According to Florida law, the publisher, Studies Weekly, has removed any reference to Rosa Parks being a Black woman from a textbook.

The fact that Rosa Parks was a Black woman is essential to her contribution to the civil rights movement in America. However, a textbook publisher chose to disregard this information to align with a Florida regulation.

Textbooks hold great importance in the governance of Florida. The battle waged by Ron DeSantis against what he terms “woke indoctrination” in public schools across the United States, particularly with regard to matters relating to gender and race.

Florida experts, educators, political activists, and parents are actively reviewing thousands of pages of book text as the administration of the Republican governor focuses on the state’s social studies curriculum.

The DeSantis administration has outlined guidelines for evaluating textbooks that specifically target two topics: critical race theory and “social-emotional learning”. While “social-emotional learning” helps students develop positive mindsets, the administration views this topic as unrelated to fundamental academics.
According to The Times, Jeff Livingston, an education consultant who used to work in publishing, stated that the state adoption process is usually uninteresting and only a small group of people pay attention to it. However, this particular adoption has garnered significant attention due to the high stakes involved.
To please Florida, Studies Weekly, a publisher of the social studies curriculum, created various editions of their materials. Some editions downplayed or eliminated any references to race, including in the retelling of the story of civil rights icon Parks.

The main focus of Studies Weekly is on science and social studies, with a target audience of primarily younger students. The social studies curriculum provided by the publisher is used in primary schools across Florida, as well as in 45,000 other schools nationwide. The curriculum is distributed through weekly pamphlets containing short lessons.

The Rosa Parks story for first graders was assessed by The New York Times, where they compared three different versions of it. The first was currently being taught in Florida, the second was an early version made for state textbook review, and the third was a revised edition.

According to the current lesson on segregation, it is stated that African Americans were required by law to relinquish their seats on buses to white individuals.
In the draft that was prepared for the textbook evaluation, race is only mentioned minimally in relation to Parks. The lesson teaches that she was asked to change her seat solely based on her skin color.

The updated version overlooks the issue of race and fails to clarify the reason for segregation, simply stating that the individual was instructed to relocate to another seat.
The Department of Education in Florida has accused Studies Weekly of possibly going too far with adjustments made to a segregation legislation lesson for fourth graders after the Civil War. The department stated that publishers who do not address the subject of race while teaching the civil rights movement, slavery, segregation, and other related topics will be identified. “Not adhering” to the law of the state would be non-compliant.
The state agency has informed us that it has already rejected the publisher’s submission due to bureaucratic errors in its application.