Civil rights attorney and former history teacher Leo Terrell on Tuesday slammed the American Federations of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten for pushing critical race theory. According to Terrell, Weingarten “lied” about the reasons behind the American Revolution, and ultimately, the nation’s founding.
“I am very upset!” Terrell told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. “Randi Weingarten, the union president, lied about the importance of critical race theory in the 1619 Project. … To make the premise that the American Revolution was fought on slavery is an outright lie!”
According to Terrell, it’s obvious that Weingarten was “afraid of losing her job if she said the wrong thing,” which is why he believes the union president didn’t push back on the critical race theory claims.
“What’s at issue here is not only the credibility of American history, but lying to our school children about American history. This is what’s so frightening about this critical race theory,” the Fox News contributor explained.
“In the American Revolution, we fought against the British for our independence, not to preserve slavery. That is a lie, and yes, that union president is afraid. I hope she is listening,” Terrell said. “She is afraid to tell the truth because no one believes that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.”
During an earlier interview with Martha MacCallum, Weingarten praised the 1619 Project, which New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones helped co-write. The conclusion of the Project is that 1619 is the year slaves were brought to the United States from Africa, which the Project claims is when America was actually founded. The project also claims the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. Both of those things are factually inaccurate. The American Revolution was fought so the United States could gain independence from Great Britain.
Schools have gone on to use critical race theory in their curriculum to teach kids that America’s founding was based on racism and slavery, which was a direct result from the 1619 Project.
Weingarten defended the Project during her interview with MacCallum, saying that “from everything I can see and understand from the data that I see, 1619 was the year that the first slave boat came from Africa to the United States. So that’s a point in history that I think we should be teaching.”
MacCallum hit back at the union president, saying the 1619 Project claim “is not factual.”
“I’ve had several conversations with Nikole Hannah-Jones and I have not arrived at the same conclusion from her work as you have,” the union president told MacCallum, according to the New York Post.
According to the AFT website, Weingarten taught history from 1991 to 1997 at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York. She started getting active in the various teachers’ unions in 1995.
Beth Baumann is a Political Reporter and Editor at The Daily Wire. Follow her on Twitter @eb454.