History by Quota?

IN THE SCHOOLS

History by Quota?

Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

ver since the 1960s, textbook publishers have tried to satisfy demands E for greater representation made on behalf of blacks, American Indians, women, and other groups. To measure the effects of this movement on leading high school American history textbooks, we have employed a quantitative content analysis of the historical characters those texts feature. In an earlier Academic Questions article, "Filler Feminism in High School History" (Winter 1991-92), we presented our findings about the representation of women in American history textbooks of the 1980s. In this article, we examine the changes in the textbook representation of two racial minorities--blacks and American Indians--from the 1940s through the 1980s. After describing our methods and presenting the results of our research, we will discuss the impact these changes have had on high school instruction in American history.

Method

Leading history textbooks were identified this way. In some states, texts are selected at the state-level for the entire state; these are called adoption states. In nonadoption states, texts are chosen by school districts. We asked the education departments of each adoption state and the 120 largest school districts in nonadoption states to list their most popular textbooks per decade from the 1940s through the 1980s. 1 For each decade we chose the three texts most frequently mentioned, for a total of fifteen books (see the Appendix for complete bibliographical information on each book). Reference to any of these texts is by the last name of its first author; for example, The Rise of the American Nation, by Lewis Todd and Merle Curti, is henceforth called Todd. Different editions of the same text are distinguished by their respective date of publication. Our results are based on the systematic coding of individual characters from each of the fifteen books. 2 We constructed the coding scheme to minimize

Robert Lerner is assistant director of the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change at Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. Althea K. Nagai is senior research associate at the center, and Stanley Rothman is the Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of Government and director of the center. This article is part of the center's study of leadership and social change in the United States. 70 Academic Questions/Fall 1992

the tendency of coders to introduce their own interpretations when coding characters. This was done as follows. First, our trained coders were unaware of our hypotheses and unfamiliar with our general paradigm or other research. Almost all did not even know the topic of inquiry, except in the vague sense of studying high school history books. In order to be counted and coded, textbook characters had to be identifiable in a picture, be treated in a column-inch or more of text, or be the primary subject of a paragraph. Coders then listed a series of traits for each character, including visual portrayal; textual portrayal in terms of the number of column inches of text; sex, race, ethnicity, religion, occupation(s), age, and personal income; spheres of activities engaged in (from a total of twenty-two categories); actual activities and actions; and every adjectival and adverbial phrase used to describe the character. A book's overall evaluation of each character was also coded as positive, somewhat positive, negative, somewhat negative, mixed, or neutral, s The content analysis scheme underwent two major and several minor revisions before reaching its final form. Coders then worked on a practice chapter, which was corrected and discussed with them before the actual coding began. Lastly, to ensure coding reliability (a sine qua non of quantitative content analysis), a different group of coders recoded a random sample of chapters whose results were compared to the original group's. Using Scott's Pi (a commonly used measure of reliability between coders), the average achieved reliability between our coding groups was 0.81, an excellent result according to the content analysis literature. 4

Changes in Minority Representation

Over the decades studied, we discovered a rapid increase, both absolute and proportional, in the coverage of racial minorities. In the 1940s, Dred Scott is the only black to receive enough coverage to be coded (Wirth, 1943). The number of codable blacks increases to seven in the 1950s, twenty in the 1960s, fifty-three in the 1970s, and ninety-three in the 1980s. Of the total number of codable characters, blacks constitute less than .01 percent in the 1950s, 2 percent in the 1960s, 6 percent in the 1970s, and 8 percent in the 1980s. While the 1980s saw a marked increase over the preceding decade in the number of blacks coded (75 percent), it saw an even greater increase (354 percent) in the number of American Indians coded. There were three codable Indians in the 1940s, seven each in the 1950s and 1960s, eleven in the 1970s, and thirty-nine in the 1980s. ~ The way in which characters are presented in the textbooks is particularly important. Being pictured gives a character special prominence. Generally, about one in three white characters appears in a picture alone or in both text and picture. Since the 1960s, however, roughly two in three blacks are pictured. Women are also more likely than men to be pictured. Of all Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman 71

characters, black women are the most likely and white men the least likely to be pictured. TABLE 1 Changes in Character Presentation Text Only Pictures Number of (%) (%) Characters Pre-Sixties Male Black 63 38 8 White 61 39 1267 Female Black 0 0 0 White 41 59 46 Sixties Male Black 41 59 17 White 65 35 762 Female Black 0 100 3 White 36 64 25 Post-Sixties Male Black 52 48 119 White 67 33 1580 Female Black 30 70 23 White 43 57 168

