00:00:00.000Welcome to Bitchy History, an irreverent history podcast which is run by the woke history professor that Moms for Liberty has nightmares about.0.70
00:00:12.180Here we are at episode 20 of the podcast, and today I've decided to tackle a topic for which the research drove me nearly to alcoholism on a number of occasions.0.57
00:05:48.280That said, any speed of abolition from the North would have been moving uncomfortably fast for the South
00:05:53.000since they were about as still and immovable on the issue as Stonehenge.
00:05:57.340But that is also a topic for another episode.
00:06:00.080Jefferson's hatred of Northern universities seems incredibly backwards in this case.
00:06:04.020If he truly wished for slavery to end in the South,
00:06:06.940would he not have wanted the next generation to be taught by abolitionists and opponents of slavery in the North?
00:06:12.600His main concern, he claimed, was that the North was pushing for too much too fast.
00:06:16.660but if the next generation of Southern leadership was opposed to slavery because of a Northern
00:06:20.980education, wouldn't that have sped up change in the South? I don't know. It just seems hypocritical
00:06:26.260to me to want to prevent the next generation from learning anything negative about slavery
00:06:30.200if you want slavery to end, but that's just my two cents on the issue. Regardless, we know what
00:06:35.900happened with students who attended the University of Virginia that Jefferson founded to keep students0.91
00:06:40.260away from the brainwashing of Yankee schools, and it was the opposite of everything Jefferson
00:06:45.300claimed he wanted. They became more religious, more pro-slavery, and the young men in attendance0.57
00:06:50.440were violently racist towards African Americans. It's amazing how keeping a group secluded from
00:06:55.600all outside thought, only learning from those who agree with their parents, and feeding off
00:06:59.660the toxicity of their fellow students will create a poor soil for growth. You'd think a farmer like
00:07:04.660Jefferson would have known something about crop rotation, but I guess he was just a gentleman
00:07:09.040farmer, not a real one. Jefferson died in 1826, but his sentiments about the evil brainwashing
00:07:15.000schools of the North lived on. The Richmond Enquirer in 1856 published an article about
00:07:20.420the University of Virginia in which they had this to say about Northern universities.
00:07:24.800Young men at college in the North are constantly exposed to the danger of imbibing doctrines
00:07:29.380subversive of all old institutions and of all the established tenets respecting religion, law,
00:07:35.140morality, property, and government. Every village has its press and its lecture room, and each
00:07:40.120lecturer and editor unchecked by a healthy public opinion opens up for discussion all the received
00:07:45.560dogmas of faith nothing is considered as settled nothing too venerable or sacred to be controverted
00:07:51.040the intellectual rashness of youth and their love of novelty predisposes them to reject old opinions
00:07:56.820and to accept without sufficient investigations what is novel and startling it is not safe or
00:08:02.580prudent to expose young minds to the contagion of the conventions the lectures and the press of the
00:08:07.540northern isms under these circumstances it surprises us that moral conservative and religious
00:08:12.860men at the north who can afford it do not send their sons to southern schools their training
00:08:17.860would be moral religious and conservative and they would never learn or read a word in school
00:08:22.300or out of school inconsistent with orthodox christianity pure morality and the right of
00:08:27.200property the sacredness of marriage the obligations of law and the duty of obedience to the government
00:08:32.640it will forever make me scream laugh and do a shot of whatever hard liquor is available that
00:08:37.880individuals like this could say that northern schools or wokeism today is about brainwashing
00:08:43.600students while also saying things like southern schools are better because students who learn
00:08:48.740there would never learn or read a word in school or out of school inconsistent with orthodox
00:08:54.200christianity pure morality and the right of property like do they seriously not see the
00:09:00.360irony there at all? Basically, this entire complaint is Northern schools make our kids0.50
00:09:06.140question our shitty traditions, and we don't like when our kids do that, so we want to make sure0.86
00:09:11.100they only learn what we want them to learn. Sounds a lot like Moms for Liberty, doesn't it?0.94
00:09:17.620And other articles from the pre-Civil War period are a lot less vague on what content they0.99
00:09:22.220specifically don't like that's being taught to their kids by those damn Yankees. Abolition.0.99
00:09:27.920In 1845, the Richmond Enquirer published this about the benefits of Southern education.
