Two of the far right religious fanatics appointed to the Texas social studies curriculum review board by their fellow creationist fanatics are David Barton (of the theocratic Wallbuilders group) and Rev. Peter Marshall (who operates Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts). The Texas Freedom Network has a look at the incredible ignorance of these two “experts” — ignorance that they’re trying to foist off on the schoolchildren of Texas: Grading the Social Studies Experts: ‘Fail’.

We told you Monday about Barton’s tenuous grasp of civil rights history — his latest review confused basic facts of the well-known story of Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on the bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama. So we decided to take a closer look at Barton’s review of the first draft of new social studies standards. In just two pages — pages 3 and 4 — from his 87-page review, we identified nearly a dozen instances of either questionable, misleading or outright inaccurate information. Some errors reveal Barton’s poor research skills — not surprising since he’s an amateur historian without any formal academic study or training in the field. Other errors reveal just plain sloppiness — something that would earn low grades for students in a typical social studies classrooms.

- Barton says John Roy Lynch was “the first black to preside over a political convention (20,000 delegates in Chicago.)” Actually, Lynch was the “temporary chairman” of the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1884. But according to the convention’s official proceedings, there were only 820 delegates at the convention (1,600, including alternates) in a Chicago convention hall with a seating capacity of only 9,500 people. According to Wikipedia, there were only 6,000 spectators [Reeves, Thomas C. (1975). Gentleman Boss. NY, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 375, according to Wikipedia].

- Barton describes the war against the Barbary Powers as “the longest war in American history — a 32-year war, and the first declared war following American independence.” But actually there were two wars: 1801-1805 and 1815-16. Congress did not declare war in the first Barbary War. The first congressional declaration of war was the War of 1812 against Great Britain. Congress declared war on Algiers, one of the Barbary Powers, at the end of the War of 1812.

It goes on, and on, and on. And notice as you read this appallingly long list of distortions and outright falsehoods, how many of them are intended to delegitimize the historical contributions of African Americans.