Before the 1960s, white women were more likely to appear in pictures than in text alone; white men and black men both conformed to the general rule of appearing more often in text alone than in pictures; and there were no black female characters. By the 1960s the percentage of pictured white women rose from 59 to 64 percent. But now they were joined in this favored category by black men, 59 percent of whom are pictured, as are 100 percent of the black women. After the 1960s, this pattern moderates slightly, but still 70 percent of black women, 57 percent of white women, and 48 percent ofblack men are pictured, as are only 33 percent of white men. A special use of pictures deserves mention. A number of textbooks feature highlighted portraits of outstanding individuals. These inserts, usually consis- 72 Academic Questions/Fall 1992

ting of a picture with a biographical sketch, have changed even more radically than other visual and textual portrayals. For example, Canfield (1952) contains sixteen "Picture Biographies." These persons are all white men except for Jane Addams; nearly half portray famous presidents. By 1985, however, the bias of such portraits is against the native-born white Protestant male. Wood (1985) features "American Portraits," consisting of thirty individuals "who have contributed to American life. Some are famous. Others are not." Ten portrayals are of women, seven are of minority males, and eight are of immigrant males (two are Jewish but not identified as such); only five are of native-born white Protestant males. The affirmative action implicit in the selection of portraits continues to increase. For example, the current revision of Todd (1990) contains forty- three American profiles. Fourteen are of blacks or American Indians, and seventeen are of women, while the remaining seventeen are of white males. Of these, one is a portrait of Holocaust survivors; another, of Alexander Graham Bell, focuses on his work with deaf persons; a third, a profile of Vietnam veterans, pictures the Vietnam War Memorial. 6 It should perhaps be noted that altering the racial and sexual mix of pictures and featured portraits is an easy way for textbook authors to meet the changing standards of textbook adoption committees, as it does not require rewriting the text. However, one consequence of this is a growing discrepancy in emphasis between the text and the accompanying illustrations. (See "Filler Feminism" for a more detailed discussion of the role of textbook guidelines in shaping their content.) Since textual alterations are a relatively expensive and time-consuming process for both author and publisher, changes in the amount of textual space characters of different types receive is an especially revealing indicator of their importance. For the period covered in our study, on average white characters receive 6.19 column inches of space while black characters receive 2.55 inches. Breakdown by decade reveals trends similar to those described above. The average per white character for the 1960s is 6.72 inches, while the black average is 1.53-a ratio of 4.39. In the 1970s, the ratio falls to less than 2 to 1--7.36 inches for whites and 4.06 for blacks--a drop of 250 percent. The balance shifts back somewhat in the 1980s: 4.74 inches for whites versus 1.95 for blacks, a ratio of about 2.5 to 1. Another measure of importance is the number of activities a coded character is described as engaging in. Of the twenty-two categories of activity, the average number ascribed per character is 2.41 for whites and 1.71 for blacks. As with the amount of text allotted to each character, the white to black ratio dropped substantially in the 1970s to 1.24 (2.38/1.92) from 1.85 (2.59/1.40) in the 1960s, and then increased slightly in the 1980s to 1.32 (2.2/1.67). The overall discrepancy between visual and textual representation of blacks and whites is striking. Blacks are proportionately much more likely to be Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman 73

portrayed in pictures, but with much less text, and engage in fewer activities per character than whites. The greater visibility of blacks in pictures is important, precisely because "a picture is worth a thousand words. ~ TABLE 2 Changes in Character Evaluations Somewhat Somewhat Number Negative Negative Mixed Positive Positive Neutral of (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) Characters

