sitting biracial government out of office.

    The white supremacist who was “elected” after the coup held the office until his death.

    Tuskegee syphillis study 1930s-70s, in which the CDC deliberately allowed black men with syphillis go untreated so they could study the progress of the disease, even after medicine allowed for treatment. This is the sort of thing that has created a deep cultural mistrust among black americans towards doctors.

    There was the Battle of Blair Mountain in the 1920s in which some 10,000 striking coal workers got into a shooting battle against a private army of strikebreakers, who literally called in plains and were dropping bombs and gas on the workers.

    All kinds of insane shit from our history that gets brushed under the rug in certain states.

    • jabathekek@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      All kinds of insane shit from our history that gets brushed under the rug in certain states.

      Because it’s the Land of the Free.1

      1. Terms and conditions may apply.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        What do you mean, “in certain states?” I highly doubt there’s any state that teaches the history of how shitty we’ve been to natives and minorities whole and unvarnished.

  • paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    “I hope and pray that our Government will not listen to the ex-parte statements of the old rulers of these States, many of whom are still traitors at heart, and even now are seeking to grasp again the political power under the old flag,” Saxton added. “It will be bad for the Freedmen if these men again get into power.”

    It wasn’t long before Saxton’s fears became a reality. In April 1865, just a month after creating the Freedmen’s Bureau, Lincoln was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, was an avowed white supremacist who moved quickly to pardon many former Confederates and return their land.

    “[Johnson] used executive power very, very skillfully to undermine transfer of land to Black people, and to really hamstring the Freedmen’s Bureau,” said Donald Nieman, a history professor at Binghamton University. He added that Johnson acted out of personal prejudice toward the freedmen, but also political expediency. “By restoring land and by giving pardons to the former landowners in the South, he thought he could make that group of people beholden to him politically.”

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      There is no single “what they teach in history”, what people are taught varies massively state by state and even district by district, especially for some who graduated 40+ years ago.

  • Drusas@kbin.run
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    2 months ago

    That’s one of the rare bad things about the US that I did learn in school. I’m sure it’s because my ninth grade history teacher had a PhD and many years of being recognized as the best teacher in the district.

    Teachers matter!