CNN reports that the Jan. 21 walkout occurred as lawmakers debated a bill designed to ban CRT, though without specifically defining the term. The anti-CRT bill has been pushed by Mississippi Republicans, who control both the state Senate and House, over the objections of Black Democrats in the state government. State Sen. Barbara Blackmon spoke for her fellow Black lawmakers when she told McLendon and the other white senators that “there are 14 Black senators in this chamber and these 14 Black senators are telling you that this bill is morally wrong!”

Prior to the walkout, Black legislators debated with Republican Michael McLendon, the bill’s author, over the purpose of the new law. The Mississippi Free Press reports that McLendon proclaimed that the bill, titled “Critical Race Theory; prohibit,” was necessary to prevent Mississippi schools “from requiring students to adhere to any tenet providing that one race, sex or ethnicity is inherently superior or inferior to another.” Although McLendon admitted that no schools had such requirements or taught critical race theory, he cited the national debate over CRT and the “issues and concerns” of local constituents as justifying the ban.

Unable to overcome the Republican supermajority, the 14 Black lawmakers present walked out of the chamber. After the walkout, the bill passed the chamber 32-2, with the Senate’s only two white Democratic lawmakers remaining to vote against the bill after their Black colleagues had left.

This Mississippi bill is the latest of several attempts to restrict discussion of race and racism in the state’s schools. The anti-CRT bill comes almost exactly one year after Mississippi sought to ban The 1619 Project, a collection of essays and other materials related to slavery and racism in America, as well as a book and curriculum, spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times. The so-called Saving American History in Mississippi Schools Act, which was introduced in Jan. 2021 but never passed, would have cut 25% of state funding from any school that taught material from The 1619 Project. Ironically, the original text of the bill asserted that “the true date of America's founding is July 4, 1775, the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress,” getting the actual date of the Declaration of Independence wrong by one year.

In December, many people became outraged when it was revealed that the Mississippi Department of Education, or MDE, had quietly changed standards for the state’s social studies curriculum. The revised curriculum removed references to specific civil rights movement leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer, as well as specific instruments of Black oppression like the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws. The MDE later reversed some of these changes in response to parent outcry.

Mississippi is the latest Republican-controlled state to pass regulations concerning the teaching of material related to racism and Black oppression. While claiming to ban CRT, an advanced legal theory that is generally taught in law or graduate classes and not in grade school or high school, these laws have in practice targeted broader conversations about race and racism. For instance, the anti-CRT law is moving forward in Mississippi although the MDE has clarified that CRT was not being taught in the state’s schools. Many other states have additionally targeted The 1619 Project as well.

In other states where such laws have been passed, these bans are being used to silence discussions of race and racism generally. The bans are even being used to remove books from school libraries that are by Black authors or that are about Black people. Books relating to LGBTQ themes or historical events, such as the Holocaust, have been removed as well. In at least one school district in Texas, a parent has requested that former First Lady Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, be taken out of a school library because of “reverse racism.”

Censoring discussions of race and racism is particularly disturbing for Mississippi, given the state’s history. According to the NAACP, at least 581 people were lynched in Mississippi between 1877 and 1950, the highest number of any state. Several high-profile racist murders were committed in Mississippi during the Civil Rights era, including the lynching of 14-year old Emmett Till, the assassination of NAACP Mississippi state Field Secretary Medgar Evers and the murders of Freedom Summer volunteers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The Washington Post reports that at least eight Black men and boys are suspected to have been lynched in the state since 2000.

As noted by the Mississippi Free Press, Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood rejected the CRT ban before walking out with the other 13 Black senators, proclaiming that “Mississippi doesn’t need this.” Jordan added that the proposed law “doesn’t have any basis unless you want to turn back to the old system,” referring to the systemic racism that plagued Mississippi’s past. Given the past and current instances of racism and violence in Mississippi, attempts to whitewash education relating to racism and racial violence not only risk misunderstanding of the state’s past, but could also contribute to continued violence and discrimination going forward, adding to the state’s shameful legacy of racial oppression.