00:09:32.760Threatening signs indicate that a storm is coming upon us.
00:09:35.460It may be distant, it may be almost here, but that it is coming can we doubt
00:09:39.440when we consider in how short a time abolitionism has grown from insignificance into consideration
00:09:44.780and with what rapid swells it continues to advance.
00:09:48.440The author then says that when this storm comes from the South,
00:09:51.540they will need all the Henrys and Rutledges and Randolphs and Sumters and Lees,
00:09:55.680the pen of Jefferson and the sword of Washington to save the Republic and preserve the Union.
00:10:00.860But, they ask, where will all these young men have been educated? Amid a strange people differing0.89
00:10:05.940from the Southerns in temperament and sympathies, or with their kindred in blood and in feeling,
00:10:10.940on the rock-bound coasts of the chilly north where they must hear daily condemnations of
00:10:15.080their domestic institutions, and even from their instructors in science, opinions unfavorable to
00:10:20.720the system of society in the land of their fathers, or among the blue mountains of their
00:10:24.960own sunny climb, where no malign influence can weaken the ties which bind them to the soil of
00:10:29.900their nativity. Right, right, makes sense. That's totally not brainwashing. Here's another part from
00:10:36.120this frankly, alarmingly long article, which always tickles me when I read it. The author
00:10:41.000goes on at length about the heightened dangers Southern students face of expulsion at Northern
00:10:45.840universities. For what, you might ask? Not for questioning the Yankee brainwashing, no. The
00:10:51.220author tells us exactly why more southern men get expelled from northern universities on average.
00:10:56.740They can't stop getting into fights over, well, the author says sectional prejudices, but he means
00:11:02.560slavery. But knowing most men in the south when I was growing up there, it was probably because
00:11:07.440someone thought someone else looked at him funny and he couldn't let that slide. Basically, it's
00:11:12.40019th century toxic masculinity on display. Good old southern boys channeling try that in a small
00:11:18.160town centuries before that shitty song was ever written. Imagine that. Throughout the 1840s and0.99
00:11:23.4801850s, we see a number of articles in southern newspapers cautioning parents against sending
00:11:28.140their sons to northern universities. From an 1841 letter to the editor, we get this,
00:11:33.340I have rarely seen a young man return from a northern school who was not completely disgusted
00:11:37.840by his experiences, or whose mind was not so filled with dangerous political heresies
00:11:42.980or sickly fanatical fancies as to render him either dangerous or contemptible as a southern
00:11:48.400citizen. Every man, I think, should be educated with a view to his becoming a valuable citizen
00:11:53.480of that country in which his life is to be spent. Now, if my idea be correct, it is certainly most
00:11:59.180desirable that in youth, when lasting impressions are so easily made upon the mind, he should be
00:12:04.060kept aloof from all influences, the tendencies of which would be to make him dissatisfied with
00:12:09.340the institutions and habits of his own people. And it wasn't just in educational institutions
00:12:14.080that southerners saw wokeism. In DeBow's review in May of 1856, they recommended that all homes
00:12:20.180should throw out any northern publications, books, newspapers, magazines, etc., which were inimical
00:12:26.400to southern interests and feelings, and only read publications published on southern soil.
