Donald Yacovone’s research has led him to argue an unconventional conclusion: the northern part of the United States, not the south, has had a larger role in keeping alive racist ideologies and producing texts which perpetuate racism. “The most damaging volumes were written by northerners,” he said.
Yacovone, author of “Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity,” spoke at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Gutman Book Talk, hosted at the Gutman Conference Center on Monday, April 3rd. Yacovone’s speech explained the research he has done into textbooks and educators which encompass racist ideologies and falsified statements regarding African Americans and slavery.
“Traditionally, both scholarship and popular thought have blamed the legacy of southern slavery for the distressing persistence of racial inequality, and of course, southern slave owners and their descendants do possess a unique, and lethal responsibility for civil war and racial oppression,” Yacovone explained. “But even if slaves had never existed in the south, northern white religious leaders, intellectuals, writers, politicians, scientists, educators, and lawyers would have invented a lesser race, which is exactly what happened, to build white democratic solidarity.”
“Overcoming the past is hard…Teaching white supremacy offers us a choice and demands that we choose,” said Yacovone, researcher, writer, and an associate at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
David Harris, former director of the Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, spoke passionately when citing a quote from Yacovone. “Donald has an abiding belief that history may not set us free, but it can be the basis of change. That if the truth of the past is placed before us, we can find our way out of the darkness,” Harris said.
“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” stated Yacovone, discussing his venture into his project. “My encounter with the astounding selection of 3,000 history textbooks here at the Gutman Library, compelled [and] forced me to change and threw me into the unknown. Quite unexpectedly what resulted is not a book about a bunch of bad books, but rather an exploration of the origins, development, and perpetuation of the idea of American national identity as white.”
Throughout his talk, Yacovone cited multiple authors, educators, creators, and philosophers who created textbooks or published pieces of writing to be shared within schools and the public that contained racist sentiments and ideals. Yacovone said, “Indeed, several of the most famous and influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century, nearly all trained in northern colleges and universities like Harvard, produced some of the most racist texts I had the displeasure to read.”
Educators who played a role in spewing racist viewpoints have left a lasting impression on their students, according to Yacovone. “Few could match the popularity of or the damage done by the University of California’s John D. Hicks…He taught students that anything beyond vocational training for African Americans was a waste of time…He mocked African Americans, what he called a “pathetic eagerness” for education, asserting that they showed “no great proficiency.” Yacovone pointed out that today, the University of California Berkeley’s archive still recalls Hicks’ “enormous influence.”
Additionally, Yacovone included an anecdote regarding Harvard’s complicity in sharing harmful rhetoric. “In 2020, the residents at a Duke University survey remain convinced that African Americans have thicker skin and less sensitive nerve endings, the same vile garbage that Harvard’s biologists spewed across the United States in the 19th century.”
Yacovone included multiple northerners who have left a detrimental impression on the information and ideas spread regarding slavery and racism, including Physician and slavery defender John H. Van Evrie of New York, who Yacovone compared to as “a toxic combination of Steve Bannon and Rupert Murdock.”
“[Van Evrie] is the embodiment of the northern white foundations of American democracy. He was a genius for marketing to promote white supremacist ideals into American political discourse, north and south,” Yacovone explained. “His venomous views played an enormous role in the assault of what we will now consider to be our modern civil rights and struggled to emerge after the civil war. By ignoring him, we have intensely ignored northern white supremacy both before and after the civil war.”
Yacovone continued, disclosing how Van Evrie’s sentiments also influenced the law. “Moreover, his ideas resounded in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures in the north in defense of white man’s government. To convince others of what he labeled as the ‘gross encompassties’ of African Americans.”
Yacovone also mentioned authors Arthur C. Perry and Gertrude Price, whose 1940 textbook American History displayed colorful images of slavery, presenting it as what Yacovone described as a “summer camp.” The intentions of Perry and Price were to make slavery seem as if it was an appealing and easy-going lifestyle, teaching children that slavery was a “rollicking good time.” Perry and Price, to confirm Yacovone’s theory, hailed from the north.
Yacovone explained that northern publishing houses are largely responsible for creating this phenomenon. “[The textbooks and publications] that stained the minds of students were produced almost entirely by northern publishing houses. [They were] situated mostly in Boston, New York, and Chicago and crafted by northern trained scholars and education specialists,” Yacovone said. “Northern presses had the resources and distribution networks that many did not have.”
This racism and ostracization of Black students continues today. In states such as Vermont and Ohio, Yacovone shared, “Black students have been compelled to stand in front of their white classmates as slaves, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.” He also cited another example in Watertown, New York, in which Black students were “ordered a Black boy and girl to stand in front of their white classmates with their hands behind their backs, ‘just as in slave times,’” and could not escape.
He cited numerous other examples, including elementary school students in Minnesota learning from a 1920s lesson plan that African Americans regretted the end of slavery because, “the enslavers took care of them, and gave them food and clothing.” Yacovone revealed that Rhode Island students commonly receive little to no exposure to the study of slavery until high school, and until 2019, Texas textbooks not only characterized slaves as imported workers, but also blamed the Civil War on succession, rather than slavery.
Looking toward the future, Yacovone emphasized an obligation to call out injustices. “It is our responsibility as educators to fight back. To resist.” He also highlighted the importance of education and knowledge in shaping our understanding and merit, emphasizing the specific significance of textbooks.
“While the worst features of the history of our textbooks may be gone, the themes, the facts, and attitudes of supremacist ideologies are deeply embedded in our national identity. In what we teach, and how we teach it.”
Layla Chaaraoui ’26 (laylachaaraoui@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the Independent.