Slavery, market censorship and US antebellum schoolbook publishing Joe Lockard English Department, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA ABSTRACT This paper explores the representation and non-representation of slavery in US school textbooks from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the US Civil War. It reviews the major readers, almost none of which mentioned slavery despite the anti-slavery sentiments of many textbook editors. The few readers that addressed slavery did so in limited terms and were not popular. Despite this, a myth arose in the US southern states that the treatment of slavery in school readers contributed significantly to the start of the Civil War and drove post-war textbook purchasing in those states. A concluding section considers the role of market censorship in shaping represen- tation of slavery in early schoolbooks. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 11 May 2018 Accepted 19 October 2021 KEYWORDS Educational publishing; schoolbooks; United States; slavery; censorship The history of slavery as an originating force in US social history constitutes a massive educational problem for the United States, especially as it contributes so heavily to explaining the nation’s racial and class divisions. US schoolbooks have long ignored, minimised or made excuses for this history. Contemporary issues of non-representation or failure to represent slavery in schoolbooks adequately arose from historical and ideological antecedents in the American colonies and early Republic. Editors, publishers and school authorities invested generations of effort in guarding schoolbooks against unpalatable social and historical intrusions. There are substantial present-day stakes in recognising and discussing this history of suppressed discussion and misrepresentation in school textbooks and classrooms. A 2018 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that only 8% of high school seniors in its survey identified slavery as the central cause of the US Civil War; 68% did not know that the 13th Amendment formally ended slavery; and 22% recognised that provisions of the US Constitution advantaged slaveholders. Further, evaluated on a checklist of concepts, the report found that most popular history textbooks failed to provide adequate coverage of slavery. 1 Such inadequacies have been driven by the unwillingness of publishers to take market risks or school board rejection in influen- tial large markets. Textbook change has been glacially slow and hard-fought. After CONTACT Joe Lockard Joe.Lockard@asu.edu English Department, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA NOTE: Eighteenth-century and antebellum nineteenth-century schoolbooks often employed lengthy, multi-part titles. For bibliographic economy, where appropriate this paper uses abbreviated full titles of schoolbook citations. 1 Southern Poverty Law Center, ‘Teaching Hard History’ (January 2018), https://www.splcenter.org/20180131/teaching- hard-history (accessed October 2, 2021). HISTORY OF EDUCATION 2022, VOL. 51, NO. 2, 207–223 https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2021.1998650 © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group