And I’m so happy to welcome historian Michael Hines whose work focuses on educational activism of black teachers and students and communities through the Progressive Era of the 1890s to the 1940s and he’s the author of a wonderful book called A worthy piece of work the untold story of meline Morgan
And the fight for black history in schools thank you so much for being with us here tonight thank you so much for the invite it’s lovely to be here right on what a fantastic book I know I learned so much and there were so many pieces of meline Morgan’s story that I
Had never learned before and I also just resonated deeply with so thank you so much for this incredible text I’m excited to dive in so what encouraged and inspired you to highlight meline Morgan’s Story how did you first learn about her um so I first came to meline Morgan uh
During the process of writing my dissertation um I got my PhD in 2017 uh from lyola University Chicago and this book really grew out of uh that work um so when I sort of started looking for a dissertation topic uh I had a couple of things front of mind um
First I wanted to study something local um Chicago has this incredibly Rich Heritage when it comes to Black History um you can think about the contributions the cities made to black music you know art literature um I wanted to find some of the educational roots of some of that
Um and then second I wanted to tell a story um that looked at black education before Brown versus Bor so there’s a lot of incredible scholarship that’s been written on those sort of like tragedies and triumphs of the of the post Brown world of of the desegregation era School
Integration but my interest as a historian was a little bit earlier um so the early 20th century late 19th centuries with those sort of um things in place those sort of interest in place I started looking for a topic and you know just really listening because in Chicago we have this really great
Tradition of black historians um people like timuel black um who just passed at the age of of 102 uh in 2021 um and you know just these amazing historians with this deep knowledge of Chicago’s black history and so uh I was fortunate enough to sit with a man named
Christopher Robert Reed um he was a professor at Roosevelt University he wrote some of the first histories of black Chicago and you know I really heard mine Morgan’s name for the first time sitting in his office just trying to keep up with the stories he was
Telling right um and you know he started talking about this teacher and I thought to myself you know this can’t be possible right she’s she’s doing black history work in the 1940s and this is before culturally sustaining pedagogy this is before you know culturally relevant teaching this is before
Multiculturalism this is before black studies um and and Multicultural studies it’s before school integration right um and so that interested me and that question of like how did that happen really sort of drove you know my dissertation and and what became the book yeah yeah yeah I’m so glad you
Wrote this book I realized the huge gap in my understanding of of the struggle for black education when when I read it um sort of I you know I’d read stuff about uh Woodson and then stuff about uh the McCarthy era attacking black studies but there’s that Gap in
Between there that I really didn’t know much about so I really appreciated that and I was hoping you could give us a biolog a biographical sketch of mine and Morgan her her early life her education and her organizational experiences that helped equip her with the skills that
She would go on to use to become a champion for teaching for black lives in her own day yeah so um so I think mine Morgan I think first and foremost she’s a she’s a child of the Great Migration so she’s born in Chicago um but her
Father John Henry Robinson is a southern migrant from West vir Virginia um her mother Stella May Dixon is what Chicagoans call the old settler which is sort of the term for black folks who can trace their families back you know to the 19th century um and she grows up on
The south side of Chicago where a majority of the new migrants in The Great Migration land um in this area that’s known as the black belt um but during this period it’s getting renamed by black folks themselves right and they’re giving it the name Bronzeville
Um which is what it’s known as today and and I think it’s you know really important that ability for self-determination and self-fashioning um that we’re seeing grow in this period um on the south side of Chicago and in bronzville so she grows up seeing black folks telling their own stories right
Whether that’s through the black press like the Chicago Defender uh the Chicago B you or whether it’s through literature I mean you know this Langston Hughes coming through the city wendeln Brooks Richard Wright you know um whether it’s through cultural institutions um you know you can think about the
George Cleveland Hall branch of the Chicago libraries um I think you know the Chicago Defender had this quote referring to Black Chicagoans that said you know they make their own wit um their own music they form their own views they live their own lives they do not constitute The Fringe of White
Society they are the nucleus of another Society right um so she’s growing up in that really rich tradition uh and then at the same time she’s going through formal uh systems of schooling where those stories are completely left out so you know when she goes to high school at
