The Long Civil Rights Movement: Using Black History(ies) to Teach for Racial Justice

• In Event: Black History Past and Present: Theoretical and Practical Considerations for Teaching and Learning Black History

Abstract

Many discussions of Black history in social studies classrooms focus upon three distinct happenings—the institution of slavery, reconstruction, and the 1950s-1960s civil rights movement—and occur most frequently during the month of February. Although these three eras are substantial in the trajectory of Black history, and Black History Month can serve as a powerful pedagogical tool to discuss racial history (King & Brown, 2014), students are often left with inaccurate assumptions about Black bodies and Black history. For example, students mistakenly assume that Black history, like much of the “heroic” narrative found in U.S. history textbooks (Loewen, 2007), entails the story of progress from slavery to freedom, from racism to full acceptance and equality in a post-civil rights world. Such assumptions have led many students to believe that racism no longer plagues American society, and that the arc of Black history does not exist without a cause-and-effect relationship with isolated acts of White supremacy. Furthermore, the isolated teaching of these events masks two essential components about Black historical narratives and thought. First, racism had never been about the isolated acts of a few Whites; instead, racism existed as an entire system of beliefs and mores that formed the backdrop of a pervasive racial ideology in American society (Brown & Brown, 2010). Additionally, Black histories and their trajectories define an historical timeline that supersedes that mere inserting of Black experience into a predominantly White-centric, U.S. narrative. These popular occurrences in the teaching of Black history do more to highlight moments of convergence between Black historical narratives and traditional White history and less to distinguish the unique historical traditions found in Black history.
In this paper, we examine ways in which social studies educators can teach beyond this problematic narrative of Black history in the secondary classroom. This manuscript explores the ways in which American History teachers can utilize Black history(ies) to teach beyond the typical scope of Black History in the classroom. The authors acknowledge that racism is an ever-present and permanent component of American society and American schooling (Bell, 1992), and as a result, this paper seeks to challenge its impact in the social studies classroom. Grounded in principles of Critical Race Theory (CRT), the authors discuss the political use of historical racial narratives (Dowd Hall, 2005), or counter-stories (Delgado, 1995), to push the boundaries of the master historical narrative that persists in most social studies classrooms (Swartz, 1992). By engaging students in investigations into what Theoharis and Woodard (2003, 2005) have coined the “Long Movement” toward civil rights, this work intends to assist teachers in presenting a Black history that is anti-oppressive, agentic, linked over time and not the collection of seemingly disconnected events that happen to include Black bodies. Moreover, the authors connect this work to the larger project of dismantling White supremacy, decentering White history and promoting racial justice through the social studies classroom.

Authors

• Andrea M Hawkman, University of Missouri

• Antonio J. Castro, University of Missouri - Columbia