The Politics of Critical Race Theory in Public Schools

In the fall of 2021, local school board meetings assumed a new and even violent tone as some parents protested vaccine and mask mandates. The timing was no coincidence when in 2020 President Trump appointed a 1776 commission immediately after the publication of the New York Times 1619 project. Some quarters represented a strenuous effort to deny or ignore key aspects of America's past. But the fact that the 1619 project existed at all was testament to the increasingly vital role historians were playing in public discourse.