Education Secretary Linda McMahon doesn't appear to know what Tulsa Race Massacre is during House hearing
By: Gerren Keith Gaynor (TheGrio)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., gave Secretary McMahon an unexpected pop quiz on Black history during the line of questioning.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon got an unexpected pop quiz on Black history during a congressional hearing on Wednesday. While questioned by Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., McMahon appeared clueless about the Tulsa Race Massacre, a historical event of racial violence that has horrified generations of African Americans.
McMahon, who President Donald Trump appointed with a mandate to dismantle the Education Department, testified before the House Committee on Education and Labor about her agency's budget and priorities.
During one striking exchange with Lee about what is or isn't appropriate to teach in public schools, McMahon appeared stumped when asked about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and civil rights activist Ruby Bridges.
Lee sought to have McMahon clarify what African-American studies courses would be considered a violation of an executive order signed by Trump that bans certain teachings, threatening to withhold federal funding from states and universities that do not comply.
"Would you say that it would be an illegal DEI for a lesson plan on the Tulsa Race Massacre?" asked Lee, referring to the incident in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white mob murdered hundreds and burned down homes and businesses in a thriving Black community called the Greenwood District, also known as Black Wall Street.
McMahon replied, "I'd have to get back to you on that."
"Do you know what the Tulsa Race Massacre is?" Lee later asked. McMahon told the congresswoman, "I'd like to look into it more and get back to you on it."
McMahon provided a similar answer when Lee asked the ex-professional wrestling mogul whether the Trump administration would consider Bridges's book, "Through My Eyes," illegal DEI material in classrooms. Bridges is notably the first African American to desegregate a public school in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the subject of Norman Rockwell's 1964 painting, "The Problem We All Live With."
Rep. Summer Lee slammed the Trump administration's anti-DEI agenda and its impact on public education, strikingly comparing it to the racist era of Jim Crow.
"When [you] call for removing of equity and inclusion and diversity and accessibility from schools in favor of 'traditional American values,' it's indistinguishable from … post-Civil War South advocating to rewrite history with the Lost Cause narrative [and] to censor truths about slavery," said Lee.
The congresswoman added, "This department's financial aid policies harken back to a time when higher education was reserved for affluent, well-connected and predominantly white students."
In a statement to theGrio, Lee said, "It's pretty telling—and deeply troubling—that this administration is more focused on chasing down Pride flags and banning books than addressing any of the actual crises facing our public education system."
She continued, "Even if Secretary McMahon was better versed in American history, there is no doubt her department would further attempt to whitewash history and ensure students don't have access to the facts."
Lee told theGrio that the Trump administration's "lack of knowledge, denial of history, and open racism" doesn't mean students across the country "should be deprived of learning opportunities or access to a quality education." She added, "Clearly they're still needed."
Markus Batchelor, political director at People For the American Way, said McMahon's testimony made clear her "only goal is to further Trump's war on knowledge and the true telling of our history."
"While pretending to not know who Ruby Bridges was or the impact of the Tulsa Race massacre, she's working every day to ban books and curriculum that acknowledge their existence from libraries and classrooms across the nation," said Batchelor. "She's leading a sinister effort to control information and restore a perverse version of white supremacist history."
He added, "We have to expose it and combat it at every turn."
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When asked if teaching African-American history will still be allowed in schools McMahon said yes, if both sides are given.
Some one on a CNN show last night said "what is the other side?"
Presumably the other side is "stop whining" over spilt milk.
The "other side" for those like McMahon is telling the alternate Southern confederate States history that tells of slave owners who loved their slaves and treated them like family and the slaves who loved their owners and benefited greatly from their positions under white slave owners. It's the tale of the fancy and sophisticated Antebellum, where the white women would wear big hoop dresses with matching parasols on their shoulders being wooed by the sly grinning white slave owners looking to pick out a fragile white flower to display on their plantations grand columned veranda. It's one of two periods in history that the descendants of those white slave owners think America was at its greatest, the other being the still segregated 1950's.
So, basically McMahon is saying she wants to make sure the white descendants of the slave owners who still live in those same States and still support conservative ideology in those States, get their own version of the civil war, Jim Crow laws, segregation and slavery where they tie the mill stone of any and all negatives around the neck of the now abandoned Democratic party. That's why these dumb fucks grow up thinking their ancestors weren't those very same Southern Democrats they now blame for anything racist. They now hilariously and wrongly imagine that all those racist conservative Southern Democrats just magically evaporated over the last 50 years or all moved to California. But when you have such mental morons like McMahon who didn't even know what the Tulsa massacre was, it's not hard to understand why so many young white kids are so blatantly ignorant of actual black history. Of course, conservatives excuse not teaching truth by saying teaching the actual facts about the civil war and slavery and the long history of discrimination in our country might make white kids feel bad about themselves so according to white conservatives, we should lie to them. Of course, the lies are really just to protect the adult conservatives own deep-seated racism that still boils under the surface in most of these white Southern conservative Christian bastions.
I dont think the Tulsa Race Massacre, despite its magnitude, was ever taught in the nations schools until "diversity" (aka black history) led to it being taught . I know when I was a kid in grammar school and high school it was never brought up.
