When Julian Bond, the former Georgia lawmaker and civil rights activist, turned to teaching two decades ago, he often quizzed his college students to gauge their awareness of the civil rights movement. He did not want to underestimate their grasp of the topic or talk down to them, he said. "My fears were misplaced," Bond said. No student had heard of George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, he said. One student guessed Wallace might have been a CBS newsman.
That ignorance by U.S. students of the basic history of the civil rights movement has not changed — in fact, it has worsened, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, on whose board Bond sits. The report says states' academic standards for public schools are one major cause of the problem.
"Across the country, state educational standards virtually ignore our civil rights history," concludes the report, which is to be released Wednesday.
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