Teaching Black History

It’s hard to teach my white kids about Black history and Civil Rights in America.

But I won’t shy away from what makes me uncomfortable.

I can’t just begin in the 1960s with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Act. I can’t just teach about this in February: Black History Month.

The fight for civil rights began long ago and continues today.

No one really wants to discuss the creation of the idea of race surrounding the colonization of Europeans to the New World.

Pioneer days are lauded as an exciting time when white Europeans claimed Manifest Destiny and took land from the Natives who had lived in America for hundreds of years. Theses times are glorified in skewed history books with white saviors “evangelizing and rescuing people of color from themselves and their savagery.”

The Civil War didn’t end slavery. It made slavery illegal, and other later court decisions made Jim Crow Laws and segregation illegal, but discrimination and stereotypes in the media, schools, and our own homes uphold racism.

The Ku Klux Klan was and is hateful toward anyone who is not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

This is hard and necessary history to teach my white children who have been mostly oblivious in their sheltered lives. It’s hard history for me to revisit and enlighten myself so I understand true American history.

I share articles from social media and the news that are important about current events to my teens so they understand that racism is unfortunately still alive and well in the world.

Civil rights are human rights.

It is my duty to learn and teach anti-racism. All year round and not just one month each year.

Studying Black American History Year Round

Our favorite history texts:

• A History of US: Eleven-Volume Set by Joy Hakim
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
• Story of the World, Vol. 1: History for the Classical Child: Ancient Times by Susan Wise Bauer
• Story of the World, Vol. 2: History for the Classical Child: The Middle Ages by Susan Wise Bauer
• Story of the World, Vol. 3: History for the Classical Child: Early Modern Times by Susan Wise Bauer
• Story of the World, Vol. 4: History for the Classical Child: The Modern Age by Susan Wise Bauer
• Life: Our Century In Pictures by Richard B. Stolley
• The Century for Young People by Peter Jennings

Topics for Discussion

I know this is an incomplete timeline. We discuss issues as I learn about them and we read about them in our studies.

• Colonialism
• Enslavement
• Underground Railroad
• Harriet Tubman
• Fugitive Slave Act
• Nat Turner
• Abolitionism 
• John Brown
• Dred Scott
• The US Civil War. See my unit study.
• Emancipation Proclamation
• Juneteenth
• Reconstruction
• Freedmen’s Bureau
• Black Codes
• Jim Crow
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
• 14th and 15th Amendments
• Ku Klux Klan
• Tuskegee Institute
• Ida B. Wells sued the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
• Plessy v. Ferguson
• Woodrow Wilson orders physical re-segregation of federal workplaces and employment
• Marcus Garvey and UNIA
• Great Migration
• Harlem Renaissance
• East St. Louis massacres
• Red Summer
• Tulsa Race Massacre
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
• Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin
• Negro League Baseball
• Jackie Robinson
• Brown v. Board Of Education
• Recy Taylor
• Emmett Till
• Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• Little Rock Nine
• Sit–in Movement 
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• Freedom Rides
• James Meredith integrates Ole Miss
• 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, bombed
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Freedom Summer and the “Mississippi Burning” Murders
• Selma to Montgomery March
• Malcolm X
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Black Power
• Fair Housing Act of 1968
• MLK Assassination
• Shirley Chisholm Runs for President in 1972
• President Jimmy Carter appoints Andrew Young to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations
• The Bakke Decision and Affirmative Action
• Jesse Jackson and People United to Save/Serve Humanity (PUSH)
• Oprah Winfrey Talk Show
• Los Angeles Riots
• Million Man and Woman Marches
• Colin Powell becomes Secretary of State
• Barack Obama becomes 44th U.S. President
• Civil Rights Extensions
• Black Lives Matter
• Colin Kaepernick

February 1976: Black History Month is founded by Professor Carter Woodson’s Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.

November 2, 1983: President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating a federal holiday to honor MLK.

January 20, 1986: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is first celebrated as a national holiday.

Resources and Reading List

I prefer to read works written by Black people about Black people. Some other books we’ve read and discussed, but they had problems.

• The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• 1619 Project online
• 1619 Project Teaching/Reading Guide
• The Native Americans Who Assisted the Underground Railroad
• Racial Equality Tools
• Frederick Douglass
• Langston Hughes
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Zora Neale Hurston
• James Baldwin
• Maya Angelou
• Alice Walker
• Toni Morrison
• Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Ibram X. Kendi
• A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
• An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz
• The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
• And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK by Henry L. Gates and Kevin M. Burke
• Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archives
• Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream by Blair Imani
• Betty Before X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson
• A Child’s Introduction to African American History: The Experiences, People, and Events That Shaped Our Country by Jabari Asim
• Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves by Glory Edim
• Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson
• Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry
• One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Logans Series by Mildred Taylor
• Books by Angie Thomas
• Biographies about former enslaved people
• Biographies about Civil Rights leaders
• Raising Antiracist Kids by Local Passport Family

Anti-Racism Books

Some of these are on my list to read. Some I’ve read and liked or disliked. It’s frustrating when white people write about anti-racism from a place of socio-economic power and white savior stance.

• I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
• Black Theology and Black Power by James H. Cone
• I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation by Chanequa Walker-Barnes
• The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
• Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US by Lenny Duncan
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
• Waking Up White: and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving
• White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White by Daniel Hill

Movies

Obviously, some of these are not for young children. Use discretion.

I love movies and I love using movies to teach history and culture. Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele have great films.

• The Princess and the Frog
• Amistad
• 12 Years a Slave
• The Color Purple
• Sounder
• Ruby Bridges
• 4 Little Girls
• Remember The Titans
• Ali
• Marshall
• Selma
• Malcolm X
• 42
• Hidden Figures
• The Help
• Fruitvale Station
• When They See Us
• 13th
• Mississippi Burning
• Red Tails
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Loving
• Straight Outta Compton
• Get Out
• Us

Music

I love music and I love the rich history that African Americans have brought to our musical repertoire. See how we learn about music.

• Spirituals and Folk Songs
• Jubilee Singers
• Barbershop quartets
• Blues
• Jazz
• Soul
• R&B
• Rap
• Hip Hop

The removal of racist songs from children’s music programs is long overdue.

Celebrate Black composers, singers, and musicians throughout history.

Field Trips

We live in Ohio and we’re learning local history along with world and US history.

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati

Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati:

Underground Railroad Walk in Springboro, Ohio:

Quilts often were maps for the Underground Railroad.

It’s important to revisit history lessons again and again. I learn so much while researching to teach my children Truth.

I’m constantly revisiting my upbringing and the stereotypes I was washed in during my Georgia public school education. I want to do better. I want to do better teaching my children.

How do you teach Black History?

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