Pre-Sixties Male Black 0 0 0 0 50 50 8 White 7 0 6 2 44 41 1196 Female Black 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 White 0 0 4 0 60 36 47 Sixties Male Black 0 0 0 0 65 35 17 White 6 0 9 3 44 37 792 Female Black 0 0 0 0 67 33 3 White 3 0 0 0 69 28 29 Post-Sixties Male Black 1 0 3 0 45 51 123 White 7 0 8 3 33 50 1665 Female Black 0 0 0 0 57 43 23 White 2 0 0 0 45 54 183

We turn, now, to the critically important variable of how textbooks evaluate the characters they feature. Although most characters of either race are presented neutrally or positively, the textbooks show proportionately more whites than blacks in a negative or mixed light, particularly since the 1960s. The percentage of whites evaluated positively declines slightly from the 1940s to the 1980s, while nearly every black evaluated non-neutrally receives a strongly positive rating. In the 1970s, only 8 percent of blacks not rated neutrally receive negative or mixed evaluations, but 14 percent of whites not rated neutrally receive a negative evaluation and 16 percent a mixed evalua- 74 Academic Questions/Fall 1992

tion. The gap persists in the 1980s: textbooks rate 75 percent of non-neutral whites as positive, compared to 94 percent of blacks. This trend becomes clearer when the races are divided by sex. In "Filler Feminism," we showed that women receive more favorable evaluations than men. Table 2 presents a four-fold division that best captures the implicit affirmative action by which characters are evaluated in history texts. With few exceptions, among those not evaluated neutrally, only white males receive anything less than the highest positive evaluation. For every period white males receive the most mixed and negative ratings, but the affirmative action style of representation emerges most decidedly in the 1980s. Of those not rated neutrally, black women receive the highest percentages of positives (57 percent), followed equally by black men and white women (45 percent). White males are a distant third (33 percent). While the coding of American Indians in some ways reflects the trends for blacks, there are also some differences. Unlike the black trend, where mixed and negative ratings don't appear until the 1970s, the one American Indian neither positively nor neutrally rated--Montezuma--appears in the 1940s (Muzzey, 1943). American Indian women are not coded until the 1980s. Of the eight coded, the textbooks rate four positively and four neutrally, a ratio comparable to the rating of black women.

Some Major Black Figures in American History

The preceding statistical profile does not tell the whole story. The treatment of major black figures in American history has changed dramatically. The only black to receive enough treatment to be coded in the 1940s is Dred Scott (Wirth, 1943 ). Neither Wirth, nor Muzzey (1943), nor Barker ( 1949) mentions W.E.B. Du Bois or Booker T. Washington, and only Barker briefly mentions the NAACP. Worse, in a horribly grating footnote, Muzzey echoes criticisms made of representatives of the Reconstruction Era Freedman's Bureau for "tempting the Negroes away from work into politics." Coverage improves somewhat in the 1950s. Dred Scott is now a neutrally coded character in all three textbooks, while George Washington Carver is positively coded in both Wirth (1955) and Canfield (1952). Frederick Douglass and Dr. George W. Hilliard, a surgical resident at Meharry Medical College (listed as one of "two outstanding Negro medical schools"), are also positively coded in Wirth, and Hilliard and Carver are pictured. However, Wirth does not mention Du Bois, Washington, or the NAACP, and only briefly discusses Brown v. Board of Education. Canfield makes note of black progress, listing many "Negro contributors to American life," but none, including Du Bois and Washington, are given enough treatment to warrant coding. Muzzey (1952) does provide Booker T. Washington's autobiography as a supplementary reading, but the book never mentions Du Bois. Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman 75

