Overview

A powerful memoir that confronts the sanitized myths of Southern history-and reveals the enduring cost of racial lies passed down through generations. In Culture Shock and The Lies We Learned, Betsy Dale Adams recounts her childhood in 1960s Alabama-a time and place where Jim Crow laws still dictated daily life, even after they'd been declared illegal. Born in the integrated North but thrust into the segregated South at age nine, Betsy witnessed firsthand the contradictions of a society that preached ""separate but equal"" while enforcing brutal inequality. Through vivid personal stories-her mother's quiet defiance of racist norms, the trauma of losing her at age nine, friendships fractured by school desegregation, and the haunting legacy of Confederate symbolism-Betsy exposes how systemic racism was woven into education, law, religion, and everyday customs. She also documents the deliberate rewriting of history in textbooks like Know Alabama, which romanticized slavery and glorified the Confederacy while erasing Black suffering and heroism. But this is more than a memoir. It's a call to truth. Interwoven with historical research, Betsy highlights forgotten figures like Thomas Fuller (the enslaved mathematical genius), the Tuskegee Airmen, and the tragic story of Emmett Till-proof that excellence and courage flourished even under oppression. She challenges readers to confront uncomfortable realities, reject historical whitewashing, and embrace a more honest, inclusive understanding of America's past. For readers of Educated, Caste, and Lies My Teacher Told Me, this book is a necessary reckoning with the lies we've been taught-and the truth that can set us free.

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