How teaching Black history in schools became a national controversy

Across the country, there are ongoing controversies over how and if Black history should be taught in classrooms. Protests have ensued after a Missouri based school board dropped elective Black history and literature courses at its high schools.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

How should students learn about Black history? That question is the source of controversy and tension across the country, including in St. Louis, where a school board will soon vote on new curricula. The board faced criticism last year for rejecting the Black History and Literature classes taught at the district’s high schools. The board now says African American studies courses in the upcoming school year should be what it calls politically neutral. St. Louis Public Radio’s Chad Davis reports.

CHAD DAVIS, BYLINE: Many people might not know the name of Claudette Colvin. She’s a Civil Rights activist who was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., when she was 15. She refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman in 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks would. Colvin’s history was one of many things Zoe Abraham, a graduate of Francis Howell High School, says she learned when she took the Black History course last year. Abraham, who’s white, spoke before the St. Charles, Mo.-based school board, telling board members that she wouldn’t have learned about Colvin without the class.

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ZOE ABRAHAM: None of this was covered in any of my other history classes. There is strength and power in this history.

DAVIS: Lauren Chance, a current senior at one of the district’s other high schools, Francis Howell North, is African American. She says the class helped her get more involved in the school’s Black student union.

LAUREN CHANCE: It’s really opened me up to being a critical thinker, being able to think for myself and formulate opinions for myself.

DAVIS: The district first offered the courses after the George Floyd protest in 2020. The board…