Author Dr. Marvin Dunn: We will go to the bloodied ground and teach the truth. PHOTO COURTESY OF FIU AND AMAZON

Racial violence by Blacks against Whites has never happened in Florida history but Florida teachers must say it did in Rosewood in 1923 when a mob fired into Sylvester Carrier’s home killing his mother. He shot two armed White men dead as they came onto his porch. Teachers must tell students that this is an example of Black against White race violence. The new standards for teaching Black history also require teachers to say that race violence by Blacks occurred in Ocoee in 1920 when a mob encircled and began firing into July Perry’s home killing two of their own. He got blamed for it and was lynched.

Why are teachers being forced to teach these lies? It is because the Republican extremists, including some black ones, are pushing the “both sides” argument that we heard in Charlottesville, Va., when Donald Trump said there were good people on both sides as he referred to Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis attacking protesters in that town in 2017.

It is as if to say, “Well, everybody was doing it”. The problem is everybody was not doing it. Race violence in Florida was worse than it was in Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia and all of it was committed by White people against Blacks. You see this same “everybody was doing it” nonsense in the new standards that require teachers of African American history to teach about slavery in China, Asia and Africa. Everybody was doing it, but American slavery was different. Only in American slavery were the enslaved reduced to property. In all other forms of slavery everywhere else, the enslaved remained human beings.

To object to the demand that teachers teach lies, the Miami Center for Racial Justice which I lead, and the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) will take a busload of 35 Miami-Dade County school teachers to Ocoee and Rosewood on an all expenses paid overnight Teach No Lies tour on Aug. 12 and 13.

We will go to the bloodied ground and teach the truth. When they return to the classroom the new state standards may require the teachers to lie but they will know the truth.