00:12:31.960Another article from the same year presses the need for books that will mold the opinions and
00:12:37.140instill proper principles into the minds of youth. Sounds precisely like something from the Moms for0.81
00:12:42.820Liberty website, doesn't it? And there's another article in DeBowse, this one by the Honorable John
00:12:48.020Perkins Jr., in which he sounds exactly like a 19th century member of cland Karenhood, saying that
00:12:54.080in the past year I purchased a full course of northern school and college books, such as are in
00:12:59.180most general use, and it seems to me impossible for a youth to be pressed through them and retain
00:13:03.780just feelings toward the South or proper ideas of its rights under the Constitution, from the
00:13:08.820frightful pictures of slaves at work under the lash which ornament the child book, up to the
00:13:13.380sickly sentimentalism of their class readers, and on through the higher law reasoning of Hickok's
00:13:18.700moral science, there is a constant effort to impress the youthful mind with the idea that
00:13:23.160slavery is a great sin for the existence of which every American citizen is responsible until0.97
00:13:28.160congress acts on upon the subject yeah no shit perkins one thing perkins was right about is his0.98
00:13:35.460prediction that within five years the issue of slavery would bring the north and south to blows0.99
00:13:40.000when that happened he preferred to have young men of the south prepared to speak from conviction of
00:13:45.640the wisdom and policy of our peculiar institutions i do not desire their judgment won over by the
00:13:51.180perverted moral sentiment or by fictitious appeals to their passions to confess that slavery is a
00:13:56.900great social and political evil is to prepare for battle by throwing away our arms. It is worse to
00:14:02.620plead guilty and ask for mercy. Some articles even offered examples from the horrifying brainwashing
00:14:09.000material of the North. Here's one particular excerpt from the American first class book that
00:14:13.840they took exception to. That ocean which seems to wave with gentle magnificence, to waft the
00:14:19.080burdens of an honest commerce, and to roll its treasures with conscious pride, that ocean which
00:14:23.780hearty industry regards even when the winds have ruffled its surface as a field of grateful toil
00:14:28.780what is it to the victim of this oppression when he has brought to its shores and looks forth upon
00:14:33.620it for the first time beneath chains and bleeding with stripes what is it to him but a widespread
00:14:38.640prospect of suffering anguish and death nor do the skies smile longer nor is the air fragrant
00:14:44.600to him the sun is cast down from heaven and inhuman and cursed traffic has cut him off from
00:14:50.440his manhood or in his youth from every enjoyment belonging to his being and every blessing which
00:14:55.900his creator intended for him. I mean, clearly the South couldn't have their children reading that
00:15:00.460kind of trash. It might make them feel guilty about being white or something, might make them1.00
00:15:04.580examine their privilege, horrifying, vile, downright un-American. But of course, the war comes, just as
00:15:11.260Honorable John Perkins predicted. The North won, amendments were passed, and racism ended forever
00:15:16.580and ever. Amen. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. Oh, right. Unfortunately,
00:15:23.140Reconstruction is a massive failure, and probably a few more racists could have stood to have been
00:15:27.660in the way of Sherman's march to the sea. Not that Sherman wasn't also a racist, but we'll get to
00:15:32.720that later. As the years plot on, the anger at woke textbooks continues to flourish in the South,
00:15:38.520and in 1894, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the original clanned Karen Hood,
00:15:43.780is founded with the purpose of commemorating Confederate traders, building roadside monuments
00:15:48.820to them, and promoting proper historical education for Southern students, i.e. the myth of the lost
00:15:54.760cause. No one was a greater promoter of this pseudo-history in schools than Mildred Lewis
00:16:00.040Rutherford, who looks like she was perpetually sucking on a lemon and was built by the Disney1.00
00:16:04.860Imagineers that constructed the spooks for the Haunted Mansion. Look, I'm not being misogynistic
00:16:09.620here. I'd insult Rutherford this way even if she was Michael Rutherford. Evil ages you. Look at
00:16:14.920Mitch McConnell if you don't believe me. Mildred was the historian general for the United Daughters
00:16:19.660of the Confederacy. I use the term historian very loosely here as I do not wish to associate my
00:16:25.560profession with this woman in any way shape or form. She was no more historian than a horse with
00:16:30.880an ice cream cone glued to its forehead as a unicorn. Mildred's greatest contributions to
00:16:35.640the Lost Cause pseudo-history of the South was in writing a measuring rod to test textbooks and
00:16:41.100reference books in schools, colleges, and libraries, in which she says that the textbooks children in
00:16:46.460the South are learning from are unjust to the South and refuse to give the South credit for
00:16:52.340what she has accomplished, which has led her to prepare this measuring rod by which committees
00:16:57.380appointed by boards of education of heads of private institutions and their teachers can apply
00:17:02.920this test when books are presented for adoption. It's like the Moms for Liberty just copied the0.95
00:17:08.720UDC playbook wholesale. And what is this measuring rod? What is just to the South? I'm pretty sure
00:17:15.420you could guess, but here's a few of the things that Mildred recommends looking for when deciding
00:17:20.140to accept or reject a book. Reject a book that calls the Confederate soldier a traitor or rebel
00:17:26.280and the war a rebellion. Reject a book that says the South fought to hold her slaves. Reject a
00:17:32.600book that speaks of the slaveholder of the South as cruel and unjust to his slaves.