Englewood High School which is back then uh was uh predominantly Irish uh you know she’s getting no black history there when she goes to the Chicago normal College um to to learn how to become a teacher this you know uh ostensibly Progressive institution where she trains um she has teachers tell her
That they’ve never heard of a contribution to American history being made by a black person right um when she goes to Northwestern where she gets her master’s degree right it’s the same thing um so I think it’s really like the tension between those two things um you
Know the the stories that she knows are there um and then you know these structures that are telling her that you know we’ve never heard of this right this doesn’t exist um that really start to to drive her to think about these things in a new
Way right on wow that’s so so powerful and I love how you’re lifting up self-determination telling our own stories and our own words and I love that meline Morgan really grew up in the spirit of that and that then permeated and transitioned into her work in her teaching and so you write white
Supremacy and anti-black racism were deeply embedded in the curriculum of America schools in the early 20th century particularly in history and social studies so can you give us examples of how schools and textbooks portrayed black history starting from the Reconstruction Era through to the early 20th
Century I’m sure so um I think first of all it’s important to to set the context right when we’re talking about race and portrayals of race in textbooks in the early 20th century they’re really they’re reflecting and they’re reinforcing the racism that’s just prevalent in the broader Society right
So white supremacy and anti-blackness were endemic to society in the early 20th century right from from science we can think about social Darwinism um the rise of the Eugenics movement um it’s in popular literature right the first Tarzan book comes out in 1912 um we can think about early film uh
The Birth of a Nation premieres in 1915 right um it’s everywhere it’s it’s down to children’s songs and nursery rhymes right I have a a two and a half-year-old um you know who just started singing uh 10 little monkeys jumping on the bed right and I was like oh God cuz I know
Where that song originated from right and I know it was 10 little Negroes except the word wasn’t negro right um so it was everywhere it was it was very very prevalent it was in the water and then supporting all of that and reinforcing all of that um is the
Official knowledge that’s portrayed in schools so black people are being characterized as as lazy as unintelligent um as violent um um as predatory as lascivious I mean um and all of those images help to to sort of underg Oppression right whether it’s oppression in the past like slavery or
Whether it’s ongoing oppression like lynching and segregation um so you know I’ll say there’s a there’s a quote it was it was very interesting to do the research for this book because I had to do a lot of reading um in very old textbooks um and I pulled a couple of of
Examples um the first is a description from of slavery um from Daniel be’s America’s roots in the past which is in 1927 and he says you know on the tobacco plantations of Maryland Virginia and North Carolina the slaves were usually treated kindly the climate was healthful and the labor of growing tobacco was
Easy the work was so simple that it was well suited to unskilled workers even when a overseer was employed to direct the slaves the work was more or less under the Master’s observation and he usually lived on his Plantation year round in Winter the slaves life was easy
Their work consisted of clearing a piece of land cutting wood for the fireplace in the Master’s mansion and caring for the livestock so I mean those are the those are the sort of portrayals right um you know a second one um from Ruth and Wilson West the story of our country
Which was uh in the Chicago schools in 1935 um they called the Klux Clan uh a secret society Who quote uh dressed like ghost in mask and long white robes rote around at night warning the terrified neg to behave themselves and to let government Affairs Alone um so
These are the descriptions that were just par for the course um throughout the period that we’re talking about wow uh I mean it hurts my heart and what what is even more painful is to see some of those types of portrayals coming back in our schools like in Florida now
Official state curric culum saying that slavery was of quote personal benefit yes right I mean to to that mindboggling ignorance can only be understood when when you know the history of US curriculum that this is not the first time that this right everything you write about they’ve developed these
Types of ideas for a long time right right Echoes of past curricula yeah no doubt uh and you write about the the early history of of uh this black history movement and you say that quote Morgan’s efforts in the Chicago schools were part of a larger wave of scholarship and
Activism aimed at the preservation and promotion of black history in the early 20th century an intellectual and social project that historian uh pitro dog bovie terms the quote early black history movement so I was hoping you could talk about some of the highlights of that movement to teach
