As students return to classrooms this fall, a new textbook revised by a Mississippi State veteran educator sheds new light on the Magnolia State’s history.
Kenneth Anthony, professor and head of MSU’s Department of Teacher Education and Leadership, is the co-author of “Mississippi: Our History, Our Home,” the most recent Mississippi history textbook adopted by the state for middle and high school students. The book is a revision of the late David Sansing’s 2013 textbook, “A Place Called Mississippi.”
“It’s important to revise history textbooks because over time, we have more information about the past and our understanding of events changes,” Anthony said. “This revision was guided by what I learned from research I conducted about reconstruction narratives in older Mississippi history textbooks.”
Anthony’s book research also included visiting historical sites and museums across the state. He incorporated more primary sources directly into the text, drawing from Census data, maps from the Library of Congress and accounts compiled by Bradley Bond in “Mississippi: A Documentary History.”
“One role of a textbook author is to make decisions about what to change, what to keep and what to add,” Anthony said. “For example, how do you decide which musicians to include? I went to an external authority, Rolling Stone Magazine, and used their list of the 10 greatest Mississippi artists and then validated the list by seeking feedback from Mississippi history teachers in the state.”
Some of the ‘new’ history in the textbook includes the state flag adopted in 2021 and the state song “One Mississippi” adopted in 2022. The revision shines new light on Emmett Till’s story, documenting the false accusation that led to his lynching in 1955. It also includes new archaeology information about the earliest inhabited site in the state and expands the Civil War narrative, adding battles and engagements throughout Mississippi.
Anthony also broadened the chronicles of the state’s rich literary tradition to include Michael Farris Smith, who Anthony says is “one of Mississippi’s most important contemporary writers.” To bring things full circle, he added Sansing to the chapter of Mississippi writers, noting how Sansing himself broke history.
“He was the historian who wrote the first Mississippi history textbook that broke the dominant 80-year narrative about reconstruction,” Anthony said. “It was my honor to add him to the textbook, especially given that I was revising his original work.”
Anthony holds a doctoral degree in secondary education from MSU and a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the United States Naval War College. He also earned his master’s degree in gifted education and bachelor’s degree in history from Mississippi University for Women