12.03.09
Why I really like flying through ATL
A book called This Thing Called You by Ernest Holmes discusses what he calls “the law of good.”
You might recall my recent positive remarks about the experience of traveling through Hartsfield Jackson International Airport.
Last night, I believe it came back to me. There was a four-hour weather delay on my originating flight out of Charlotte. When we left the gate, they told me my connecting flight would leave one minute before our scheduled arrival.
Then there was a 40 minute delay on the runway. At that point, I knew I would miss my scheduled appointment with my optometrist if I had to wait until the next departure from Atlanta.
When we arrived in Atlanta just after 11 p.m., the gate agent said your flight to San Francisco is still here, and it was at the very next gate, allowing myself and another passenger to skip in just as the door closed.
You go, ATL!
11.28.09
Dr. Andrew Williams and his book Out of the Box
For those who think that cutting edge careers are only for a certain elite, Dr. Andrew Williams has a powerful testimony about his work at Spelman College with the Spelbots robotics team in his book Out of the Box.
http://www.cbn.com/media/player/index.aspx?s=/vod/SUT69_AndrewWilliams_102709_WS
11.27.09
Commemorating John Brown and Harper’s Ferry
I was watching a debate on South Carolina Educational Television the night before Thanksgiving on whether slavery would have survived the Civil War. The two august scholars only disagreed on how much longer it would have continued. One projected until the 1880s and one quoted Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debate when he speculated it would take a hundred years to die out naturally.
That’s why the raid on Harper’s Ferry, funded surreptitiously by the likes of Mary Ellen Pleasant, was one of those watershed moments in history. Jean Libby, author of a new photo book and exhibition on John Brown, sends this announcement on commemoration activities around the country. Pan African City Alive also hosts an observance on Dec. 2 at 5:30 p.m. in Sunnyvale, CA.
COMMEMMORATIONS OF THE MARTYRDOM OF JOHN BROWN Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2009
Philadelphia
Sunday, November 29 – Mother Bethel Church, Free
-John Brown a Man of Faith: In Music and Words. Mother Bethel Church choir at 11 am service, followed by public program featuring a talk on John Brown by Charles Blockson, Emeritus Curator – Charles Blockson Collection at Temple University.
Monday November 30 – Cliveden, 6:30 p.m., Free –
The North’s Slavery Legacy. Open House. 6:30 p.m. Through the lives of the Chew family, learn how slavery produced northern wealth and was engrained in northern life-styles. Learn about the enslaved people that worked for the Chews and how their story is changing the interpretive program at Cliveden. For more information contact: info@cliveden.org
Tuesday, December 1
– Shiloh Baptist Church, 6 p.m. Free - Philadelphia’s Vigil for John Brown’s Hanging. This day marks the 150th anniversary of vigils held for John Brown in Philadelphia. Experience a living history performance honoring the vigils held by the black community and abolitionists for John Brown and his men. This program is written and produced by Philadelphia’s Millicent Sparks and will feature music by Shiloh Baptist Church. [download flyer in Adobe Acrobat format]
Wednesday, December 2, noon – 1 pm, Free
– Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Hamilton Auditorium, 118 N. Broad St. In Memoriam: Horace Pippin’s John Brown Going to His Hanging. This day marks the 150th anniversary of the hanging of John Brown, one of the most controversial and celebrated men of the nineteenth century, whose raid on Harper’s Ferry and subsequent execution caused stirrings across the nation. For years, artists have depicted these events in myriad ways, including an iconic painting by Horace Pippin titled John Brown Going to His Hanging. Join art historian and Pippin expert Judith Stein on this historic anniversary for a discussion of Pippin’s painting and the quietly heroic figure of John Brown that it portrays. This program is part of the Art-at-Lunch Lecture Series and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact PAFA at 215-972-2105 or visit our website: www.pafa.org/aal.
Wednesday, December 2 – Charles Blockson Collection, Temple University, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m., Free
– Conversation on the Legacy of John Brown with Charles Blockson and Dr. Molefi Kete Asante. Mr. Blockson will discuss his family’s personal connection to John Brown, the Underground Railroad and John Brown’s relationship with the African American community. Dr. Asante will present “John Brown: An Authentic Hero of Liberty“, where he will examine the reason why most Americans have forgotten the thoughts and deeds of John Brown. Dr Asante will reintroduce us to John Brown and Brown as an authentic actor for human freedom, showing that Brown was not insane but simply living in an inhuman and insane context. Charles Blockson is national authority on the Underground Railroad and Curator Emeritus and founder of the Charles Blockson Collection at Temple University. Dr. Molefi Kete Asante is Professor, Department of African American Studies at Temple University. He is the author of seventy books, including African American History: A Journey of Liberation. For more information contact: aberhanu@temple.edu
Wednesday, December 2, 6 pm, Free – Historical Society of Pennsylvania/Library Company of Philadelphia
moment in the struggle for civil rights. The guest speaker will be Dr. Louis A. DeCaro Jr., author of
, 1300 Locust Street – The Empty Coffin: John Brown and Philadelphia. After his death, John Brown’s body traveled through Philadelphia. The mayor worried about riots in the streets, so a plan was devised to sneak Brown’s body away safely. Learn about this story and commemorate the anniversary of this pivotal Fire from the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown. After the lecture, guests can view original documents from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company of Philadelphia, including John Brown’s will. The documents will also be available as an online John Brown exhibit. FREE. To register, visit www.hsp.org or call 215-732-6200 for more information. ****************************************************************************
AKRON — The city will conclude its year-long commemoration of John Brown, who led the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, with a special ceremony and lecture Dec. 2 at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 647 E. Market St. The ceremony is sponsored by the city of Akron, the Summit County Historical Society and First Presbyterian Church.
Following the service, at noon, Mayor Don Plusquellic and students from Goodyear Middle School will ring a historic bell that will begin the ringing of church bells throughout Downtown Akron, just as they were in Akron on the day Brown was hanged, Dec. 2, 1859. On the day of his execution, bells rang and flags flew at half-staff in Akron, the courts adjourned and stores closed, according to city officials. That night “a great indignation meeting” took place in Empire Hall, and speeches were made by Akron’s leading citizens.
