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This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Dr. Clayborne Carson, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University and the Founding Editor of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. He describes the larger political and spiritual lessons Dr. King and the other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) sought to impart regarding nonviolent protest, and the complex relationship among Dr. King, the SCLC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and less well-known civil rights figures like the late Bob P. Moses. They discuss how hymns and literary works such as Langston Hughes’s 1951 poem “Harlem (A Dream Deferred),” strongly influenced Dr. King’s sermons and speeches. Dr. Carson compares how racial issues have differed in Southern and Northern cities, noting MLK’s 1966 Chicago Campaign. They explore whether K-12 U.S. history instruction sufficiently covers the Civil Rights era compared to other important periods, and Dr. Carson offers insights on how policymakers, schools, and parents can draw on lessons from the Civil Rights era to better understand race in America. He concludes with a description of the World House Documentary Film Festival, a free, four-day webinar and virtual film festival celebrating MLK, beginning on January 14th.
Stories of the Week: In London, staff shortages from a spike in COVID cases have forced many early education programs to reduce their hours of operation or close. In an era in which technology is replacing books, how can we ensure our children develop the habits that lead to lifelong reading? An EdWeek story explores this question, which is important because long-form and pleasure reading are linked with higher academic performance.
Railroad rivalries played a significant role in nineteenth-century US history. No rivalry was as intense or bitter as the one between the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and the Denver and Rio Grande railroads. At times it erupted into actual gunfire.
President Trump and his appointed subordinates in the Department of Education have launched a real counteroffensive in the culture war. The president took the occasion of Constitution Day, which is also Citizenship Day, to announce a full offensive against the leftists’ lies, and identified Howard Zinn as a propagandist. Then the Department of Education took the president of Princeton at his word when he proclaimed in writing that this university, recipient of federal largesse in grants and scholarship guarantees, is shot through with systematic racism.
President Trump took the occasion of the 100th anniversary of ratification of the 19th Amendment, extending the franchise to American women, to pardon one of the heroes of the long fight for the vote. This is not the first time he used the presidential pardon power to correct a very old wrong. 
Two older veterans’ remarks pointed to the late 1960s being repeated on the same ground. The forces involved may well have changed, and that may matter a great deal. What has not changed is the physical geography, apparently. We should pay attention to both the forces and the ground if we are to begin to truly understand and so have a chance at preserving our constitutional republic. This is a national problem. It is made worse by local bad governance and leadership, but there is a much larger and persistent problem of national-level entities seeking to influence politics through violence and the threat of violence.
