The day after the Florida state Senate's education committee passed a bill banning public schools and private businesses from making people feel "discomfort" when learning about U.S. racial history, a school district in central Florida canceled a teacher training seminar about the civil rights movement that had been months in the planning.
This past Saturday, Dr. J. Michael Butler, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at Flagler College in St. Augustine, was supposed to lead a day-long seminar for Osceola County elementary school teachers on "The Long Civil Rights Movement." The event was hosted by the nonprofit National Council for History Education, a leading provider of professional development for history teachers, and was part of a three-year partnership between the council and the district to enrich history education at underserved public schools. (Osceola County, just southeast of Orlando, has a population of close to 400,000, which is nearly two-thirds Black or Latino, and a median household income of $52,000, well below the national median.)