The 1960s textbooks present a dramatic increase in the number of black characters covered. Besides Dred Scott and George Washington Carver, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche, Louis Armstrong, and Martin Luther King, Jr., appear. Both Booker T. Washington, who receives 1.25 inches of text, and Du Bois, who receives 2.25 inches, are positively coded in Bragdon (1967). Bragdon also discusses the founding of the NAACP and includes a picture of the NAACP New York office. Todd (1966) includes pictures of the positively coded Washington and Du Bois with long captions, and describes NAACP activities during the early 1960s. Canfield (1962) briefly discusses Washington but neither Du Bois nor the NAACP. Dred Scott and George Washington Carver are the only black characters coded. (Canfield probably wrote too early in the decade to be affected by the civil rights movement. The Detroit protests over the absence of blacks in the textbooks, which began a sustained period of protest by black organizations, only started in 1962.) 7 The 1970s textbooks exhibit an even more dramatic increase in the amount, scope, and favorableness of black coverage. In addition to all of the characters coded in the 1960s, Crispus Attucks, Phillis Wheatly, Benjamin Banneker, Blanche K. Bruce, Sojourner Truth,James WeldonJohnson, Marcus Garvey, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Whitney Young appear. Also, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and Stokely Carmichael emerge as coded characters at least once. King becomes a major character in the 1970s textbooks. Codedjust once in the 1960s (neutrally with a picture), all the 1970s texts treat him positively at considerable length with pictures. Freidel (1970) allots King fifteen inches of text, with a long quotation from King explaining his philosophy of nonvi- olence. Todd (1972) devotes 8.75 inches to King, including a highlighted excerpt from "I Have a Dream." And Graft (1973) includes three inches, two pictures, and a paraphrase of King's famous speech. Undoubtedly King's martyrdom as well as his teachings' broad appeal prompted this expanded coverage, eclipsing other major figures of the day (e.g., Roy Wilkins). Texts of the 1970s include Washington, Du Bois, and Garvey (who appears for the first time). Todd devotes 2.75 inches to Washington and 4.5 inches to Du Bois, both of whom are positively coded. It mentions the NAACP in four separate places and includes a picture of the first issue of its journal, The Crisis. Marcus Garvey receives three inches of text and is neutrally coded. The book pictures both Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, respectively negatively and neutrally coded. Both Washington and Du Bois are coded in Graff, and the NAACP is discussed at length. King is pictured twice. Garvey is mentioned, but is not coded. There is no coverage of the 1960s' black nationalists. Graffs book is unusual because it represents the only extensive departure from the chrono- logical narrative style of the textbooks studied. Beginning with a chapter 76 Academic Questions/Fall 1992

entitled "Race and Racism," its leading quotes are solely from former slaves or John Brown. In striking anticipation of multiculturalism, Graft calls Columbus's discoveries into question by putting the word discoveries in quotation marks. Freidel discusses Washington, Du Bois, and the NAACP, but only Washing- ton is coded. Marcus Garvey is the only black character in the entire study to receive negative coding. Freidel quotes Garvey's black nationalist thought at some length, and points to his conviction on federal mail fraud charges and subsequent deportation. However, Freidel also includes Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, who are coded positively and receive 1.5 inches of text each. Lastly, Freidel includes the story and a picture of the positively coded Olaudah Equiano, "a member of the Ibo tribe of the kingdom of Benin (in present day Nigeria), who was...kidnapped, [and] lived to write a vivid, essentially accurate account of his background and experience" as a freed slave and a British subject. Freidel devotes thirty-two inches of text to Equiano, more space than 90 percent of the other 302 characters in the entire book receive. The only individuals to receive more space are twelve American presidents. Freidel also allots Rosa Parks 13.25 inches of text, more space than 75 percent of the other characters receive. This is surprising, given complaints about her neglect. For instance, historian Gary Nash categorically states that history books discuss only in a single sentence Rosa Parks's courageous act of refusing to move to the back of the bus. s Actually, Parks is a coded character in all three 1980s textbooks, and is pictured in Todd (1982) and Wood (1985). Boorstin (1986) entitles the section on the Montgomery boycott, "Martin Luther King and Mrs. Rosa Parks." The 1980s are primarily a period of consolidation. Todd, for example, discusses Washington, Du Bois, and the NAACP. The two characters are neutrally coded and Washington is pictured. Todd also covers black nation- alism and black power in the 1960s in some detail. Marcus Garvey receives a mixed rating, as does Malcolm X. Dr. King, who is positively rated and pictured, receives 16.75 inches of text, more space than 93 percent of all the other characters in the book. In Wood, Washington and Du Bois are pictured and Marcus Garvey receives a positive rating. Wood discusses the black power movement extensively, but only Stokely Carmichael warrants coding, which is neutral. Boorstin is unusual in mentioning such facts about Du Bois as his losing faith in American democracy, becoming a Communist, and expatria- tion to Ghana. Boorstin also discusses Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Stokely Carmichael, but not Marcus Garvey. Of these, only Malcolm X is coded, with a mixed rating. By contrast, Dr. King receives a glowing tribute extending twenty inches of text, more than 94 percent of the other 440 characters in Boorstin. To put all these data into perspective, let's compare the textbook treatment of major black figures to that of Andrew Jackson. Jackson receives mostly Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman 77

