A Huffington Post article reveals that tax records filed by David Barton’s Texas-based organization, WallBuilders Presentations, suggest that the religious right’s favorite propagandist is an expert in African-American history. From the article:
In filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Barton’s nonprofit, Wallbuilder Presentations, Inc., justified its tax-exempt status by highlighting among its “accomplishments” a video project “of the moral heritage and political history of African Americans.
It’s a curious claim for the Tea Party favorite, who has twice given speeches in front of white supremacist groups — protesting later that he was ignorant of the groups’ professed racist ideology.
But Barton can’t boast ignorance of his more controversial lobbying. The Texas-based former school principal once advocated that Thurgood Marshall be removed from the state’s text books and that Martin Luther King, Jr. got too much credit as a civil rights leader.
Barton has claimed that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the powerful influence of the civil-rights movement. He argued that African-Americans couldn’t have had much impact since they weren’t the majority. “Only majorities can expand political rights in America’s constitutional society,” Barton has said.
“I call it historical creationism,” said Rob Boston, senior policy analyst with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “All I can tell you is everything that Barton does is to promote ultra conservative politics and to persuade people to vote for extreme conservative Republicans.”
…
“The material that I’ve seen that he puts out aimed at African Americans is typical Barton,” explained Boston. “It’s almost as if Lyndon Baines Johnson never existed.”
Or other true civil rights champions, we might add.
The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund looked at Barton’s distorted and politicized claims about African-American history and the Civil Rights Era (among other subjects) in a 2006 report about the religious right in Texas.
