REVERSING COURSE

Missouri School Board Backpedals After Cutting Black History Classes

The decision to remove the classes was met with fierce backlash and a petition from students.

Last week, an all-white school board in Missouri voted to eliminate Black history and literature electives—months after the same conservative-led panel rescinded the district’s anti-racism resolution adopted after George Floyd’s murder. Now, after a backlash and petition from students, the Francis Howell School Board’s president and superintendent say the courses will return in the 2024-2025 school year, so long as the new curriculum is “rigorous and largely politically neutral,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The board’s right-leaning majority—elected with the help of a political action committee that opposes Critical Race Theory—said it cut the classes because they were taught through a “a social justice framework” developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Students had requested the courses in 2020 amid complaints about discrimination against classmates and staff members of color.