Distinguished historian Gary Mormino had been invited to give a talk at a workshop for Florida teachers this summer about the African American experience during World War II. But a week before the talk, the task force that invited him curtly told him his services were no longer needed.
What happened? “I suppose in a word, it’s about politics,” Mormino said Tuesday during an interview on WMNF WaveMakers with Janet and Tom.
Mormino said he never got an explanation for why his talk was canceled, but points to Gov. Ron Desantis’ appointment of five new members to the Florida Department of Education task force on African-American history, four of them Republicans. It was the new members who canceled his talk, Mormino said.
“New board members didn’t want any negativity I suppose,” said Mormino, an emeritus professor of American history and co-founder of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. “The saddest thing about that is my talk was a nice balance between positive and negative, a story about race relations in WWII.”
It was the most important meeting of the year for the task force, reported WTSP-TV, and the decision to disinvite Mormino and other speakers and reduce the workshop from two days to one was controversial and opposed by the long-time members of the task force. The decision came as the Florida Department of Education issued new guidelines for middle school African-American history that included how some enslaved people in the United States learned valuable skills that they used once they were free.
“I was going to talk about lynchings during World War II but I was also going to talk about contributions by African-Americans during World War II,” Mormino explained. The only lynching in 1945 happened in Florida, Mormino said.
Mormino also recently wrote about interviews with former slaves collected during the 1930s through the Works Progress Administration in an essay for the Tampa Bay Times, “Want to know about slavery in Florida? Listen to former slaves.” “History is not simple,” Mormino pointed out. “More than a few said, yeah I think I was treated better in slavery than during the Great Depression. At least my master fed me,” Mormino says. “Others talked about unspeakable horrors, being tortured, of being tied up in the sun, so it’s a complicated source.”
Hear the entire conversation by clicking the link below, going to the WaveMakers archives or by searching for WMNF WaveMakers wherever you listen to podcasts.
