The man behind Florida’s new Black history standards

Florida teachers returning to the classroom this week face what many say are confusing new directives from state education officials over the instruction students should receive in certain classes. Among the most contentious: standards championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for teaching Black history, which must include discussion of how slavery could have provided beneficial skills to the enslaved and how mob violence against Black people included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

at the seminar were recent appointees from DeSantis’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz, and members of a separate “working group” that created the standards. The featured speaker was William Barclay Allen, a conservative scholar who has become the public face of the state’s efforts to rewrite how Black history is taught.

Here are key details about Allen and the controversy.

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