Black history uh even before mateline Morgan’s time yeah I mean I think that this movement goes back I mean black Educators have been teaching black history for as long as black people have been in this country right um but formerly in the schools I think we can
Trace uh the movement back to the work of people like Edward a Johnson in the late 19th century um who writes a school history of the Negro race in like 1891 92 um you know people like Leela Amos Pendleton um a teacher in DC who wrote A Narrative of the Negro in
1912 um so this is a movement that’s been ongoing and I think what’s different about uh the 1920s to 1940s that sort of solidifies it into this movement is that it becomes really far-reaching really deep more extensive uh better organized um and you know a name that we’ve already you know said
Tonight I think is responsible for that right it it’s in large part the result of Carter G Woodson um in the association for the study of negro life and history um and so Woodson puts together this you know this machine right and it’s still going it’s still
Going strong right uh but this machine for the documentation and the dissemination of black history and the association launches you know academic journals right the Journal of negro history um is holding annual meetings um it’s putting scholarship out there um you know they’re working in the schools through the Negro history bulletin um
You know and of course the the effort that most people are are familiar with which is the Negro history week movement that becomes you know black history month that we know today um and so that’s really the engine that’s driving this movement during mine Morgan’s time
And she’s a part of the association uh and she really leans on the association um because I think it’s it’s important to recognize that while you know Carter G Woodson was the head of the movement right the people who were out in the trenches doing the work dayto day were
These black teachers the majority of whom were black women right um who are really carrying this and interpreting it um and and giving it to to kids and to communities I love that shout out to the black women teachers and I just appre appreciate you forting yes I just appreciate you for
Lifting up that and and lifting up the everyday ordinary people that do the organizing and that are part of the struggle and that are leading the struggle in so many different local context and so I want to talk a little bit about the Intercultural movement so this Intercultural movement that got got
Going in education in the runup to World War II that you talk about in the book was really fascinating to us so can you explain how World War II helped create the conditions that led to the Intercultural movement yeah yeah so um by the 1930s I think the early black
History movement is is grown it’s expanded but it’s still very much contained within segregated black schools and what changes I think in the late 1930s or early 1940s is that there’s another movement called Intercultural education that provides this window for black teachers to bring some of their thinking to Bear uh and
Into sort of the mainstream of American education so uh the Intercultural education movement it’s also called the tolerance education movement really begins post World War I and then really gets going in the leadup to World War II uh and it’s concerned mostly with bringing together the Sons and Daughters
Of mostly white immigrants right Germans Irish Italians polls right um into this sort of United American whole right and as World War II you know is looming on the horizon and the threat of fascism is there um you know Educators start picking up on this this need for
Interculturalism in the schools um and what black teachers I think immediately recognize is that there’s an opportunity here right America is trying to portray itself as you know the beacon of democracy equality inclusivity right and black teachers are going okay we can use that right we can
Use that same rhetoric right um and we can turn it to argue for the importance of black history as part of this broader American story right um and so they’re basically calling out the hypocrisy of what’s going on and I think that happens a lot during during the second world war
Whether you want to talk about um you know the first March on Washington movement With A Philip Randolph whether you want to talk about you know um the movement to desegregate the military um you can look at civil rights pushes in nursing in you know War work um you know
There’s so many I think that the civil rights movement during the 40s really lays the groundwork for what’s going to follow in the 50s right it’s no surprise that um that school integration becomes this issue in the early 1950s because this groundwork has been being laid in
The 30s and 40s so um she’s really taking advantage of that yeah yeah no doubt I I love how Morgan saw this opening like oh you all want to talk about different cultures but you don’t want to include black people that’s not going to work so
Let me open up some space here and we’re going to include black people in the many cultures that make up this country and she went farther to actually create a curriculum that Educators in Chicago could use to teach black history um I think she called called it the
