Commentary: Florida’s Community Colleges Provide a History Lesson: There is still much about civil rights-era history that remains undiscovered, and even what we do know is unknown, for the most part, to students of all ages. On the 50th anniversary of many pivotal events in the struggle for civil rights in the United States, a scathing national report documented the appalling ignorance of this chapter in American history. “Teaching the Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education in the United States 2011” was released in September by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Program.
Moreover, not only is the history of the civil rights movement not being adequately taught to students today, but primary sources documenting the events of that era are becoming buried in the sands of time. Rescuing the historical record before it is lost to future generations is a matter of the utmost urgency.