Historian Paul Finkelman will deliver remarks at the 11 a.m. service. Finkelman, the William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School, is the editor of “Terrible Swift Sword: The Legacy of John Brown” (Ohio University Press, 2005) and “His Soul Goes Marching On — Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid” (University Press of Virginia, 1995).
| Charles Town December 2, 2009– NAACP John Brown Observance |
| Description:
Time: 11:00 A.M. Location: Meet on Courthouse Lawn, Charles Town, WV Contact Name: Lyn Widmyer Contact Number:(304) 725-4326 Website: http://www.harpersferrywv.net/NAACP.htm Procession and ceremony from the site of the Charles Town jail to the John Brown hanging site |
| December 2, 2009– Freedom Fighter – v – Traitor? |
| Description:
Time: 7:00 P.M. Location: Charles Town Library, Charles Town, WV Contact Name: George Rutherford Contact Number: (304) 725-9610 Website: http://www.harpersferrywv.net/NAACP.htm A debate on the John Brown legacy sponsored by the Jefferson County NAACP |
11.25.09
One pumpkin don’t stop no show
It’s sort of amazing how one never grows up.
It hit me like a bolt of lightning when my mother asked me to bake a pumpkin crisp for Thanksgiving.
Although at first glimpse, I’m a graying senior citizen, when it comes to my family, I’m still the youngest and the family kitchen was always pretty crowded.
I couldn’t remember her ever asking me to cook anything. So this dish took on epic proportions, starting with the fact that I’d never heard of it.
My sister Juanita provided a pumpkin; my niece Jada suggested looking up the recipe on the internet, my sister Marie offered use of her kitchen (with trepidation) and I got to carving.
Following the recipe didn’t completely work out, so I improvised and think I’ve made a presentable showing, with a little technical assistance from master baker John Akins.
11.20.09
Why I like flying through ATL
As the co-founder of National Black Business Month, I’m always on the alert for innovative strategies and opportunities that highlight black-owned businesses or, in some case, just jobs for African-Americans.
Despite a century of African-American involvement in aviation, flying while black can be a lonely experience. Unless one flies through Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.
My two-hour layover on a red eye flight gave the opportunity to buy a newspaper from the Atlanta Daily World’s news stand, and to pick up some breakfast from Pascal’s.
While sitting at my gate, I was startled to hear what sounded like Lakeside blasting off the monitor. Sure enough, I looked up and the iconic funk group had performed a commercial touting the airline’s shops and restaurants.
Although we now have an African-American president, it is always nice to see African-American flight attendants. Sure enough, my connecting flight on Airtrans to Charlotte had an all-black in-flight crew, something I’d never experienced before.
In a tight economy, it’s the kind of thing each of us should take notice of when we decide where to spend our dollars and how we travel.
11.19.09
More on Cakewalk
The fascinating opportunity that I explored in Cakewalk was a convergence of a number of historic, yet little known or understood events.
Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton was a registered voter and home owner in San Francisco on and off for the first two decades of the 20th century. He is almost completely identified with New Orleans. He is reported to have theatened to shut down Purcells when he first arrived in San Francisco.
Sam King and Lew Purcell, the owners of most of the black-owned jazz clubs on Pacific Street, both died within a month of each other in December 1909 and January 1910.
Lester Mapp, who was the subject of a major trial in the mid 1910s, became the owner of all their properties.
The day before the 1906 earthquake the mayor and the entire Board of Supervisors were charged with corruption.
And there’s a lot more.
To create Cakewalk, I began to envision what the personal conversations and encounters would have been like leading up to those events.
Will Marion Cook and Tom Turpin were among the regulars in the area, along with Bert Williams and George Walker.
It isn’t hard to realize that this period and this area is as rich a source of black culture and heritage as any period of American history.
Where I take the story is to try to explain why we haven’t known about this rich history.
Who needed to change the timeline of history to cover up their own misdeeds?
These were questions that began to answer themselves as I connected the dots.
11.18.09
Entrepreneurship isn’t a cakewalk
am nearing the completion of a new novel written for National Novel Writing Month. I just learned about it in September at a UCLA Writers Fair and decided to take the plunge. The objective is to write a 50,000 word novel by Nov. 30. I just passed 36,000 words and have structured the 14 chapters.
The working title is Cakewalk.
It tells about the 14 year period between the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the forced displacement of the Barbary Coast in 1921.
Like my first two novels, Grampa Jack’s Secret and Lake Merritt: What Goes Around Comes Around, it is an historical novel which adds flavor and depth to real events. Because the historical events are subjects which I’ve researched as an historian, the simplest way to tell the story has been to insert my alter ego, Will, as the narrator. Will was also the narrator in Grampa Jack’s Secret, although he was then a high school student navigating the desegregation of schools in the South. For Lake Merritt, I used a gaggle of Canadian geese as the intermediaries between the reader and the story.
For 14 years, I’ve researched the first jazz club and the first jazz band in history. Purcell’s So Diff’rent was the name of the establishment and its house band was led by Sid leProtti. It was located in the 500 block of Pacific Street in San Francisco and the building still stands, along with seven other black-owned “resorts” from the period between 1906 and 1921.
Sam King and Lew Purcells, the original owners, leProtti and his band members and Lester Mapp, the subsequent owner of six of the clubs, are little known figures in history. My op-ed editor at the San Francisco Examiner gave me a tip to look into a book called Jazz on the Barbary Coast back in 1995. As I have subsequently done genealogy research to identify descendands and find artifacts, I’ve learned that each of them had a national and global footprint through the people they touched..
Better-known names ranging from Bert Williams to Jelly Roll Morton to Anna Pavlova to Rudolph Valentino have a connection to the story in some fashion. As we’ve gathered more detail. we’ve gotten a sense of the personalities involved, particularly through talking to relatives and journalists who’ve known them.
I’ve also been able to extrapolate what things must have been like based on the trends and history before this period and what has occurred since then.