positive ratings until the 1980s, when his ratings decline to mixed, largely because of his treatment of American Indians and his attitudes towards blacks and women. For example, Todd gives Jackson a mixed rating, unequivocally stating that while Jackson helped to spread democracy for white males, he should be justly criticized for holding reactionary views.

Symbolic Substitutions

The eagerness of textbook authors to improve their presentation of minority Americans is nowhere more evident than in two remarkable substitutions they have made of symbolic black figures for symbolic white figures.

A Tale of Two Harriets: Stowe and Tubman

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe exposed the evils of slavery to an extraordinarily wide audience. After selling three hundred thousand copies in its first year of publication, her book became a play and eventually sold nearly three million copies in the United States alone. According to David M. Potter, Uncle Tom's Cabin "probably [outsold] any other single American work. "9 According to John Hope Franklin, "[I]ts complete condemnation of Southern civilization won countless thousands over to abolition. 'q~ Stowe's novel was so influential that Lincoln, when he met her, said, "So this is the little woman whose book made such a great war." Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave and a "conductor" on the underground railroad, was called "the Moses of her people" by those she helped.John Hope Franklin states, "[S]he is said to have gone to the South nineteen times and to have emancipated more than 300 slaves. 'ql Tubman is not a coded character in any textbook of the 1940s or the 1950s, nor is she even mentioned in their indices. While all briefly discuss the underground railroad, none regard it as an institution of great importance. Tubman dramatically emerges from her previous anonymity in two of the three 1960s books, Todd and Bragdon, both of which picture her and describe her as "the Moses of her people." Todd concludes its column-length, highlighted tribute: "Her story has been and will forever remain an inspiration to all people who value freedom above life itself and who show by their lives that true greatness comes from serving others." In its study guide, Bragdon suggests that the student "[p]repare an account of the extraordinary career of Harriet Tubman." Canfield is again an exception to this, because, as noted, the book appeared too early to be influenced by the first wave of civil rights challenges. Harriet Beecher Stowe's treatment is almost the reverse. She appears in all six books of the 1940s and 1950s, but as a codable character only in two in the 1940s and one in the 1950s. Stowe vanishes as a codable character in the 1960s, but all the texts do point to the great influence her novel had on 78 Academic Questions / Fall 1992

Northern public opinion. The 1970s reverses this trend, due to the influence of feminism, and Stowe is coded neutrally in two books. Two of the three books mention Tubman, but she is not coded. By the 1980s, Tubman is treated as or more positively than Stowe, although Stowe is covered more fully than before. (The Columbia History of the Novel also resurrects Stowe and "declares her to be a better novelist than Herman Melville because she was socially constructive [and] because Uncle Tom's Cabin helped rouse Americans against slavery, whereas the captain of the Pequot was a symbol of laissez-faire capitalism with a bad attitude towards whales.") l~ However, Todd features Tubman in the appendix to the chapter entitled "Social Science and History," where she is pictured. (Our coders were not instructed to code appendices.) Although both Tubman and Stowe receive enough text in all three 1980s books to be coded, only Tubman is pictured in all three. Wood allots Tubman two inches of text, a picture, and a favorable rating, while Stowe receives 2.5 inches of text, a picture, and a mixed rating. The mixed rating is due to the text's giving equal time to both Northern praise and to Southern complaints that the book was unfair. Todd presents Tubman neutrally with an inch of text and a picture, and treats the underground railroad for 6.75 inches. Stowe receives 3.5 inches of text and a neutral rating, due as well to giving the same space to Northern and Southern reaction to her novel. Boorstin is the clear exception to the pattern, giving Stowe eight inches of space, a picture, and a picture of the cover of her novel, while Tubman, who is rated positively, receives 1.25 inches of space and a picture. Unlike Wood and Todd, Boorstin does not include Southern reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin. As admirable as Harriet Tubman was, Harriet Beecher Stowe's actions had the greater impact on the course of American history. Yet since the 1960s, history books give Tubman at least as much and sometimes more coverage than Stowe.

