Speaking at Mar-a-Lago earlier this monthformer president trump lies thrown reflecting their continued efforts to rewrite the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. suggested that his followers were completely unarmed and falsely blamed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the mob. For their part, Trump supporters have tried to reframe imprisoned insurrectionists as hostages either Even political prisoners. Some have suggested that January 6 was a “peaceful protest” either “normal tourist visit”. This revisionism serves many functions, but none more than legitimizing Trump's attempt to undermine the United States Constitution.
Trump's election denialism has been compared to another piece of mythology in American history, and rightly so. After his insurrection in 1861, residents of the southern states also spread falsehoods about the war. Some former Confederates claimed that slavery had nothing to do with their attempted secession, but rather, Northern aggression and federal overreach forced the South to act.
This lie became known as the Lost cause, and by the 1920s it was widely considered factual. But it sparked pushback from a group of black scholars who started what was then called Black History Week, which grew to become Black History Month in February. Those educators had to combat one of our nation's first misinformation campaigns. As the month concludes, can your experience offer any hope for today?
After the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, in books, films such as “gone With the Wind” and lessons in American schools, the Confederates became heroes and their rebellion a noble cause. The narrative required Confederate monuments, flags, and stories. celebrating white Americans who tried to secede. He also erased the empowerment and leadership of African Americans that, after emancipation, shaped public life during post-Civil War Reconstruction. Black people in this version of the story were portrayed as docile or better off on the plantations, if they were recognized at all.
This period of racism and extreme opinions fueled a countermovement to set history straight. In 1926, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson chose the second week of February as Negro History Week because it coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Black History Week expanded work Black teachers were already doingand so? quickly became popular. Through historical reenactments, lectures, parades, and other events focused on black history, Woodson and black scholars rejected the Lost Cause myths of that era.
These efforts were certainly not without opposition nor were they completely successful. None other than Massachusetts-born John F. Kennedy fell in love with the Lost Cause in the 1950s. Today, the rebel Confederate flag is still displayed on bumper stickers, buildings and schools, and streets are named after Confederate leaders, reflecting the valorization of the men who tried to tear the country apart. But these false narratives are not as indisputable as they were when Black History Week began.
Black leaders adopted a few different strategies to attack the Lost Cause. They focused their lessons first on elementary school children, ensuring that local schools emphasized democratic principles, including the peaceful transfer of power from one leader to another. These examples teach students from an early age how democracy itself has functioned and evolved.
These educators also applied their mission to the organization, first among like-minded people and gradually among less immediately receptive groups. Black leaders of that era, including historians and members of the press, aligned themselves with abolitionist or sympathetic white Americans to teach black history wherever it could be taught. This phase focused not on winning over those enthralled by Confederate falsehoods, but on providing accurate information in safe, educational environments.
That has some resonance today. Arguing on X/Twitter against MAGA fans trapped in a new Lost Cause narrative may be of little to no use. There may be more value in sharing knowledge of American democratic institutions, including the tradition of peaceful transfer of power established by John Adams in 1801, with young students and other open-minded or pro-democracy people. The persistence of Black History Month suggests that such an approach can build a lasting foundation for myth-busting education.
Simply preaching that January 6 was wrong clearly does not convince everyone. In the wake of his own insurrection, Trump and his supporters seem determined to follow in the footsteps of the Confederates who lost the Civil War but largely won the battle of falsifying history for their purposes.
But the teaching of black history through decades of strong, sometimes violent opposition shows that resistance to facts does not have to be a death sentence for education. Black scholars did not simply argue against the Lost Cause; they also sought empowerment through knowledge that kept their teaching traditions alive. Democracy itself is empowering, and organizing to share the basic ideas of democracy must be critical to fighting Trump's lost cause.
10 years from now, Trump supporters might well be enjoying Jan. 6 reenactments or waving MAGA banners beneath American flags on public buildings. But we don't have to accept the historical revisionism of a vocal minority as the winning narrative. It may be a long, grueling and imperfect process, but the facts about democracy can still be relevant.
Christopher M. Richardson is an immigration attorney and co-author of the “Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement.”
