The Lost Cause, Reconciliation, and White Supremacy in South Carolina's Education System, 1920 - 1940

Abstract

Between 1920 and 1940, South Carolina saw major changes in its education system both in response to low literacy rates in the state and as part of a national trend in education reform. The period also saw the emergence of one history textbook as the dominant history text for middle school students across the state. William Gilmore Simms and his granddaughter, Mary C. Simms Oliphant, the authors of this history text, had influence over middle school-aged children’s history education for over a century with their books being used in South Carolina schools in some capacity from around 1840 until 1985. These books exhibit strong influence from the Lost Cause Movement, as well as reconciliationist and white supremacist ideology, to present a more pro-southern point of view of the Civil War. Through heroification—the remaking of historical figures into heroes despite their flaws—revision/omission, and both implicit and explicit racism, Simms and Simms-Oliphant weaved narratives that twisted the facts of the Civil War era. These narratives implanted in the seventh and eighth grade students’ minds who typically read the textbooks’ false ideas about the events and people involved in the war. While research on history textbooks generally is widespread, there have been no in-depth studies of the influence of Simms and Simms-Oliphant on South Carolina’s education system. In the 1920s and 1930s, when students across the country on average completed eight to nine years of school, Simms’ and Simms-Oliphant’s books would have been the last history book many of those students would have read before ending their schooling. This gave these two authors immense power to influence public opinion in South Carolina. Ultimately, it appears that education is the primary tool through which South Carolina, and other southern states, have institutionalized Lost Cause, reconciliationist, and white supremacist narratives of the Civil War era that continue to influence public opinion in South Carolina and across the South.