Crispus Attucks and Paul Revere

Paul Revere is a traditional minor figure in American history, while Crispus Attucks, who is thought to have been an escaped mulatto slave, has become such a character in recent years, is In the 1940s, Paul Revere does not receive enough attention to be a codable character. Only Barker refers to his "famous" ride, while Wirth does not even mention him. In the 1950s, Revere emerges as codable in two of the textbooks. Muzzey and Canfield include portraits of Revere and Canfield presents a map of the route Revere and his companions took to warn the colonists. Canfield states, "Revere was Boston's most versatile citizen: a skilled silversmith, coppersmith, bell caster, cartoonist, engraver, and dentist." By the 1960s, Revere is coded in all textbooks. Canfield's entry is the same as the previous Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman 79

decade, while Bragdon mentions Revere's print of the Boston Massacre, that he was a noted "silversmith, artist, and political agitator," and includes a description of his famous ride with a painting by Grant Wood. Todd offers a dramatic rendition of Revere's ride and presents two engravings of Revere and a picture of one of his teapots. Crispus Attucks does not appear in the textbooks until the 1960s, in Todd, which specifically identifies him as a "Negro patriot." While he does not receive sufficient coverage to be coded, his name is shown as one of five colonists on the monument to the Boston Massacre on the Boston Commons. In the 1970s, Todd promotes Attucks to a pictured, coded character, pointing out that "Attucks became the first person to die in the struggle between Great Britain and the colonies." Todd's previous text on Revere remains, but without the pictures. Freidel discusses Revere only, but not enough to warrant his coding. Graft mentions neither character. In the 1980s, Todd and Wood take the modern approach to Revere and Attucks, while Boorstin is again something of a throwback to earlier treat- ments. Attucks receives sufficient coverage in Todd--an inch of space and a picture-to be coded, but Revere is just briefly mentioned, with the note that his ride leaped "into the pages of history." In his generic style of describing colonist response to the news that "the British are coming," Todd makes sure to include both sexes: "Women, their eyes filled with worry, hastily prepared food while the men hurriedly pulled on clothes and lifted their muskets and powder horns from pegs on the wall." Wood also portrays Attucks favorably, and, while stating that no one really knows what happened next, specifically declares that "Attucks became a hero." Revere is mentioned in several places, but is not codable, and his coverage lacks the colorful descriptions that marked his treatment in earlier texts. Boorstin is the exception to the rule of proportional representation. Attucks is mentioned as the leader of the throng at the scene of the Boston Massacre, but only in a single sentence. The book pictures Paul Revere and gives him his celebrated due, which warrants his coding. Ironically, though, the ethnic slant is not entirely missing; most of Revere's portrayal occurs in a section on immigration to the colonies, where he is described as "a famous descendent of French Huguenots." It is important to note that a good deal of mystery still surrounds Crispus Attucks. Arthur Schlesinger writes, "He was a sailor and of dark complexion, perhaps a mulatto, perhaps an Indian. No one knows much about Crispus Attucks.'14 Richard Shneckman, who specializes in the debunking of historical "myths," claims: "The Attucks story, in all its glorious details and fine ironies, was wholly the creation of the propagandists of the Revolution. "15 The Dictionary of American Biography reports that "almost nothing is known defi- nitely of his life previous to the event which brought him prominence and death. "16 The author of the entry on Attucks notes that while the view that 80 Academic Questions/Fall 1992

