Dr. Tim Messer-Kruse, professor in the BGSU Department of Ethnic Studies, will speak on “Civics and the Civil War: The Racist Origins of the Citizenship Education Industry,” Tuesday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. at Grounds for Thoughts, 174 S. Main St., Bowling Green.
In this talk sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Culture & Society, Messer-Kruse uncovers the forgotten origins of “civics,” a term born out of concern about the impact of emancipation and African American voting. His perspective sheds light on the racist beginnings of civic education, revealing the origin of the biases that permeate current debates about teaching civics to this day.
The term “civics” was coined soon after the Civil War as a group of America’s most powerful northern politicians, jurists, and philanthropists, feared the effects of emancipation and black voting. Part of their plan to blunt the possibility that African Americans might become a powerful voting block by delegitimizing the common practice of voting along ethnic or racial lines.
Towards this end they established the first educational foundation dedicated to “education for citizenship” throughout the nation. While the principles they promoted successfully became embedded in the structure of American schooling, the racist arguments used in launching them have been forgotten and buried. This project exhumes these ideas which reveal the inherent biases that continue underlie our current debates about teaching civics.
