Local history has a profound effect on our communities. It’s up to educators to learn and teach students about the hard history in their own backyards.
How did racial hierarchy adapt and persist after Emancipation? Throughout its history, the United States has been structured by a racial caste system. From slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration, these forms of racialized social control reinvented themselves to meet the needs of the dominant social class according to the constraints of each era.
As part of our series highlighting educator voices, we spoke to five Black teachers who teach in predominately Black or all-Black settings to ask how they approach the topic of slavery.
Don’t sugarcoat history in teaching the civil rights movement. Students deserve the full truth about both the racial bias that caused it and our hesitant steps toward freedom.