Black History Month is becoming more precious and precarious than in any other moment in recent memory. Since 2021, conservative lawmakers have introduced legislation banning books on Black history and restricting how America’s children understand the past, present, and future of racism in this country. These tactics are not new, but they impede, delay, and discourage teachers from teaching Black history.
There was a time when white segregationists said that teaching The Negro in Our History by Black historian Carter G. Woodson, was “antiklan;” today, conservative lawmakers call it “woke.” And the same logic still applies: Erase Black history, then replace it with a myth that paints white people as nonviolent. Next, affirm the lie that slavery, discrimination, inequality, and dispossession are results of unfortunate events beyond anyone’s control. Lastly, portray state-sanctioned violence with lies that Black people were not ready for the responsibility of freedom, so white people had to intervene for Black people’s own good.
When Black erasure and the fabrication of white saviorism meet, the kneejerk response doesn’t evolve beyond the instinct to cram Black history into a month of flashcards where countless celebrated figures are revered as individual legends with unstoppable qualities rendering them immortal. This pedagogical trauma response makes Black history less about community and solidarity and more about a portrayal of bigger-than-life personalities who get reduced to phrases like “I Have a Dream” or a single monumental action like Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus.
My brilliant friend Ashley Woodson from Wayne State University, who supports social studies teachers in their quest to educate about freedom, told me that we teach Black history, really all history, as if there is a hero coming to save us. As a result, students are left looking for a savior, instead of understanding the hard work required to cultivate and sustain justice movements. What we should be teaching, she explained, is community.
As soon as the words left her mouth and before they hit my ears, I felt them in my gut because I have taught Black history in the exact way she was describing. I have gathered the names of Black people, their accomplishments, their faces, and their most memorable quotes to memorialize them. I have taught that countering injustice is the Herculean effort of one person, rather than a community. Sadly, I have led class discussions that discounted the long history of justice work which is passed down from one generation to the next.
By teaching this way, we neglect the important work of community organizers, strategists, mutual-aid funds, bail funds, street medics, community food banks, healing collectives, youth organizers, cultural workers, educators, freedom schools, care workers, and millions of protestors. When we include community and the collective struggle for racial justice in Black history, the work of justice reflects its inclusivity, enabling more people to bring their gifts to the work. This allows students to understand that justice work is the will of the people, not one person. And it is how we build justice movements. It also demonstrates how strategic justice work requires collective, sustained actions.
For example, Rosa Parks is memorialized for refusing to give up her seat. We teach it as though this one spontaneous act changed America. The truth is that she is part of a long history of civil rights activists and anti-racist educators refusing injustice. Before Parks stepped on that bus in December of 1955, she was secretary of the NAACP Montgomery, Ala., chapter, a trained activist and organizer. She was also an investigator of sexual violence against Black women in Alabama. And, just months before her historic act, Parks attended a two-week workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn., on implementing school desegregation and nonviolent disobedience tactics. (Legendary educator Septima Clark developed and taught the workshop that Parks attended.) Highlander Folk School also trained many other civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Claudette Colvin, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and Diane Nash.)
Four days after Parks’ stand and arrest, Black religious and community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The 26-year-old King was among the founders, having recently moved to Montgomery to pastor a church with his new wife, Coretta Scott King, an activist and musician. The MIA would organize the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted 381 days. By any means, it was a success: 90% of the city’s Black residents refused to ride the city’s buses. This would be the first major protest King would lead. The boycott was sustained by “the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation,” according to educator and civil rights activist Mary Fair Burks, who was also friendly with the Kings. Burks formed the Women’s Political Council in 1949, which would later play an active role in the Montgomery bus boycott.
These historic figures knew that no one person was coming to save them. If they wanted justice, they would have to organize. When you tell Rosa Parks’ story, her full story, it is one of community, history, and solidarity. And there are many more beautiful stories that link humanity together beyond hers.
As American cities are forced into a police state where ICE agents have “absolute immunity,” we need to teach community, solidarity, and the strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience and mutual-aid funds because there are no heroes coming to save us. It’s just us, and we are enough. And Black History Month seems like an ideal time to start teaching this.
This essay is inspired by the writings of Saint Trey Wooden and Leigh Patel.
