A fundamental way to teach students is to present material in comic strips. It’s fun to read and can be quite impressionable.

That’s why a cartoon strip called Texas History Movies is so critical to any discussion about race relations in Texas.

Texas History Movies was a comic strip that first ran in The Dallas Morning News for two years from 1926 to 1928. Then the newspaper canceled it. But the cartoons about Texas history didn’t die. The originals were reprinted again and again in books and distributed to hundreds of thousands of Texas public school students for the next 30 years.

The strips were riddled with inaccuracies and ignorance. They only told the story of the Lone Star State through a prism of the experience of white people. They were also racist and fostered the worst stereotypes of Black and brown people who played a significant role in the development of Texas.

As some worry about the indoctrination of today’s students through so-called critical race theory, it’s important to remember that these cartoons indoctrinated generations of students for decades. And because the racism was shielded under the guise of a fun comic strip, the damage to people of color in terms of their self-esteem is incalculable, one major civil rights activist told me last week.

Repercussions are long-lasting. The Rev. Peter Johnson of Dallas, who was a disciple of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said, “As a people, we have not overcome the psychological damage that kind of stuff has done to us.”

To which I would add, this not only applies to Black and brown people depicted in the strips. Whites were hurt, too, because these strips did the opposite of improving race relations in Texas.

A cartoon history of Texas sounds so benign. Let’s not be fooled.

History professor Gene B. Preuss of the University of Houston-Downtown, says: “Generations of Texas schoolchildren learned the history of their state from these comics, inaccuracies, prejudices, stereotypes and all.”

Cartoon content

The original idea was brilliant. An editor at The News in 1926 figured the paper needed a cartoon strip that would teach Texas history in an entertaining way.

A columnist and a staff artist were assigned to the project, and that’s how Texas History Movies began a lifespan of 427 strips for two years until the newspaper canceled it.

But then a second life began immediately when the strips were reprinted in a 1928 hardcover book.

Paperbacks were printed shortly after to give to almost every student. The sponsor was the Magnolia Petroleum Co. and later Mobil Oil.

ExxonMobil spokesman Casey Norton said, “These books in no way reflect the values of the company.” He told me that the company “is committed to building and sustaining a diverse workforce.”

ExxonMobil, he said, deserves credit for funding Spelman College, a historically Black college. The company is also funding an exhibit on the Green Book, which helped Black motorists learn lodgings that would cater to them. The company’s predecessor, Esso, was the only major retail distributor of the Green Book through its network of Esso stations, Norton said.

Amid cartoon stories about French and Spanish rule and the battle of the Alamo, the stereotypes worked their way into the comics.

Blacks were called “darkies,” and shown with exaggerated lips, speaking poor English and eating watermelon.

Slavery was falsely portrayed to show that slaves could switch masters at will. According to the strips, slaves attended schools and were shown getting freed by their masters — a highly rare occurrence.

Mexicans were called greasers and tamale eaters. Native Americans were called savages and reds.

Moses Austin, father of state hero Stephen F. Austin, was shown as someone committed to “the dream of an Anglo-Saxon Texas.”

Women were almost nonexistent in the first several hundred years of Texas history.

King disciple Johnson told me, “This was not unusual for Southern states. You found these types of cartoons in Southern newspapers at that time.”

Part of lesson plans

Recently, I bought several versions of the books. On a 1956 printing, I found a space for pupils to write their name on the front cover, as if the books were a regular part of the lesson plan, which in many schools they were.

Novelist Larry McMurtry once said the strips thwarted a true education for students because they “stopped two generations of public-school students dead in their tracks as far as history is concerned.”

Clay Robison, 74, of Austin told me he remembers the strips from his school days.

Teaching the truth about race in history is very important, he said. “Don’t whitewash it because students can form impressions that are not accurate as they grow older. They don’t want to be reminded of it.

“Well, students need to be reminded of it to take steps to avoid repeating it. I fear that some of my classmates may not have gotten past that. Hopefully, they did. But who knows?”

After The News dropped the strip, it was reprinted in books year after year, decade after decade, thanks to the main sponsor, Magnolia Petroleum. When Magnolia merged with Mobil in 1959, Mobil decided to discontinue its support. But racism wasn’t the reason given.

In 1960, Mobil explained that “only the need for strict economy and the highly competitive conditions facing the oil industry would prompt us to discontinue sponsorship.”

In the 1970s, the original printing plates were given to the Texas State Historical Association, which asked people of color to help decide which parts were offensive and needed to be removed. A somewhat redacted version was released in that decade.

But removing problem parts didn’t solve the problem, historian Lonn Taylor has written.

“Like so many efforts, this one went askew,” he wrote. “The net result was that nearly every panel depicting an African-American was eliminated, and caricature was replaced by complete absence.”

The historical association released yet another version of the corrected cartoons in time for the state’s 150th birthday. That 1986 version was the last to be released under the name Texas History Movies. In 2007, the historical association released a modernized version called New Texas History Movies.

A painful truth

State Rep. Jarvis Johnson, D-Houston, is a leading state lawmaker on matters of diversity.

The cartoons, he told me, were part of the process of dehumanizing people of color.

Johnson has fought for several years to remove Confederate Heroes Day as a recognized state holiday. But his efforts have been for naught. Elected in 2016, Johnson cannot get his bill out of committee for a full vote. Much to his great despair, his bill can’t even get a hearing.

“The truth has to be told,” he said of Texas History Movies. “And the truth hurts. The truth is painful.

“It was done, and we need to bring awareness to it,” he added. “This is how you heal people. You let people know you made a mistake, and we want to change it. We acknowledge our mistake, and then we move on.”

Twitter: @DaveLieber