My overall conclusion is that this period of San Francisco history is also one of the most important periods of African-American heritage. In many respects, the more heralded Harlem Renaisance was seeded by figures from San Francisco. The first black to perform and the first black to write a play on Broadway both came from San Francisco.
Will Marion Cook,Paul Laurence Dunbar, J. Rosemond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson were among the national figures who collaborated wtih these San Franciscans, who had a different way of looking at things because they had the benefit of ownership of facilities along the San Francisco waterfront from the 1850s.
At the same time, this relative freedom was seen as a threat locally and nationally, because of its ability to raise the aspirations of blacks around the country and world.
So the novel becomes the interplay between the push and pull of black aspirations and talent and the resistance to that expression.
I’ve had enough aha! moments while projecting how real events must have happened to expect that some of my scenarios may turn out to be closer to reality than one might expect.
I chose the title Cakewalk because the dances of the period which originated in this neighborhood are central to the plot, and also because the term has taken on a collogquial meaning. That meaning is one of relative ease. These real figures were people who projected an aura of success while overcoming extreme obstacles.
That’s not much different from the experience of African-American entrepreneurs now. So I can definitely feel their spirit moving through me as I write.
11.12.09
The night time is the right time
I knew when I watched the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain award to Bill Cosby that the classic scene in which the family lip-synched Ray Charles’ “The Night Time is the Right Time” would be indelibly stuck in my brain.
It’s a lot better than some song off the radio or fast food jingle.
In any event, San Francisco Black Heritage Tours, following a fabulous first two weeks, is now offering its first Evening Excursions–customized theme tours exploring the culinary and literary spice of San Francisco.
We’ve scheduled five Evening Excursions for the holiday season:
–S.F. Soul: Taste the Excitement on Fridays, Nov. 13, Dec. 4 and Dec. 18 at 5 p.m. It’s an exploration of great black restaurants throughout the city which you may have bypassed or not known about
– Alex Haley’s North Beach on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 5 p.m. Before Haley became famous for the Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots, he wrote one of his first pieces for the Saturday Evening Post on his North Beach neighborhood. Recall the scenes he experienced on a daily basis.
– Ernest Gaines’ Divisadero on Tuesday, Dec. 15 at 5 p.m. shows the neighborhood where he wrote such works as Ceremonies in Old Dark Men and the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
11.08.09
Let’s stimulate learning
With 10.2 percent unemployment nationally and even higher rates for African-Americans, particularly youth, we can not afford to allow our students to leave grade school unprepared to compete.
During my presentation to the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators, I described an infusion policy, based on research about effective instruction for learners of African descent and the California curriculum frameworks and content standards.
Here is a draft of that policy:
POLICY STATEMENT ON THE INFUSION OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN SAN FRANCISCO AND CALIFORNIA THROUGHOUT DAILY CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT IN LITERATURE, MULTIMEDIA AND COMMUNITY (“THE LEIDESDORFF INITIATIVE”)
Whereas the San Francisco Unified School District wishes to provide a complete educational experience to all of its students, including a balanced, non-stereotypical curriculum;
Whereas the State of California has specifically provided for the emphasis on underrepresented groups in curriculum, culture and art in the Education Code;
Whereas the Education Code provides that all California schools recognize March 5 as Black American Day in honor of the death of Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre;
Whereas the California Department of Education annually recognizes the anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education as a seminal event in education history with specific coursework;
Whereas, A.B. 33 in 1988 provided that the superintendent of public instruction provide all schools with a list of recognized materials for African-American heritage
Whereas, the California content standards specifically identify significant African-American personalities to be studied as examples for educators;
Whereas, the first school committee chair of San Francisco was an African-American entrepreneur, William Alexander Leidesdorff, in 1848, whose life punctures many stereotypes of African-American history;
Whereas the achievement gap between African-American students and other groups is a major concern for San Francisco and many other school districts
Whereas, San Francisco has lost more than 7,000 African-American students in the past sixyears, depriving the district of vitally needed diversity;
Whereas, the late UC-Berkeley researcher John Ogbu, among others, found in a longitudinal study that the absence of positive role models negatively affects student behavior and performance;
Whereas, initiatives in such cities as Los Angeles, San Diego and Hayward have positively affected student outcomes with the infusion of African-American content throughout the curriculum;
Whereas, individual educators who have participated in the Teaching American History program for the past two years have found that the heritage of San Francisco’s African-American population has been a particularly effective educational tool, particularly with hard-to-reach children;
Whereas, many dedicated educators spend their own time and resources to search for culturally-relevant information to match their student populations and participate in organizations and training to advance that knowledge;
Whereas, the significant African-American historic and cultural sites create a demand for workers who are skilled in the knowledge of the African-American heritage of this city
Therefore, it shall be the policy of the San Francisco Unified School District to infuse the significant contributions of African-Americans within San Francisco and California throughout the k-12 educational curriculum in a coordinated, coherent way as a matter of accuracy, justice, efficiency and educational efficacy.