History is what happened, Tulsa happened and was important, it should have been being taught all along. Why it wasnt is sort of the story of this country.
Maybe the correct question for her should be "the department of education has spent billions yet the quality of education in the US has dropped significantly, what do you plan to do about it?". But no, the most important thing to the left lawmakers is will black studies still be taught.
www.theguardian.com /us-news/2025/jun/04/linda-mcmahon-black-history-dei-policy
Linda McMahon unsure if teaching Black history flouts Trump’s anti-DEI policy
Robert Tait 4-4 minutes 6/4/2025
Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said on Wednesday she was unsure if teaching students about two of the most notorious racist episodes in US history would fall foul of the Trump administration’s onslaught against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Testifying before the House of Representatives’ education and workforce subcommittee, McMahon appeared uncertain of her facts when confronted by Summer Lee, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania. Lee asked her about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and Ruby Bridges , a civil rights workers who as a six-year-old, braved a screaming mob to become the first Black child to attend a previously all-white school.
The exchange occurred after Lee asked her if teaching an African American history course would breach the administration’s anti-DEI policies.
“I do not think that African studies or Middle East studies or Chinese studies are part of DEI if they are taught as part of the total history package,” she said. “So that if you’re giving the facts on both sides, of course they’re not DEI.”
Lee said she was unsure what both sides of a Black history course would be and raised the questions about Tulsa and Bridges, prompting McMahon to respond that she would “look into them”.
That in turn led to Lee asking: “Do you know what the Tulsa race massacre is?” McMahon replied: “I’d like to look into it more.”
The Tulsa episode is widely seen as the single worst outbreak of racial violence in American history, when an attack on the city’s Black community led to the destruction of more than 1,000 homes and business, and the deaths of between 50 and 300 people, according to various estimates. The attack happened during a period of racial tensions marked by the growth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Lee then asked if it would be illegal to teach Bridges’ book, Through My Eyes, which documents her experience of attending a formerly segregated school in New Orleans in 1960, under the escort of federal marshals. The episode was later depicted in a famous Norman Rockwell painting, entitled The Problem We All Live With .
McMahon said she had not read Bridges’ book, leading Lee to ask: “Have you learned about Ruby Bridges?”
McMahon – a billionaire former president of World Wrestling Entertainment – tried to respond: “If you have any specific examples you would like to … ”
Lee cut her off, saying: “That was an incredibly specific example.”
McMahon was equally vague when asked if schools could be penalized for accurately teaching that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
She said that social studies “should all be taught accurately” and that “we should hear all sides” when Lee raised the question in the context of recent changes in Oklahoma, where the state’s schools superintendent recently ushered in the introduction of election conspiracy into the curriculum. These include asking students to “identify discrepancies” in the 2020 poll.
McMahon also clashed with the Democratic representative Mark Takano when he challenged her about “viewpoint diversity” at Harvard, a principle the administration says it wants to enforce to counteract supposed liberal bias.
“Does refusing to hire a Holocaust denier as a member of Harvard’s history department faculty count as an ideological limit test?” Takano asked.
Replying, McMahon said: “I believe that there should be diversity of viewpoints relative to teachings and opinions on campuses.”
Just what is the "other side" of the Tulsa Massacre? Is somebody going to suggest that the white mobs were justified in their actions?
I think the only possible "other side" is "get over it'.
Well that's stupid. I can't say people who say that that sort of thing are stupid because that would be a sweeping generalization
I think quite a few people in America don't know anything about the Tulsa Massacre or Ruby Bridges. I say that because I never learned about them until a few years ago.
I agree, and I think that only makes the congresswoman's point.
I think it is fair to assume that Linda McMahon is a virtual ignoramus about black history in America, yet she will have a say in deciding if it should be taught in schools.
I agree. I knew about Ruby Bridges but didn't know anything about the Tulsa Massacre until I was much older. I don't remember any of it from my grade school or high school years.
Maybe she doesn't but I'll bet she knows what a woman is.
good stuff. Funny to observe the overlap between those who don't think the fact that six months ago the President of country was mentally incapacitated is relevant or worth discussing because it's "old news" but who think a race riot from over 100 years is a pressing topic that demands attention .
Your over concern for Joe Biden is probably why you get deleted for off topic.
r concern for Joe Biden is probably why you get deleted for off topic.
What are you talking about? Your typical response to seeds about the coverup by your party is "who cares? It's old news! It happened months ago!"
Joe Biden has nothing to do with Linda McMahons ignorance of American history.
let me simplify for you so you don’t get hung up on the word Biden.
The same people who think a massive national scandal that occurred six months ago is irrelevant and not worth ever mentioning believe a 100 year old race riot is a pressing issue. It’s bizarre.
You can misapprehend if you want. Its a free country.
According to her website:
So... she's on the Secondary Education Subcommittee....
Wonder if she can pass an impromptu Calculus quiz. OK Summer, find the area enclosed by one petal of r = 6 sin(2θ). By hand. That's taught in secondary schools all over the US.
Oh wait.... you mean we don't actually expect people overseeing education to recall everything in the curriculum on a moment's notice? Ah. Very interesting.