Texas Textbook Hearings

The Rehabilitation Of Joseph McCarthy? Texas Textbooks Process Grinds On

Justin Elliott | January 14, 2010, 1:55PM

Joseph McCarthy

When we last checked in on the U.S. history textbooks standards setting process down in Texas, the conservative-dominated State Board of Education was mulling one-sided requirements to teach high school students about Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority.

Now, in the home stretch of a process that will set the state's nationally influential standards, a liberal watchdog group is worried that the State Board of Education will try to push through changes to claim that communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy has been vindicated by history, among other right-wing pet issues.

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FBI

The John Hope Franklin File: FBI Looked At Esteemed Historian For Communist Ties

Justin Elliott | December 15, 2009, 3:33PM

Historian John Hope Franklin

The celebrated historian John Hope Franklin was scrutinized by the FBI in the 1960s for supposed links to communists, particularly his opposition to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his vocal support for W.E.B. Du Bois.

"Dr. Franklin is an apologist for the late Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent crusader for civil rights and a sponsor of communist fronts who joined the Communist Party at the age of 93," wrote an unidentified FBI official in a letter to the White House in July 1965.

Franklin's file, obtained by TPMmuckraker through the Freedom of Information Act, is mainly a collection of background checks conducted when he was up for presidential appointments (though the FBI withheld 18 pages of the 515-page file). The author of the classic From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, Franklin died in May at 94.

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