We find this infusion so important that the following guidelines should be followed in each school in the district:
TEACHER AWARENESS. Fourth-grade teachers of Caliifornia history should receive training on the primary sources of the black experience in San Francisco, including
–the 36 African-Americans from San Francisco listed among the 150 Most Historic Black Californians
–the significant role of the three 150-year-old black churches in San Francisco –Third Baptist, Bethel A.M.E. and First A.M.E. Zion in the abolition movement of the 1850s and the fight for civil rights in California that overturned the right of testimony and franchise laws in the 1860s
–the location and significance of two dozen African-American historic sites in the downtown financial district dating back to the 1840s
–the 29 state parks with historic sites on the black experience
–the allegorical epic Las Serges de Esplandian which led to Hernan de Cortes naming California
–important public artwork including the Room of the Dons murals by Maynard Dixon and Frank von Sloun, the Sargent Johnson murals at the National Maritime Museum and George Washington High School; the Dr. Howard Thurman sculpture; the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Waterfall by Houston Conwill; the Dewey Crumpler mural at 762 Fulton St.; the Ella Hill Hutch Center murals; the Gene Suttle Plaza; the Fillmore Street sidewalk legends and Mildred Howard’s Blue sculpture atop Geary Boulevard; Aaron Douglas painting at the DeYoung Museum;
–the heritage of entrepreneurial success beginning with pre-Emancipation millionaires William A. Leidesdorff and Mary Ellen Pleasant to the current accomplishments of executives such as Genentech COO Myrtle Potter, SBC West CEO Chuck Smith, Victor MacFarlane of MacFarlane Partners; civil engineer Frederick E. Jordan and current businesses such as restaurants
–the scientific and engineering exploits of Richard B. Spikes, inventor of the electric boom for streetcars and the automatic gearshift; Dr. Nathaniel Burbridge, a pharmacologist and Dr. Arthur Coleman, one of the first lawyer/physicians to astronauts Drs. Mae Jemison and Yvonne Cagle
–the impact on entertainment of black performers in San Francisco theatres in the 19th century such as the Hyers Sisters, leading up to the ragtime success of Bert Williams, George Walker and Sissiretta Jones; the origin of the first jazz club in the world at 550 Pacific Ave. in San Francisco and musicians who played there in the Sid leProtti So Diff’rent Orchestra
–significant literature written in San Francisco ranging from the first cookbook by a black chef by Abby Fisher in 1881, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots by Alex Haley; The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines
–the impact of black labor leaders due to the decision by Harry Bridges to integrate the ILWU in the 1930s
–the political impact of leaders such as Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, a candidate for governor in 1966 and newspaper publisher; through Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. and current lawmakers and public executives
–primary source resources and educational experiences from:
• San Francisco African-American Historical and Cultural Society
• Museum of the African Diaspora
• African-American Center of the San Francisco Main Library
• San Francisco Room of the San Francisco Main Library
• Bayview/Waden Branch Library of the San Francisco Public Library
• Western Addition Branch Library of the San Francisco Public Library
• California Historical Society Library
• Performing Arts Library and Museum
• Bancroft Collection, UC-Berkeley
• Sutro Library of the California State Library
–the multilingual experience of peoples of African descent, including the early Spanish-speaking pobladores and conquistadors on Mission Dolores, the Presidio and Yerba Buena and the interrelationships between Africa and Europe; Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean; Africans in Asia and the Pacific Islands
–how to train other members of their staffs in the application of this material.
–why locally-specific historical information improves the learning experience for students
–and in creative and effective ways to incorporate this information throughout various subjects throughout the years on a daily basis, not only in history/social science, but also in mathematics, foreign language and physical and biological sciences
When possible, this training should also be made available to social science faculty at all levels.
CURRICULUM MATERIALS. Each school library and fourth grade classroom should be equipped with sufficient reference materials to provide a 500-year perspective of primary source materials on the black experience in California, including books, lesson plans, documentaries, maps and online resources.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT. Schools are encouraged to observe March 5 with school wide demonstrations of student mastery in knowledge of San Francisco and California African-American history, including oral history and genealogical accounts of family heritage, and to select the most creative, most thoroughly-researched entries for competition in a district-wide judging to be announced on April 3, the anniversary of the dedication of the first public school. Students are also encouraged to present materials in different languages in the same manner as the quotations on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Community, business and civic engagement in this process, including donations of prizes and scholarships., is encouraged.
BUDGET. A sum of $400,000 (FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) is appropriated from funds allocated to comply with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund the costs of training and purchase of books and other curriculum materials. Administration is authorized to seek other funding sources such as grants, gifts or sponsorships.
DESIGNATION. This policy and the implementation thereof shall be known as the Leidesdorff Initiative in honor of Capt. William A. Leidesdorff, 1810-1848, chairman of the school committee that dedicated the first public school in San Francisco and California on April 3, 1848. In addition, his values of mathematics proficiency, nautical expertise, fluency in multiple languages and business success are all attributes which are still desirable in our graduates.
EVALUATION. The research department shall note the extent to which there is progress in the state examinations for students whose teachers have completed training and implemented the initiative; and the impact on school attendance and/or dropout rates at the secondary level and report back to the Curriculum Committee in May
CONCLUSION. we find that repairing the psychological damage of discrimination is still a critical and vital role for the San Francisco Unified School District to play for its students and affirm our commitment to comply with and promote the integration of all students into constructive roles at every level of society by inspiring them as students.
APPROVED THIS __________________ DAY OF ,
11.06.09
Black heritage closes the achievement gap
Black Heritage as Gap Closer
S.F. Alliance of Black School Educators
Willie L. Brown Jr. College Prep Academy
Friday, Nov. 6, 2009 5 p.m.
John William Templeton
© 2009 eAccess Corp.
INTRODUCTION. Our speaker has provided training for SFUSD teachers through the Teaching American History program and the Ethnic Studies development process on how to infuse the significant local history of San Francisco and California in the classroom. He’s spent the last 20 years chronicling that history in a series of books, Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, three documentaries and now the daily S.F. Black Heritage Tour. He’s also the co-founder of National Black Business Month and produces the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology. He’s a native of Statesville, North Carolina and an honors graduate of Howard University’s John H. Johnson School of Communications.
The Holy Grail of American education is how to improve the performance of African-American children. The survival of neighborhoods and in some cases entire cities depends on the answer to that dilemma.
The Bayview neighborhood we stand in at this moment is a perfect example of how significant an issue this is.
Exactty a month ago, we hosted Robert Simms, who grew up in this community, on the Hill, attended public schools, and now is the owner of ParkSFO and Trux Cargo Shipping, two significant transportation businesses along with being a lawyer.
And this school is named for someone who migrated from Texas to become the premiere political leader of the past 50 years in California.
Clearly, when we get it right, magic comes out of African-American children.
When we don’t get it right, these very streets aren’t safe to walk on when we leave here.
For the first time, we have a President who has put the resources behind the talk of closing the achievement gap — a $100 billion bet through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that transformatton is possible in American public schools.
If it doesn’t work, who knows how long it will be before education gets that kind of support again.
But I’m here to tell you tonight that it is not rocket science. How do I know that? A couple of days ago, I was talking with a rocket scientist, Mary Spio, who will be one of the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology that we’re announcing Monday.