00:17:37.880There's a few other suggestions in there, but these are the ones that really still pop up in
00:17:42.340most modern Lost Cause mythology, at least in my experience. Check out the comments on some of my
00:17:47.320Civil War videos on TikTok sometime. National UDC President Mrs. James A. Roundsville put it this
00:17:53.200way at one of the group's annual conventions. It has ever been the cherished purpose of the
00:17:58.000daughters of the confederacy to secure greater educational opportunities for confederate children
00:18:02.740and by thorough training of their powers of mind heart and hand render it possible for these0.78
00:18:08.240representatives of our southern race to retain for that race its supremacy in its own land
00:18:14.500by southern race just to be clear she means white people the udc's primary focus like those of the
00:18:21.420pre-civil war south that i shared earlier was on ensuring that southern schools used only history
00:18:27.060books that were loyal to the South. In 1915, Mildred Rutherford spoke about a particular book
00:18:32.460that had been found unjust and which the committee had tried to have removed from schools. When that
00:18:37.320didn't work, the group, in a quiet, dignified manner with no spirit of insubordination, kindled
00:18:43.620a bonfire on the campus and into it every copy of that history was thrown. The authorities were
00:18:49.080taught a lesson. Not one member of that class was expelled. She expressed another story too in this
00:18:54.760speech, which sounds all too much like the overwrought stories that Moms for Liberty share
00:18:59.300of little girls and boys crying about how a lesson made them hate being white. In it, she says that
00:19:05.020a veteran came to me with tears streaming from his eyes saying, what can we do? My granddaughter came
00:19:10.820home from school and said, grandpa, our teacher said today that slaveholders beat their slaves
00:19:15.860until the blood fairly gushed out of their backs. And I was ashamed to tell them my grandfather
00:19:20.560ever owned slaves. Oh, boo-hoo. Tough shit, you racist old shitbird. You should feel ashamed of
00:19:27.140owning slaves, fighting to keep them, and your granddaughter is better off knowing what you were1.00
00:19:31.840up to. But really, this is the same motivation of the Moms for Liberty types these days. They don't1.00
00:19:37.300want their kids and grandkids asking awkward questions about what Mommy and Daddy or their1.00
00:19:41.660Gigi and Gaga were doing when Ruby Bridges was walking to school with U.S. Marshals, or the0.96
00:19:46.560Little Rock Nine was being escorted by the 101st Airborne, or when the Clinton 12 were having their
00:19:51.600homes shot at by white supremacists. That would be an awkward conversation. And of course, Mildred
00:19:57.060Rutherford had this to say in a 1914 speech in Savannah, Georgia. The black race, she did not0.55
00:20:03.220say black, should give thanks daily that they and their children are not today where their ancestors0.99
00:20:09.260were before they came into bondage. Does that remind you of anything? I thank God for slavery.0.98
00:20:16.560Look, I don't care how much Kimberly Daniels insists that what she's saying here was taken0.97
00:20:36.940out of context. I can't think of any context that would improve that. Of course, the UDC
00:20:42.620died down a bit after a while, but their ideas on controlling woke textbooks in school never did.
00:20:48.900The most marked resurgence came in the 1950s when the civil rights movement was gaining steam.
00:20:54.040Here's some excerpts from approved textbooks in southern schools at the time. A fourth grade
00:20:59.060history book called Virginia History had this to say about slavery. Life among the black people,
00:21:05.200they didn't say black, of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. They went about in
00:21:11.000a cheerful manner, making a living for themselves and for those for whom they worked. The high
00:21:15.600school history textbook Cavalier Commonwealth also said this about slaves. They did not work
00:21:21.840so hard as the average free laborer since he did not have to worry about losing his job.
