Professor will visit St. Paul to discuss history of white supremacy in U.S. textbooks

Donald Yacovone, an associate at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, will give two talks this week in St. Paul on how history books used in public schools have promoted white supremacy. Both events are free.

Yacovone is the author of “Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity,” published in 2022.

Yusef Mgeni, a Minnesota NAACP official who is on a committee planning the events, said that Yacovone has reviewed several hundred books on American history taught in public schools since the 1700s and “his research demonstrates that going back to the beginning of the republic, the premise of teaching American history is white supremacy.”

“The way that history books present the history of indigenous people and enslaved people is not only slanted but severely inaccurate,” Mgeni said.

The Minnesota Legislature last year voted to mandate ethnic studies classes in Minnesota public schools, and a local committee is promoting Yacavone’s book to help K-12 teachers who are going to be responsible for those classes, Mgeni said.

The first event will be held 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Walker West Music Academy, 760 Selby Av. in St. Paul, sponsored by the Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul chapters of the NAACP, the East Side Freedom Library, and Embracing Minnesota Histories, a local group.

The Minnesota History Center, 345 West Kellogg Blvd. in St. Paul, will host a second event at 11 a.m. Saturday. It will be followed by refreshments and a book signing of “Teaching White Supremacy.”