Teaching the "Spirit of Virginia": Black Educators and the Virginia History and Government Textbook Commission, 1948–65

“Teaching the ‘Spirit of Virginia’” argues that history classrooms were key sites of struggle during the Civil Rights Movement and centers Virginia’s Black educators as shapers of Civil War memory. It is grounded in the history textbooks and lesson plans that Virginia’s educators, white and Black, used in their classrooms between 1948 and 1965. While many white leaders of the state education apparatus used Civil War history to justify segregation, Black educators often used their interpretations of Civil War history to argue for integration and equal rights. This paper focuses on Black teachers’ framing of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction and interprets their pedagogical practices as part of their activism in the Civil Rights Movement.

During this fraught period of desegregation and massive resistance in Virginia, white members of the Virginia legislature established the Virginia History and Government Textbook Commission (1948-1965), a group committed to etching Lost Cause history into a new, statewide history textbook. This paper positions the textbook drafts and correspondence of the commission in conversation with the publications and teaching tools of Virginia’s Black teachers to show their competing interpretations of the past. In order to tell this history, the paper highlights the experiences of two participants in the textbook drafting process: black educator Archie G. Richardson and white commission member Natalie Blanton. Richardson’s insistence to include African American leaders in the draft revealed his engagement with a broader Black pedagogy; Natalie Blanton's rigorous commitment to keeping Black history out of the draft begs questions about the role of white women and textbook control during massive resistance more broadly. This paper brings a fresh interpretation of both Civil War memory and the long civil rights movement by exploring the conflicting aims of these two individuals.