By age 26, she was head of digital satellite communications for Boeing. Then she created what we are now experiencing as digital cinema in our movie theatres. She holds about eight patents.
And I’m sure like me, you’d never heard of her before.
Imagine how you’d feel sitting in a movie theatre and thinking I invented that whole process. You’d want to jump up and tell everybody.
What she did tell me was, “Seeing people who looked like me who were successful was what motivated me to go into the sciences.”
That’s consistent with my experience as author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California. When I did the first volume in 1991, I spoke at the Los Angeles Alliance of Black School Educators monthly meeting just like this one today. I hadn’t completed the first volume yet,. I just had an uncorrected proof copy for reviewers. Dr. Bruce Gaines, who was the president, took my proof copy to his classes at Jordan High and Pasadena City College.
Just from his use of the proof book to provide lessons, he reported that his black students had an average of two grade points improvement within two months.
We got similar results thorugh IRISE up here in the 1990s, particularly with James Taylor and his faculty at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. Carol Fields told me last year how effective Our Roots has been with her fourth grade students over the years.
So we know what can happen when content is placed in the hands of master educators. According to the news last night, there are 300,000 teachers in California.
How do we make sure the vast majority of them know how to effectively reach and teach black children.
Last year, I gave the keynote for the California Council for Social Studies in Oakland and did a joint tour with the Chinese Historical Society through downtown San Francisco.
For that presentation, I conducted a research study among California social science teachers, many of whom were in San Francisco Unified, thanks to the cooperation we got from the Office of Teaching and Learning which disseminated the survey.
There is a specific term in education jargon for what I’ve been discussing — culturally-responsiive instruction. People like Carol Lee, and Michele Foster and Gloria Ladson-Billings have helped to take our intuitive sense and define it in scientific terms.
Simply, a well-trained teacher knows how to get the student to identify with the subject being taught in a way that engages their interest and perceived needs.
Juan Gilbert, chair of human-centered computing at Clemson University, is another one of the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology. He e-mailed me last night about how they’ve designed video games using hip-hop to teach algebra to black students.
The key phrase is “To teach algebra.” Any thing you do should result in acquired skills which can be used in any context.
Our research question to the teachers was to discern their capacity to provide culturally-responsive instruction.
So we asked a series of questions about what they did for Black History Month and Black American Day. The latter was a trick question. Although March 5 was declared Black American Day in the Education Code 40 years ago to mark the death of Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre, I’ve yet to find any evidence that any one has ever actually devoted the entire day to the “study of the contributions of African-Americans to American history.”
We expected and got 100 percent response with a question “What is Black American Day?”
We were more surprised to find that only 10 percent of the activities described by teachers iincluded the aspect of teaching skills, particularly skills identified in the curriculum frameworks and content standards.
All the evidence shows that such topics as the black queen who gave California its name, Buffalo Soldiers, the three local black churches in the Underground Railroad or, more contemporaneous topics, like black scientists and inventors attract the interest of hard-to-reach students.
We only need to ask successful learners what turns them on. And we’re not saying that only black role models can motivate black youth. In my book Success Secrets of Black Executives, I found that the presence of white mentors was a key element for the most successful black achievers.
However, the teaching of social studies, which I’m increasingly considering the most important subject, begins with a hierarchy in the primary grades of studying one’s own family, their city their state and then their country. Black kids get handicapped in those early grades because there is very little material to help them place themselves in the picture of American history, particularly family and local history.
To address that, we propose an infusion policy for San Francisco and any other school district to create a uniform standard, just as we have for mathematics, science and social studies, for how and what we expect our learners to know about African-American heritage. This will give educators a repertoire of cultural referents, with the proper training, to hang their instruction of actual skills upon.
My study indicates that we can’t leave it up to the initiative of the teachers to pull these resources together for themselves. They have too many other demands.
A couple of products we’ve done are the result of feedback from educators. The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map is the fourth volume of the Our Roots Run Deep series. It includes twelve themes of lesson plans. short bios on the 150 most important black Californians and a breakdown of the how the California social science framework relates to African-American history. The infusion policy we suggest basically amounts to highlighting what the frameworks already call for.
Globally, we find technology a valuable tool for supplementing existing curriculum resources. The Black Students Internet Guide annotes 400 different sites with useful content for learners of African descent, broken down by subject areas.
For instance, Ron Eglash at RPI in New York has a presentation that teaches geometry through corn rowing. Its a good way to address girls’ perceived aversion to math and science.
Our guide Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco drills down to the local level to use the entire community as a learning laboratory.
We’ve distributed copies of the proposed infusion policy. Students should not have to depend on the luck of the draw to get the instruction that all the research indicates is their right as part of a quality education.
Back in 1943, my mother, Mary Elizabeth McLelland was the first valedictorian of Unity High School outside of Statesville, N.C. and my dad, the late Clarence Templeton Jr. was salutorian of Morningside High School before he went off to the Navy to fight in World War II. As their kids, we always got set aside by our teachers, who had also taught them, and were given the hardest assignments to do. I was a National Achievement Scholar when I graduated from high school and my son scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT when he graduated.
My point is that when you turn a young person’s life around, to motivate them to follow in the footsteps of a Bob Simms or a Willie Brown or a Kevin Epps, you’re making a difference for generations to follow.
If there’s going to be a Bayview-Hunters Point in 50 years, then we can’t afford to write off any of the young people being forced out of the public schools. They will have children.
When we give them the kind of guidance that propelled us, the benefits extend way beyond the classroom.
I look forward to answering your questions and to working with you to find the Holy Grail.
11.04.09
Expanding the electorate
Perusing the plethora of pundits pontificating on the polls yesterday, I am prompted to place the reason for the results on the failure to learn the lessons of last November.
Tuesday was not a referendum on President Obama because neither guvernatorial race had candidates who offered the tranformation that voters sought last year.
The Democratic party must learn that it’s brand value was not particularly enhanced last year, so much as the quality of its candidates across the board improved. Bad candidates will yield bad results.