Attucks was a mulatto or Negro underlay the unveiling of the monument on the Boston Commons, another source argues that he was an Indian of the Natick tribe, while still a third contends that he was of mixed Indian and mulatto blood. On the other hand, John Hope Franklin unequivocally states that Attucks was a forty-seven-year-old runaway black slave who made his living as a seaman. 1~ This account, with some additional details, is echoed in the Encyclopedia of Black America and The Negro Almanac. The Attucks story, if it is to be included in history textbooks, should be told with all the attending uncertainties of fact and interpretation. It also serves as an excellent example of the difficulty in making accurate historical judgments in cases where not much information exists. The question can still be raised, however, whether Attucks warrants equal time with Revere. There is no mystery about Revere's identity and role in American history. The author of the entry on Paul Revere's ride in the Dictionary of American History comments that while "Revere did not reach 'the bridge in Concord Town'...his feat was of quite as great importance as Longfellow supposed. "is This is because Revere helped save Samuel Adams and John Hancock from capture by the British at Lexington. While he was briefly detained by the British on his way to Concord, Revere talked his way out of captivity and returned to Lexington in time to save Hancock's papers, to see the battle on the village common, and later to command American troops. 19

Discussion

Multiculturalists continue to criticize history texts for neglecting the contri- butions of racial and ethnic minorities. The partial evidence gathered here indicates, to the contrary, that extraordinary efforts have been made during the 1960s and after not only to increase the representation of black Americans and American Indians but to feature individuals of those groups and to portray them positively. In some instances, the result of this demographic preoccupation has been to recover important historical figures and move- ments wrongly neglected in high school texts of the 1940s and 1950s. In other instances, however, history by quota risks distorting students' understanding of the past. The Bradley Commission on History in the Schools, the latest in a long series of national commissions attempting to set educational goals, specifies several aims in teaching history, including: "to develop historical empathy vs. present-mindedness~; "to distinguish between fact and conjecture, evidence and assertion"; and "to develop the capacity to distinguish between the important and the unimportant--to develop the discriminating memory. "2~ These aims are undermined by the trends documented in our study. Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman 81

First, the attempt to write history in light of current problems is the essence ofpresent-mindedness. It locks students into the present and cancels the effort to gain an empathetic understanding of other periods of history, when people held different preoccupations and events were driven by other concerns. In particular, the desire to see minorities and women play a role in society commensurate with their numbers has resulted, illogically, in textbooks that portray them as having played nearly that role in the past. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman receive equal treatment in today's texts, despite the fact that Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin had a far greater impact on the course of events during the 1850s than did Tubman's activities on the underground railroad. Paradoxically, this kind of distortion subverts a major argument against slavery and racial or sexual discrimination--that they un- fairly deprive their victims of the power to influence events. Further, the pressure to find minority figures that can be included in history texts renders textbook authors, editors, and evaluation committees vulnerable to the temptation not only to exaggerate the importance of individual accom- plishments but to assume greater certainty about them than actually exists, as in the case of Crispus Attucks. But if the textbooks themselves blur fact and conjecture, they will hardly be of much help in teaching students to distinguish between them or between evidence and assertion. Finally, rather than fostering the development of the discriminating memory this present-mindedness develops what might be called, ironically, the nondiscriminating memory. The impulse to impose proportional representation on historical narrative requires writer and reader alike resolutely to ignore distinctions essential to any understanding of the events described. But a "nondiscriminating memory" is likely to be no memory at all, since it is extremely difficult to remember sequences in which no intelligible pattern can be discerned. The conclusion is inescapable that history by quota is not only bad history but will result in very little history, good or bad, being retained by the students subjected to it. 82 Academic Questions/Fall 1992

Appendix High School History Textbooks Examined in this Study

1940s Barker, Eugene C. and Henry Steele Commager. Our Nation. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson and Company, 1949. Muzzey, David Saville. A History of Our Country. Boston, Mass.: Ginn and Company, 1943. Wirth, Fremont Philip. The Development of America. Boston, Mass.: American Book Company, 1943.

