A sculpture of a slave trader in Alabama Bicentennial Park, as seen on Feb. 6, 2026. The sculpture is part of a larger monument on slavery. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
Gov. Kay Ivey’s Black History Month proclamation last week noted the contributions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It celebrated the resilience of Black Alabamians. And it praised Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver and Condoleezza Rice.
If it sounded familiar, that’s because it was almost word-for-word the proclamation Ivey issued for Black History Month in 2025. And 2024. This year’s version removed a mention of Rice serving on a state board. Otherwise, it was copypasta.
But Ivey has made significant contributions to the teaching of Black history, beginning in March, 2024.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
That’s when the governor signed SB 129. The law forbade public funding of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. It also banned the teaching of so-called “divisive concepts.” It said a teacher could not “direct or compel” someone to “personally adopt, adopt or adhere to a divisive concept.”
The list of “divisive concepts” included things like feeling guilt for past wrongs or a need to apologize for them. Like — oh, I don’t know, slavery.
This was all transparent nonsense from conservatives gripped by visions of humanities majors angrily cornering passers-by with demands for intersectional critiques of social identity. But Ivey signed the bill with an Orwellian statement that her administration was “supporting academic freedom, embracing diversity of cultures and backgrounds and treating people fairly.”
SB 129 does none of those things. It aims to confuse teachers about how honest history lessons can be.
And it’s become the linchpin of efforts to drive Black students out of public life. Our two flagship universities (and several others) shut down their diversity programs following passage of the law. The University of Alabama closed spaces for its Black Student Union and LGBTQ+ students. Later, it announced that it could no longer support the publication of magazines aimed at Black students and women.
As al.com reported last week, this law has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and left minority students feeling alienated from communities that once made efforts, imperfect as they might be, to include them.
“You’re dealing with the grief of physical safe spaces being removed, being renamed,” one organizer said. “Hobbies and things that people had at their institutions no longer exist.”
If SB 129 was really about fairness and freedom, its supporters would repeal the law or consider serious amendments.
They won’t. Because SB 129 was always about white Alabamians.
White feelings. White students’ freedom of speech. White people’s feelings of fairness. In particular, the belief that society should shield white people from the injustice suffered by others.
This is the Black history lesson Ivey and many of our lawmakers have been teaching us. The white Alabamians who dominate our government — who have dominated it from the start two centuries ago — see themselves as the victims of state history. They view discomfort as parallel to racial terror. And they would prefer not to see or hear Black Alabamians.
It’s the latest link in a grim chain. There was the earlier panic over critical race theory (remember that?) in K-12 schools. The hysteria defied efforts to point out that it was a post-secondary and graduate subject not taught to children. Or that it made a reasonable effort to study the persistence of racism after the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Didn’t matter. The slightest chance of a white child feeling sadness over racial injustice drove a lot of people bonkers.
We can go further back. After terrorists killed four Black girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, George Wallace went on NBC to attack Time magazine for what he considered “defamation by photography” and claimed white radicals, not Black Alabamians, were organizing civil rights marches. Nowhere did he express sympathy to the families of the murdered children. Wallace’s pain mattered most.
And further still. When John Knox, who oversaw the passage of Alabama’s authoritarian constitution in 1901, urged voters to approve the document, he criticized rampant fraud against Black Alabamians — because it was hurting whites.
“We are in the habit of designating manipulation of the ballot as Black Belt methods, but I tell you, these methods have been extended to the white counties as well, and there is scarcely a county in Alabama where this baneful practice has not been indulged to some extent,” he said. (The constitution was almost certainly passed through rampant fraud in the Black Belt.)
This is a key dynamic in Alabama, past and present: the ceaseless attempts to control Black Alabamians and keep them out of public view. It is not a factor in Alabama politics. For many white Alabamians, it is the very essence of political life.
SB 129 is the latest iteration of that. It says Black history is inherently dangerous. That Black voices must be contained. And that white status matters more than the truth of our past.
And so we get daily reminders of our shameful past in this shameful law. A past of terror and oppression that seems to be racing back into our present.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Brian Lyman