For next year’s races, it should return to the playbook of the Obama campaign and select candidates who seek to rise above the partisan divides which have paralyzed the country’s agenda.
In its governance, the White House and Congressional Democrats must rise above mere vote counting and remind the public of the goals at stake — accessible health care, energy independence and a livable climate–as well as how to create more jobs in the process.
The low turnout races of yesterday left out the new voters who were inspired in 2008. The politics of the last year has left those new voters out as well. If the focus on bipartisanship was necessary, then the next year must be geared to making the case that the election mattered for those who cared enough to seek change.
11.02.09
S.F. Black Heritage Tours begin today
The world’s number one attraction has a brand new magnet for tourists and residents -- S.F. Black Heritage Tours.
Historian John William Templeton brings the same mastery of the city’s vast African-American heritage that he has provided for major conventions like the American Library Association, American Bar Association, National School Boards Association and American Educational Research Association in three tour circuits provided by reservation daily.
The site for information and reservation is http://www.africanamericansf.info.
Group visits to such attractions as the King Tut exhibition at the DeYoung Museum are also available.
To learn more about the tours, one can also hear Templeton speak Friday, Nov. 6 to the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators at 5 p.m. in the Willie Brown College Prep Academy, 2055 Silver Ave. or call 415-240-3537.
Standard tour rates are $45 including a copy of Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco., the indispensible guide to all aspects of black life in San Francisco, including churches, restaurants, historic sites and merchants.
Templeton curated JazzGenesis: San Francisco and the Birth of Jazz, currently on display in the Visitor Information Center of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Gold Rush Abolitionists: the California Movement to Emancipation. Those eras of history are featured in one circuit through the Financial District of San Francisco, where the African-American community was concentrated in the 19th century.
The third Preserving California Black Heritage conference, Bayview’s Last Stand, last month, highlighted the historic black neighborhood of Bayview/Hunters Point. S.F. Black Heritage Tours begins the first regularly scheduled tours of the neighborhood, home to the some of the oldest pre-1906 earthquake churches, residences and commercial buildings in the city.
Templeton is also principal investigator of the Invisible Pioneers context statement on the history of African-Americans in San Francisco, having documented a number of previously unrecognized historic sites in the Western Addition stretching from Market Street up to Sacramento Street. One of his sources was the 1929 membership list of the new San Francisco branch of the NAACP. More than 200 of those addresses still stand in the area between Post and Sacramento Streets.
For background on these sites, the four-volume reference Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4, gives a context for the central role of African-Americans in California from the 1500s to present.
10.29.09
Black Heritage as Gap Closer
John William Templeton, author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 and founder of S.F. Black Heritage Tours, discusses Black Heritage as Gap Closer to the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators Friday, Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. at the Willie L. Brown College Prep Academy, 2055 Silver Ave.
He will describe a proposed policy to “infuse” local and regional African-American heritage into daily classroom experiences in line with the state content standards and curriculum frameworks as a research-based method to improve student outcomes.
Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 won the 2002 Library Laureate award from the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and the 1998 Commendation from the California Sesquicentennial Commission. The books were the subject of a traveling exhibition in the Historic State Capitol Museum, Los Angeles Central Library and San Francisco Main Library in 1995-96.
Templeton is principal investigator for Invisible Pioneers: Blacks in San Francisco 1770-1985, a context statement, and was project historian for 62 Heroes and Heroines of the Western Addition oral history research project for the S.F. African-American Historical and Cultural Society. He also contributed African-Americans in the West to the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History, 1619-1890, From the Colonial Era to the Age of Frederick Douglass.
S.F. Black Heritage Tours begins Monday, Nov. 2. Reservations can be made at http://www.africanamericansf.info There are three tour circuits: JazzGenesis/Gold Rush Abolitionists; Western Addition/Pacific Heights/Haight; and Bayview to OMI.
10.28.09
Hot off the press: Contemporary history made by sports legends
The underappreciated role of black athletes in the civil rights movement is one of the themes that jumps out from Volume 3 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, 1950-2000. New editions of the four-volume set are available today. To put the significance of Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell in context, the following letter indicates that blacks were routinely refused factory jobs as late as the 1960s.
No jobs for Negroes
It is difficult to overstate the motivational role of Jackie Robinson, the Pasadena sports and military hero who was an all-star in three sports at UCLA (football, basketball and track) , to take on the task of integrating major league baseball. Two chapters by Anthony Pratkansis describe Robinson’s impact on American society in Vol. 2 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, 1900-1950.
Dodger Jackie Robinson
A decade later, Bill Russell pulled off the amazing feat of winning NCAA, Olympic and NBA championships, boosting the morale of the civil rights movement even further. As the NBA season launches again, with a preponderance of black players, it is difficult to realize how Russell’s run of nine championships spanned a transformation in American society.
Some of the athletes were so important in later life that we forget they were sports stars. Lionel Wilson was a Negro Leagues pitcher long before he was first black mayor of Oakland, and Tom Bradley was a track standout at UCLA who later became mayor of Los Angeles for 20 years. Ralph Bunche also was a UCLA basketball legend who ascended to the highest ranks of the United Nations at the same time that Robinson was breaking into the major leagues.
Bunche went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The winning attitude of sports has been just as important to the civil rights progress as legal victories. Relive those magic moments in Volume 3 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, 1950-2000.
Other chapters cover S.F.’s Fillmore District: the Cutting Edge of Black Urban Removal, the Bakke decision, the Watts and Rodney King riots, the Proposition 209 campaign, whether the CIA brought crack into south-central Los Angeles, bringing understanding to topics which still resonate through today’s news.
As the referees toss the ball up for the opening jump balls of the NBA season, reflect on the shoulders upon whom they stand.
10.27.09
Tragedy needs a landmark
The spirit of despair was etched on the face of the woman who scurried to open the door of the post office at Geary and Fillmore.
It was a reminder of how that same despair had helped create the largest mass suicide in American history — starting from that very location.
But there is no landmark, although the post office is a relatively new building.
For the unaware, who simply see a place to get a passport or drop off a package, this post office sits on the site of the People’s Temple.
Next month will be another anniversary of Jonestown in which the memories of the fallen will be obscured.
