President Trump lashed out Thursday at educators who teach about the United States’ history of slavery and racism, announcing a so-called patriotic education plan to combat what he called “toxic propaganda” in schools. Trump was speaking at the National Archives Museum in Washington.
President Donald Trump: “The left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.”
Trump was referencing Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” In response, the Zinn Education Project tweeted, “So what explains the rebellions in 1676, 1680, 1786, 1831, 1859, & more by Native Americans, enslaved Africans, coal miners, & more? #HowardZinn wasn’t alive then.”
Trump also called the teaching of critical race theory a “form of child abuse” and lashed out at the 1619 Project, the Pulitzer Prize-winning series which reexamines the legacy of slavery. On Twitter, 1619 creator Nicole Hannah-Jones pointed out, “The White House Conference on American History has not a single Black historian on it. Strange.” We will hear the late historian Howard Zinn in his own words later in the program.