I grew up in Wyoming. We didn't get most of that well...

We did hear about lynching and Malcolm X. Not much in details about either, mind, but we were told that both had existed. They glossed over anything that Malcolm X stood for, or actually said, or did....

As for lynching... We learned the word.

The people of Tulsa didn't know about the Tulsa Race Massacre. Until that HBO show Watchmen I never heard of it.

Ask my wife who was born and raised here and my ex wife both had no clue and they went to school in the Tulsa area.

It fucked up but Until HBO shine a light on it they had plan to never educate anyone about it.

To be fair, I grew up in the north east and went to a very good public school and never learned about ANY of that until I went to college/uni and started taking real history courses.

Is black history not taught inside the main history classes? Slavery, civil rights, etc etc? What is the argument for these classes?

I'm reminded of a guy I knew (who wasn't even white!) that had a sort of "racism is over" attitude. I was like, "Ok, let's look at one very specific part of racism in the US. Do you know what redlining is?" He did not. I explained it, and generational wealth transfer. Then he was like, "Oh. Yeah, I guess that would still have an effect today." Made a big crack in his world view with one twenty minute talk.

Of course conservative shitheads don't want this stuff taught. They don't want that kind of eye opening happening all over the place.

Unfortunately what gets considered as "The South" is actually anywhere in the country more than ~30 minutes outside of any Metropolitan area. It's not North VS South, it's urban v rural, and Big Ag dropped a fuck load of money a long time ago to ensure land votes harder than people.

Unfortunately Lincoln severely hampered the radical reconstruction movement, and then Johnson absolutely killed it.

Recommended reading: "Black Reconstruction in America" is a really great book that covers this kind of stuff. It's by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois

The political and military leadership of the Confederacy should have been executed, the statehood of traitor states should have been stripped, and the whole region placed under martial law with military governors appointed. That's how Reconstruction should have went. I don't think there was ever the will to do that to "fellow Americans" though. Especially on behalf of people that, at the time, were still largely considered "less than," even in the Union.

Talking to a family friend who's still in the area, I frankly can't say it surprises me at all.

I'm with you, it's really disappointing seeing it get this bad. It feels like Missouri has been trying it's hardest to catch up to Texas and Florida, in fighting the culture war. Example: one of the Republican candidates for governor wants to get rid of the state's department of education.

But it's Missouri.

Haven't been to Missouri, huh?