a 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center report examined the curriculum standards in fifteen states and found that “none addresses how the ideology of white supremacy rose to justify the institution of slavery; most fail to lay out meaningful requirements for learning about slavery…or about how [enslaved people’s] labor was essential to the American economy.” What’s more, the organization surveyed high school seniors from across the country and found that only 8 percent knew that slavery was a primary cause of the Civil War.
