In January 2023, the Florida Department of Education told the College Board that its new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies "lacks educational value." It was a short letter, but it announced a long campaign. Over the next three years, Florida, and then Texas, turned classrooms, campuses and grant budgets into a battleground over how, and whether, Black history would be taught.
A Law Named for a Slur
Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Individual Freedom Act in April 2022, though he preferred to call it the Stop WOKE Act. The law limited how teachers and employers could discuss race and sex, barring instruction that might make someone feel responsible for past wrongs committed by members of their race. Federal courts blocked major parts of it. Judge Mark Walker called the higher-education provisions "positively dystopian" in November 2022, and in March 2024 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld an injunction against the workplace provisions as a violation of free speech.
The courts slowed the law, but its message reached teachers anyway. Many school districts pulled books, rewrote lessons and avoided topics such as the Ocoee Massacre of 1920 or the Rosewood Massacre of 1923 for fear of complaints.
"Personal Benefit" and Other Rewritings
In July 2023 the State Board of Education approved new standards for African American history. One benchmark told middle-school teachers to explain that enslaved people "developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." Another framed the 1920 Ocoee killings and the 1898 Wilmington coup as violence "perpetrated against and by African Americans." Historians across the country, including some who had served on the work group, objected. The state is in fact one of the few that has required African American history instruction since 1994, which made the revisions sharper: the subject stayed on the books while its meaning was bent.
The same year, DeSantis remade New College of Florida, a small public honors college in Sarasota. New trustees, among them activist Christopher Rufo, fired the president, closed the gender studies program and its diversity office, and announced a turn toward the "classical" curriculum. Then came Senate Bill 266, signed in May 2023, which banned state and federal dollars from funding diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities and ordered a review of general-education courses. In 2024 the Board of Governors removed Principles of Sociology from the core list, and campuses began cutting or renaming courses that touched on race and identity.
The MAGA Playbook Goes National
Florida's measures were never meant to stay in Florida. DeSantis campaigned on them in his 2024 presidential bid, and the language of "anti-woke" governance became a central part of the MAGA movement. After January 2025, the Trump administration carried the approach to the federal level. Executive orders ended federal diversity programs and pressured contractors and grant recipients to drop them. A February 2025 Department of Education letter warned schools and colleges that race-conscious programs could cost them federal funds.
Federal agencies then terminated thousands of research and humanities grants, including many on race, health disparities and Black history. The National Endowment for the Humanities canceled grants to state humanities councils, and the administration froze billions in research funding to universities such as Columbia and Harvard while demanding changes to admissions, hiring and curriculum. For Black studies programs, many of which depend on grants for archives, oral histories and teacher workshops, the cuts struck at the base.
Texas Follows the Map
Texas moved on a parallel track. Senate Bill 17, signed by Governor Greg Abbott in June 2023, banned diversity offices, training and diversity statements at public universities as of January 2024. The University of Texas at Austin closed its Division of Campus and Community Engagement and dismissed dozens of staff. A 2021 law had already limited how K–12 teachers could discuss race and current events. In 2025 lawmakers passed Senate Bill 37, giving governing boards more authority over general-education courses and faculty governance, a move critics saw as opening the door to political control of curriculum.
Teaching the Truth Anyway
Resistance came quickly. When the AP course was rejected, three Black students, represented by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, threatened to sue. The NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida in May 2023, warning that the state was "openly hostile toward African Americans." Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Jacksonville that July to denounce the "personal benefit" standard.
Black churches opened their fellowship halls for history lessons the schools would no longer teach, and pastors organized "freedom schools" on Saturdays. Marvin Dunn, professor emeritus at Florida International University and author of A History of Florida through Black Eyes, led "Teach the Truth" tours that took teachers and students to the sites of Rosewood, Ocoee and other massacres. At New College, students held their own graduation ceremony with speakers the new administration would not invite. Teachers formed networks to share lessons, and families turned to libraries, museums and online archives to fill the gaps.
Why It Matters Before Election Day
The fight over curriculum is a fight over memory, and memory shapes power. Laws that make it harder to teach about Jim Crow, voter suppression and racial violence also make it harder for citizens to recognize those patterns when they return. As Florida and Texas voters head to the polls, the question is not only who governs, but what the next generation will be allowed to know.
For more on Florida politics, read our profile of Andrew Gillum, and for the legal struggle over voting rights, see our Supreme Court Watch coverage of Louisiana v. Callais.
Related Reading
History is never only about the past. It is a political and intellectual fight over who gets to tell the nation's story, and who gets to vote on its future.
The fight over history: Roots to Recognition: Black Studies from HBCU Classrooms to Ph.D. Programs, in the debut issue of Black Thread, a members' story.
The 2026 elections: - Walking to Vote: Greensboro's Students and the Long Shadow of *Louisiana v. Callais - Eight Names, One Short List: Black Candidates for Governor in 2026 - What Could Have Been: Andrew Gillum and the Road Not Taken in Florida - From Moncrief to the Senate Race: Angie Nixon and the Black Socialist Tradition
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