I’m just saying a white person, in this day and age with the internet and social media, I’d be scared is I was like Governor of Georgia and all those teachers were teaching the facts of Georgia history. Like the black students in class would be reading about Sam Holt, chained to a stake, stabbed and burned alive as a white crowd gathered around and watch for hours rejoicing “gleefully” while he screamed and cried in pain, as reported by one northern newspaper.

Or take this 1923 newspaper description of a couple black men false accused of stealing from a white man’s store: “Fingers and ears of two Negroes lynched near this city last week are on display in a large bottle filled with alcohol on the counter of the town’s only drug store…. Lindsay B. Gilmore, a white grocer, was shot when he took after two Negroes, unidentified, who were caught stealing some cheese and cash from Gilmore’s store. A number of witnesses have stated that in the chase Gil-more was shot by a local officer whose aim was faulty. The Negroes were lynched, nevertheless.” Oops, those two negros didn’t do it, it was a stray bullet from the police. Well, we’ll just keep their parts on display as a reminder.
Or take this July 1947 New York Times article that starts off, “Two young Negroes, one a veteran just returned from the war, and their wives were lined up last night near a secluded road and shot dead by an unmasked band of twenty white men.” Turns out they hung them from a bridge. And one of the wives was seven months pregnant, so really 5 people were killed.

Or in 1981 the “Last Lynching” occurred of Michael Donald who was killed while walking to get some cigarettes in neighboring Alabama and lynched on a light pole because these white guys were angry at the black man downtown on trial who was acquitted. The first time a fair trial occurred was in 1981 of these white men who killed a black man who had been denied his due process rights. I tell from all the stories I’ve read, I feel like if black American students had to read this stuff, story after story from the one hundred years of lynching, massacres, beatings, I would be terrified.

If I was governor in that state, and I did NOT keep CRT fact history of black Americans out of the textbooks, I would be like, “Holy Cow, the black students are learning the facts, the truth of the violence, repression of their unconstitutional denial to vote and denial of due process rights, along with the slavecropping that occurred until the 1960s—I mean share cropping, omg, Freudian slip.” Than I would know they’re coming for me. I’d be hiding under my governor’s desk praying, “I didn’t do it Lord, it wasn’t me personally, though I may be in charge of the state government that defend the whites who did all this, and other governors spoke out in their white supremacy support, I didn’t do it. God, I hear them banging at my door, maybe I will pray for forgiveness for one hundred years of endorsing anti-American, dehumanizing, anti-biblical actions of my predecessors before they kick my door down.”

I’m just saying, maybe they’re scared at the reckoning ahead. They should be. Oh, and if anyone is heading to the governor’s mansion to yell outside to change those history books Now, put in our black American history, let me know. Because I’ll be screaming outside with you. Look back in anger, my friends, Look back in anger to propel you forward, because our democracy will not move on until you tell us that it has truly started for you, until all your black voices are heard, and your histories are lifted up.
Thanks much for all these updates and inspiration.