San Francisco avoids facing that history, because it still continues the same policies which created what researcher Mindy Thompson-Fullilove termed “Root Shock,” neighborhoods stripped of the social supports which make up a community through misguided land-use policies. I describe that era in a chapter of Volume 3 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California “San Francisco’s Western Addition: The Cutting Edge of Black Urban Removal.”
900 souls contnue to cry out for justice!
Explore S.F.’s black heritage in a new tour
If you didn’t know that the first building rebuilt after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a black-owned jazz club or where novelist Ernest Gaines penned such works as the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, then you’ll be interested in the new San Francisco Black Heritage Tour beginning daily operation Nov. 2, 2009.
Created by historian John William Templeton, author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 and the section on African-Americans in the West in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History, the three distinct tours cover time periods stretching back to the Mexican era.
For more information, call 415-240-3537 or go to http://www.africanamericansf.info or use the I-phone application at iheritageguide.com.
10.23.09
The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map
Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 is a 1,400 page chronicle of the centrality of blacks in California heritage from the naming of the area in the 1500s to the present.
It has been updated to integrate with the California content standards and to include new discoveries from recent exhibitions in Los Angeles and San Francisco — the first black company to record a jazz record; the first black woman to publish a cookbook and the site of the first jazz club and jazz band in history.
Volume One also includes the translation of Las Serges de Esplandian, the 1510 epic describing California as an island populated only by black women, which Cortes sought out with his party of 300 African conquistadors in the 1530s.
Volume Four, The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map, is designed for frequent classroom usage with 12 thematic lesson plans, bibliographies and the 150 most important blacks in California history. The package also includes a DVD of Our Roots Run Deep documentary, a 56-minute public television show; Black Heritage as Gap Closer, a research study on the capacity of California educators to provide culturally-responsive instruction in social studies, Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco, a tourist guide to the city’s 300 black historic sites, 50 black restaurants and 100 churches, the Black Students Internet Guide, a resource for 400 sites with educational content geared to learners of African descent, and the new documentary Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge, a chronicle of early black technology pioneers in the earliest days of Silicon Valley.
Editor John William Templeton also contributed “African-Americans in the West” to the Oxford Encyclopedia of African American History. Co-editor of Volume 2 is Agin Shaheed, a San Diego education administrator and grandson of the first African-American administrator in Los Angeles public schools.
Volume orders also include training in culturally-responsive instruction using California African-Ameircan heritage. A showing of the play Queen Calafia: Ruler of California, which excited hundreds of San Francisco students is slated in February 2010 in Oakland.
“OUR ROOTS RUN DEEP: THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN CALIFORNIA, 1500-1900 is an effective reference book for researchers from a variety of backgrounds,from students to interested community members. This book is jam-packed with excerpts from primary source material: the reader can hear the voice of civil-rights activist and entrepreneur, Mary Ellen Pleasant; read the Gold Rush diary of Alvin Coffey; and experience the verbatim testimony of Charlotte Brown in her 1863 discrimination case against the street car company.
In addition, the book contains a number of essays from historians and other academics, many reprinted from books that are rare or out-of-print. OUR ROOTS RUN DEEP pulls together a large overview of the experience of the Black community in California, incorporating both original voices and reliable historical analysis.”
Susan Goldstein
Manager, San Francisco History Center
City Archivist
San Francisco Public Library
10.22.09
Compensation furor indicates new environment
Anger has been rising among Americans and other global observers that the financial calamity of 2008 has not caused a more sensible approach to CEO and executive compensation.
The issue is a marker for a larger re-examination of the role of the largest businesses in the global economy.
At the end of the robber baron era of the 19th century, progressive societies chose not to allow the pursuit of profit at any cost to be the determinative factor in business success.
Throughout the 20th century, other objectives like ending child labor, paying minimum wages, providing pensions and health care, equal employment opportunity and environmental remediation have become societal imperatives that businesses must embrace.
From the Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond days through the 2008 meltdown, the pedalum swung towards profound cost-shifting of those obligations to individuals while a privileged elite concentrated more and more wealth.
In my opinion article for the New York Society of Security Analysts in October 2008, I suggested that a rebound of the market would depend on how well companies, particularly in the financial sectors, read the lessons of the Obama election.
“Is there an Obama play in the market?” predicted that companies would need to grow not just by moving money around in acquisitions but by demonstrating ethics and broad societal value.
It has taken a while for the changed environment to sink in. Some CEOs have seen the Troubled Asset Recovery Program as a piggy bank to fund even larger bonuses and stock options.
As the proxy for the taxpayers who had to fund the $700 billion TARP, the federal government should act against top executives who felt they deserved rewards for almost presiding over the demise of their firms. That poor judgment would not have survived in an open market, and government intervention should not protect them from those consequences.
A wider adjustment should come from the pension funds which supply much of the liquidity in the market. The best investment plays are policies and practices which widen opportunity.
Outlandish bonuses in the face of high unemployment and depressed demand are a bigger threat to capitalism than any government regulation. The economy depends on trust. Managers, who do not understand that, need the same wakeup call that investors and consumers got last year.
10.21.09
Are you ready to step up to the plate?
Have only watched two pitches of the major league baseball playoffs. Like many other blacks, the game has lost its luster for me as its number of African-American players has declined.
However, Ryan Howard did catch my eye the other night while channel flipping, and like the prime ttime player he is, he hit a home run on that pitch.
While in a restaurant last night, Alex Rodriquez was at the plate. I watched because he has a reputation for not performing iin clutch post-season action. Just before he swung, the announcer was making a reference to his different body language. Sure enough, he belted a homer too.
If I don’t see any more baseball, it won’t be a big deal, because there is a real World Series going on around us. In major league politics and governance, the number of African-Americans in positions of influence is growing.
The significance of the decisions to be made in the next few weeks — from troop deployments in Afghanistan to whether all Americans will be covered with health insurance to a global treaty on reducing emissions–can not be overstated.