1950s Canfield, Leon H. and Howard B. Wilder. The Making of Modern America. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952. Muzzey, David Saville. A History of Our Country. Boston, Mass.: Ginn and Company, 1952. Wirth, Fremont Philip. United States History. Boston, Mass.: American Book Company, 1955.

1960s Bragdon, Henry W. and Samuel P. McCutchen. History of a Free People. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1967. Canfield, Leon H. and Howard B. Wilder. The Making of Modern America. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962. Todd, Lewis Paul and Merle Curti. The Rise of the American Nation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966. lgT0s Freidel, Frank B. and Henry N. Drewry. America: A Modern History of the United States. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1970. Graft, Henry F. and John A. Krout. The Adventure of the American People. Chicago, Ill.: Rand McNally Company, 1973. Todd, Lewis Paul and Merle Curti. The Rise of the American Nation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

1980s Boorstin, Daniel J. and Brooks M. Kelley. A History of the United States. Lexington, Mass.: Ginn and Company, 1986. Todd, Lewis Paul and Merle Curti. The Rise of the American Nation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Wood, Leonard C., Ralph H. Gabriel, and Edward Billet. America, Its People and Values. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman 83

Notes

1. Details about our survey of the states and the districts are available upon request. Please write to Robert Lerner at the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. 2. The coding form used in this study is also available upon request from the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change. 3. This rating scheme was expanded for those few characters, largely American presidents, who are codable characters in more than one chapter. Where the ratings are identical, which was often the case, they remain the same. Thus a character coded positively in two separate chapters receives a positive rating. Where the ratings differ, we adopted the following rules: combining a neutral rating with any other rating yields the other rating, combining positive and mixed ratings yields a somewhat positive rating, combining positive and negative ratings yields a mixed rating, and combining negative and mixed ratings yields a somewhat negative rating. Finally, we recoded these scores to match those in table 2: "5" is positive, "4" is somewhat positive, "3" is mixed, "2" is somewhat negative, and "1" is negative. Arbitrarily, we assigned a score of"8" to neutral codings. To illustrate the scheme, a character coded as "positive" in one chapter but as "mixed" another receives a score of"4." 4. •ee K•aus Krippend•rf• C•ntent Analysis: An Introducti•n t• •ts Meth•d•l•gy (Beverly Hi••s• Calif.: Sage Publications, 1980). 5. While the number of Hispanics and Asians increased over time, few are covered for any given decade. 6. The political bias of these pictures is also striking. The only post-World War II conservative white American male pictured is John Foster Dulles. The remaining portraits are of Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Claude Pepper. While Todd considers Dulles controversial, the latter three are praised. A more balanced group might include Milton Freidman, the Rev.Jerry Falwell, or Irving Kristol, not to mention Ronald Reagan. 7. "Board Rules Books Unfair to Negroes," New York Times, 24 December 1962. 8. Gary B. Nash, "History for All People," in Historical Literacy: The Case for History in American Education, ed. Paul Gagnon and the Bradley Commission on History in Schools (New York: Macmillan, 1989). 9. David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861 (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 140. 10. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 266-67. 11. Ibid., 259. 12. See Robert Hughes, "The Fraying of America," Time, 3 February 1992, 47. 13. Paul Revere's ride is probably best known through its memorialization in Longfellow's poem by that name. Interestingly enough, the poem is only occasionalIy mentioned even in the early textbooks. By the 1980s, Longfellow is not even in the textbook indices. 14. Arthur Schlesinger, The Disuniting of America (Knoxville, Tenn.: Whittle Direct Books, 1991), 30. 15. Richard Shenkman, I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not (New York: Harper, 1991), 152. 16. Dictionary ofAmerican Biography (New York: Scribner, 1935), s.v. "Crispus Attucks," 413. 17. Franklin, 128. 18. Dictionary of American History (New York: Charles Scribner, 1976), s.v. "Paul Revere's Ride," 106. 19. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. "Paul Revere." 20. Bradley Commission on History in the Schools, "Buildiug a History Curriculum: Guidelines for Teaching History in Schools," in Historical Literacy, 22-23.