A long-told family story, passed down through generations, took on new meaning when Rep. Bryant Clark learned the history behind it in school.
Clark’s ancestor, William Henry Clark, was born enslaved in Hinds County two centuries ago. During Reconstruction, a white friend warned William Henry Clark to leave town, saying he had been told to kill him. William Henry Clark fled to the Mississippi River to work on boats before he eventually returned to the area.
The Clark family told that story time and time again at family reunions and dinners. Then while in high school, Clark learned about the Clinton Massacre of 1875, which catalyzed a period of violence when dozens of Black Mississippians were killed. Clark realized his predecessor had fled the massacre.
What “had just been a family folk tale became a reality to me,” he said. “That’s when it really dawned on me that these aren’t just words on paper … That changed the way I looked at everything.”
Now Clark is one of the three Democrats — including Rep. John Hines of Greenville and Rep. Omeria Scott of Laurel — who have filed bills in the House requiring that public K-12 schools teach a comprehensive history of Mississippi. The representatives cite fears that the state’s history is being erased — a history that’s impossible to teach without acknowledging the struggles and successes of Black Mississippians.
Lawmakers have filed similar bills in years past, but the representatives say recent changes to how history is taught in Mississippi classrooms, injects new importance — and urgency — this session.
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill banning diversity, equity and inclusion curriculum in schools. Its language is vague, and doesn’t specify what is prohibited under the new law, but some educators and parents say they’re afraid the law could bar teaching Black history. The law is not yet being enforced because of a lawsuit that spurred a temporary pause, but that ruling has been appealed.
At least 20 states have passed laws restricting how history is taught in schools, especially instruction involving race and inequality. These efforts, which Republicans say combat a left-wing agenda, have included book bans and curriculum changes.
Hines and Clark say the bans speak to a concerted effort to wipe the country’s history, its Black history in particular, from record.
The bans are an effort to “whitewash history,” Clark said. “I just think that a comprehensive course, and reaching out to different groups to sit down and help formulate that curriculum, is important in educating our kids.”
The three Democrats’ bills require “particular emphasis on the significant political, social, economic and cultural issues of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have impacted the diverse ethnic and racial populations of the state.”
The Mississippi Studies standards include instruction about slavery, the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement — all from a state perspective.
Still, Hines isn’t convinced the standards are being met consistently and comprehensively.
“Part of the problem in society is that we are not willing to learn what the other folks are doing,” he said. “ We shouldn’t run from our past — we should embrace it because it makes us a better society.”
But the representatives’ bills face a bleak future.
Tuesday is the deadline for committees to pass bills from their own chamber. If a bill does not advance out of committee by that deadline, the measure will effectively die.
And as of Monday, Rep. Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville and chairman of the House Education Committee, said he had no plans to take up any of the bills.
Roberson said the representatives haven’t talked to him about their history bills.
“If I don’t have somebody communicate with me, I don’t have a tendency to go back and look at it,” he said. “I certainly think Black history’s important. All history is important.”