00:21:26.560In fact, the slave enjoyed what we might call comprehensive social security. Generally speaking,
00:21:32.060his food was plentiful, his clothing adequate, his cabin warm, his health protected, and his leisure
00:21:37.580carefree. It also said that both slave and master understood that bondage as they knew it was not
00:21:44.140totally evil. Both realized that enslavement in a civilized world had been better in many respects
00:21:49.520for them than the barbarities they might have suffered in Africa. It sounds like these textbooks0.73
00:21:55.140would fit in very nicely with Florida's new curriculum standards about how slaves develop
00:22:00.520skills which in some instances could be applied for their own personal benefit. You can't see the
00:22:05.760way my eyes are rolling right now, but it's suitably dramatic. But of course, all of this
00:22:10.120was for nothing when the Supreme Court said, hey, that whole school segregation thing you've been
00:22:14.480doing? Not cool, bro. And with Brown versus Board, segregation was over and racism ended forever and
00:22:20.420ever. Amen. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. Wait, shit. No, the racists
00:22:28.160just doubled down. Sorry, I got that wrong. We'll show you we'll just take all of our kids out of
00:22:33.580public school and send them to private schools with names like Stonewall Jackson Academy,1.00
00:22:37.660where they conveniently only accept white students, which again, the current Moms for1.00
00:22:42.560Liberty types seem to have simply copied from their predecessor's homework again with the push0.99
00:22:47.160for voucher systems, which will funnel money from objectionable woke public education into private
00:22:52.740religious schools, which can conveniently ask for religious exemptions from silly things like
00:22:57.060Title IX and set vague enrollment standards that they can enforce to keep out bad elements,0.86
00:23:02.800which today are queer kids and, well, probably the rest of the minorities that couldn't go to segregation academies as well, let's be fair.0.82
00:23:10.740And yes, these schools were definitely created to avoid integration. Let's be clear about this.
00:23:16.160Here's a quote on the reasons for the opening of one of these private schools in Farmville, Virginia in 1959.
00:23:22.000Because the people of Prince Edward will not submit to integrated public schools.
00:23:27.260For how long will the courts and the federal government permit the county to deny educational opportunities to the black children?0.63
00:23:35.520Oh yeah, in 1959, Prince Edward County, Virginia famously shut all of their public schools by refusing to appropriate funds for those schools to run after being ordered to desegregate them.
00:23:47.340They did not reopen those schools for five years.
00:23:50.660So between 1959 and 1964, there were no public schools.
00:23:55.320the only way for African American students to be educated was to either create a private school of their own
00:24:00.800or send their children out of the county.0.60
00:24:03.400And they cheekily decided to blame the court for denying those kids education.
00:24:32.000It felt like a curse, but still lucky in the context of allowing me to find the information needed to write this episode anyway.
00:24:38.140I was lucky enough to come across a scanned-in copy of several hundred pages of the Citizens Council newspaper from the 1950s and 1960s.
00:24:46.280If you haven't heard of the Citizens Council, they were an anti-integration group that was formed in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision, which has been not so affectionately dubbed the Uptown Klan for being the kind of group that has all the same ideas as the KKK, but is slightly less likely to make a public scene by lynching someone, blowing up a church, or setting a cross on fire in your front yard. Much more civilized.
00:25:10.240Wading through the absolutely nauseating ideas in this newspaper,
00:25:13.720I found many articles that sounded like they could have come directly from Ron DeSantis
00:25:17.820and Moms for Liberty's telegram channels.
00:25:20.700Which, by the way, those telegram channels are totally public and anyone can view them.
00:25:25.440They really are in there just screaming the quiet part out loud,
00:26:05.440these subversive ideas had to be sneaked over on the teachers
00:26:08.380and through the teachers to the students.
00:26:10.100And what better way to sneak them over
00:26:11.660than through the teacher's own organization
00:26:13.580and through the textbooks that teachers were given to use in the schools.
00:26:16.540The largest teacher organization is the National Education Association.
00:26:20.880It has innumerable committees, subcommittees, state and local branches
00:26:24.600which reach into every phase of educational activity.
00:26:27.520It claims a tremendous membership among the nation's teachers
00:26:30.240and its monthly publication, the NEA Journal,
00:26:33.200goes out regularly to teach these members.
00:26:35.400But like all mass organizations in which the majority of the membership has neither the time nor the inclination to watch too closely,
00:26:43.320the NEA is pretty tightly controlled at the center by a group of officials who, if not outright leftists, could hardly be described as pro-American.
00:26:52.540And yes, I'm absolutely sure that this is a quote from that 1959 article, not a quote from an episode of The Five on Fox News last week.
00:27:00.620The Citizens Council complains that students are undereducated
00:27:03.540because that's the intent of the Marxist socialist commies at the NEA.
00:27:07.940Oh, and here's a quote from a 1957 article related to Florida,
00:27:11.780which seems like it could have come from a Moms for Liberty newsletter in 2023,