Earlier this year, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law Senate Bill 1336 that requires all high schoolers to complete courses in history and government “encompassing a strong emphasis on civics” and specifying the elements of the civics test all students must pass to graduate. While stating that everything taught should be “historically and factually accurate” the new law misspells the name of Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas.
This error is surprising as SB 1336 was written by Idaho’s office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, passed by two committees, read in the House and Senate a total of seven times, and passed by a vote in each chamber of four to one. The conservative Civics Alliance of the National Association of Scholars also missed this mistake when it cheered the progress of the bill, called it an “essential reform” and urged other states to “imitate” it.
It is also notable that this is not the first time that a legislative bill confused Senator Douglas’ name. In 2022, a GOP bill in Virginia mandated that children in that state be taught about the “the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass,” an event that never happened. While Virginia’s confusion about the Lincoln – Douglas debates was quickly caught and corrected, Idaho’s mangling of Illinois’ illustrious Senator is now law.
There is a deeper historical irony in confusing Senator Douglas for the towering black abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. Stephen Douglas was christened ‘Stephen Arnold Douglass’ – with two SS’s – and only changed his name in 1846, when he was 33 and soon after Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published. That same year he was betrothed to Martha Martin, the daughter of a wealthy North Carolina family and several of his biographers have speculated that Stephen feared either the suspicions of his future in-laws or the smears his name would invite in the tumble of Illinois politics, or both. Sharing a name with the most famous abolitionist in America became even more troublesome when within a year of his wedding, Martha’s father, Colonel Robert Martin, died, leaving to the couple his extensive Mississippi plantation and its 100 enslaved workers.
Therefore, mixing Stephen for Frederick is not a trivial matter but deeply linked to the most likely reason Stephen became Douglas and not Douglass. Casually confusing the two men narrows the great moral gulf between them. Frederick Douglass was one of the most heroic and effective voices denouncing slavery and racial discrimination. Stephen Douglas claimed throughout his political life that he cared not whether slavery lived or died, only that the (white) people in each state or territory have the power to decide its fate. Stephen sent Frederick a copy of his collected speeches and Frederick responded by publishing an open letter in reply in which he hoped Senator Douglas would live long enough to “see not only that his course was morally, a crime, but that it is, politically, a mistake.” While debating Lincoln at Freeport, Illinois, Senator Douglas told the crowd he had seen Frederick Douglas reclining in a carriage with a white woman. “if you, Black Republicans, think that the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, and ride in a carriage with your wife… [you] have a right to entertain those opinions, and of course will vote for Mr. Lincoln.”
Neither Stephen Douglas’ or Frederick Douglass’ views can be easily discussed in classrooms in Idaho or in many other states. In forcing educators to celebrate “America’s original Anglo-American heritage” and requiring that students be told how the nation’s founders were hostile to slavery and racism, Idaho’s SB 1336 makes it dangerous, if not impossible, for Idaho teachers to discuss Stephen Douglas’ campaign of white supremacy in delivering their newly mandated lessons on the “The Lincoln-Douglass [sic] debates”.
Idaho’s new misspelled law is just the capstone to a movement to erase the history of institutional racism from America’s schools. In 2021, Idaho, along with South Carolina, became the first states to pass legislation outlawing the teaching of certain concepts that were falsely claimed to constitute “Critical Race Theory”, including anything that made white kids feel sad or guilty about what white folks did in the past. Arizona, Tennessee, Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, both Dakotas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and New Hampshire have all passed similar laws. Louisiana in 2024 broke from the template the other states had followed and adopted its own wording banning teaching that any “child is currently or destined to be oppressed or to be an oppressor based on the child’s race or national origin.”
In addition to Idaho, in the last year a number of states including West Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi have banned lessons that caused children to feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish…on account of his or her race.” West Virginia acted even though Mississippi’s law was blocked by a U.S. District Court for being an unconstitutional restriction of free speech. Not to be outdone, Wyoming went further, banning lessons that laid “fault” or “blame” on “members of a race” or that anyone should merely “acknowledge” a “sense of guilt” or feel the “need to apologize on the basis of the person’s race”.
The movement to whitewash American history has now shifted from legislatures to the less public deliberations of state curriculum and federal grant committees. A dozen states are currently revamping their social studies standards in ways that follow similar templates crafted by the right-wing National Association of Scholars. The U.S. Department of Education is pressuring schools and states to promote “patriotic education”, as developed by Hillsdale College, PragerU, and Turning Point USA. The prospect that any student will be taught who Frederick Douglass or Stephen Douglas were or what they stood for is growing increasingly unlikely.
Timothy Messer-Kruse is professor of cultural studies at Bowling Green State University.