However, there are media reports that African-American voter interest is lagging in the off-year elections slated for the first Tuesday in November, most notably the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
It is partially understandable. The intense excitement of last year’s election was followed by a daunting economic downturn, making the casual observer of politics perhaps feel that things have not changed.
The announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize was a recognition of how thoroughly the Obama administration has changed the course of the country for the better in just nine months. Many of the changes will take years to be visible, but the President and his Cabinet are delivering on the change they promised in 2008.
Delivering health care for all was the mantra in 1992, but a fierce reaction by entrenched special interests kept any legislation from coming to the floor of Congress.
Obama has provided the leadership to get a bill through both the House and Senate, perhaps by Thanksgiving.
U.S. troops are leaving Iraq on schedule, the issue that propelled him to the front of the campaign last year; and the conflict on the Afghan-Pakistan border now has the direct involvement of Pakistan’s army, which is the gamechanger that the previous administration never attracted, even from a military dictatorship.
These changes are happening because African-American voters took a leap of faith, beginning in South Carolina, that the most improbable, the most far-fetched thing most of us could ever contemplate would occur.
Yet, as the troubles of New York Gov. David Paterson indicate, progress is rarely a straight line, and popularity can shift in an instant.
The tides of the battles over these issues can continue to move in a positive direction as an unexpected force, just as been the case in Pakistan, comes to the battlefield.
In Virginia, black voters understood that electing James Webb would transform the national landscape by creating a Democratic majority in the Senate. He wasn’t particularly exciting and some of his past statements were problematic. But they acted on the permanent interests philosophy articulated by Frederick Douglass.
I had the chance to help send out that message during that election and witnessed a similar transformation when black voters helped Debbie Stabenow win an upset in Michigan.
The notion that only the President can get black voters to turnout is disrespectful to their good judgment.
However, there are forces at work to divert their attention in the final days before the election. I’ve been troubled by the fact that one of the most conservative activists, Phillip Anschutz, through his control of AEG Entertainment, has the rights to much of the Michael Jackson legacy.
The release of the new rehearsal footage film just a week before the election has the opportunity to distract voter attention in November.
But I lean to the belief that the ideas that Jackson espoused in his music will cause voters to become more active as they peruse the person in the mirror.
President Obama didn’t make the change in 2008. Voters did. To maintain the pace of change, voters must stay at bat, ready to take the big swing in the clutch. As the H1N1 flu strikes, the need for near-universal health care coverage is all the more important. As the polar ice caps melt, we can’t wait another decade to do something about climate change.
One doesn’t have to have a big contract to hit a home run in this World Series, one just needs to get in the game.
10.19.09
Embracing Queen Calafia
Millions of California school children never learn the origin of the state’s name.
That’s why I begin many of my discussions with teachers or students by asking “How did California get its name?”
The answer is usually so incongruous that I give it through a video clip of my documentary “Our Roots Run Deep” which pans through the Room of the Dons in the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I’ve learned it has to be seen to be believed.
Last year, we enacted that same experience of discovery through the one-woman play Queen Calafia: Ruler of California during a three-day run starring Ajuana Black at the African-American Art and Culture Complex.
The actress did a fabulous job of presenting the awe and amazement one experiences when learning about the origin of California.
We first presented the primary source account in Chapters Two and Three of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vol. 1, 1500-1900. Chapter Two describes the Maynard Dixon-Frank von Sloun murals in the Room of the Dons.
Chapter Three is a translation of Las Serges de Esplandian by Garcia Ordonez Montalvo, the 1510 Spanish epic which was the first written use of the word “California.”
In Las Serges, Montalvo describes California as an island nation populated solely by black women. As described by UC-Santa Cruz historian Margo Hendricks, Montalvo’s work was part of a genre of European literature from the 1300s to the 1500s which portrayed black women warriors as synonymous with wealth, courage and beauty.
The contrast between this genre and the way that blacks have been portrayed for most of the 500 years since is so glaring that we immediately seized upon this as a window to the examination and understanding of race.
In Volume Four of Our Roots Run Deep, The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map, we present a series of lesson plans to explore not only the content of Las Serges, but the context of a Mediterranean area where Moors were dominant for 700 years in southern Europe through the end of the 1400s; and where West African emperors were fabled for their wealth in gold as far away as Mecca on the Arabian peninsula.
Students learn the role of mythology to create their cultural norms and how to determine what is actually true.
They can put themselves in the shoes of Cortes, who read Las Serges and believed that he had found the island nation of California just off the western coast of North America.
Most importantly, we want to them to ask deep questions about why this information has not been presented to them and generations of school children before them.
Queen Calafia, as Dixon and von Sloun portray, is a metaphor for the California quest for adventure, but her omission is a metaphor for the invisibility of the central role of blacks in the history of the Golden State.
It begins with the 300 black conquistadors among Cortes’ party, continues through the African ancestry of four in ten pobladores who settled the missions along the coast of Alta California, including the majority of the original settlers of sites like Los Angeles and San Jose; moves through the intrigues of competing black land barons from southern and northern California on whether the area would stay part of Mexico, go independent or join the United States and then begins a still-unresolved battle for racial justice in response to the intolerance that began with the Gold Rush.
As we survey today’s images of black women through such works as the Chris Rock documentary “Good Hair” where billions are being spent to live up to a completely foreign mythology or the caricatures of Tyler Perry, we must insist that all our students receive the primary source information about the proud heritage which they can make part of their own self-esteem.
Books such as Serena Williams’ new autobiography or the movie Akeelah and the Bee demonstrate the power of positive self-image as part of the educational experience. Educators who fail to employ the magic of California’s African-American experience are doing themselves and their students a disservice.
Now that a new school year has begun, parents should insist that by March 5, which is Black American Day in the California Education Code, that classrooms demonstrate proficiency in California’s African-American heritage. During February, which is not only Black History Month but also the time for National African-American Parent Involvement Day, parents should ask what is being presented and why.
Our study Black Heritage as Gap Closer demonstrates through a research study what types of lessons truly embody culturally-responsive instruction during Black History Month and throughout the year. Armed with these tools, parents can effectively advocate for their children.
Let’s not let another year of ignorance proscribe the futures of our children.
