It wasn’t until his senior year of high school that Dylan Holley began to learn about all the facets of Black history. Not just snippets focusing on pain and suffering and victimization but full stories also featuring the contributions, triumphs and joys of, as he put it, “people who look like me.”
“In U.S. history (class), we’re taught to view ourselves a certain way,” said Holley, 17, a recent graduate of Maynard Holbrook Jackson High School in Atlanta.
Last fall, then a rising senior, Holley signed up to take the Advanced Placement African American Studies course, which was being tested out at Maynard Jackson High as part of a national pilot.
“I learned a different narrative when it comes to the history of my people,” he said. This narrative highlighted the African kingdoms that thrived before slavery and colonization, for example, as well as the activists who’ve challenged systemic racism through the modern Black Lives Matter movement. It highlighted the nuances of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech – and the stubborn persistence of the racism that speech 60 years ago described.
Explore the series:MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ speech looms large 60 years later
Opportunities such as these to learn a more inclusive version of the country’s history are, after decades of advocacy and activism, becoming more common in the nation’s public schools. And already, they’re being stamped out.
Republican political leaders in all but a few states (44 total) have since 2021 proposed legislation or policies restricting lessons about race and racism in the United States – what many inaccurately decry as a graduate-level framework called “critical race theory.” As of June, 18 states had such laws on the books, according to an Education Week analysis.
The classroom effects have been immediate. Civil rights activists both dead and alive have had their stories erased from social studies classes in the name of protecting children’s…
Read the full article here