Supplementary units for the course of instruction and social studies um and so I was hoping you could talk about how she launched this movement um and what was in that curriculum and and you know some of the struggles she had to go through to get it implemented yeah yeah so um what
Morgan does I mean is really recognized that there’s this interest convergence and I say that really pointedly because you know I can talk about this more later but interest convergence being one of the underlying principles of of critical race Theory right um but there’s this interest convergence
Between white policy makers um you know at the district level who are looking to shore up patriotism and then black Educators who are looking for Justice right and representation and so she develops this proposal for a black history curriculum um and it really takes every part of the existing sort of K8 curriculum
Um and adds material to it right so if the students are studying ancient history then she has you know material on dhom and other African kingdoms right if they’re studying explorers then she has material on eston or Matthew Henson or or Petro Alonzo right um but it’s more than just additional material right
It’s something that’s written from a different perspective so you know looking at her units on slavery they’re the complete opposite of this sort of whitewashed version that was existing before her right she she’s including descriptions of the Middle Passage she’s uh including descriptions of the violence that underlay the slave system
Um she’s describing resistance to slavery in the form of slave revolts and uprisings um so there’s this very different approach and very different perspective uh that informs what she’s doing that comes from this tradition of this early black history movement and it’s really sort of a counternarrative
To what’s going on in the official curriculum um so I think that’s the the important thing to to get is that it’s really sort of cutting Against the Grain right on yeah I could see that and I just just to follow up on that I
Wanted to um ask you a little bit more about how widely this supplementary units were were uh adopted by Educators how were they received by by teachers and students um how widely were were they were they implemented um so she succeeds uh in getting the city of Chicago to adopt the
Supplementary units uh in 1942 um and so that means that it’s uh used officially in about 353 schools in the Chicago area um but the question of how these units get used is really interesting for me as a historian and as a a former K12 teacher and current you know teacher at the
College level um because there’s always this difference between the curriculum that’s intended and the curriculum that’s enacted right um there’s always a difference between what gets mandated and then you know what teachers actually teach so it’s difficult to know precisely how Faithfully teachers use this curriculum um so I don’t want to
Act like this curriculum comes in and magically upends white supremacy in the Chicago schools right it doesn’t do that I’m sure that a lot of white teachers simply you know close their door and continue teaching whatever they want to teach without incorporating it um but even with that right there’s a lot of
Evidence um about the reception in Chicago and outside of it you know we have records of black students um you know one of the fun parts of writing this book was hearing the voices of black students from the archives saying things like you know since I have studied negro history every good word
About Negros and good thing they do makes me feel swell you know um just at one time yeah at one time we were not allowed to do nothing but work night and day and now we are doing things just as important as anybody else um was this
Girl named Sandra Clark who was in the seventh grade you know back then um of course that’s a suud them because I had to make up names for for everybody um and then we have white teachers and students who are giving the same kinds of reactions so I start the fifth
Chapter of the book with a story from a teacher named Grace markwell um who is in Brookfield right outside of Chicago and she reads her students this story about Yan mats slagger and the Sho lasting machine um and her students are just their minds are blown by the fact
That there are black inventors right um and then they’re even more blown when she tells them that a black woman wrote this story about a black inventor right um and so her fifth graders eventually like beg her and beg her and beg her and she lets them write a letter which I put
In the book um asking mine Morgan to come to their school and and talk to them right um so we know those stories and we know a little bit about the national and international reception that her work gets I mean thousands of people you know black white teachers administrators parents uh soldiers
Fighting in the Second World War I mean are you know sending her letters requesting copies of these units so um you know I think her work is a success um you know widely um but it’s always uh it’s always difficult to see um exact the parameters of of how far she
Got wow it’s great to see the the kind of progress she was able to make in that time uh it’s a shame that her curriculum was only an addendum to the regular course rather than you know the Core Curriculum and I think that’s a struggle we’re still in today right to make
Ethnic studies a graduation requirement or part of the Core Curriculum rather than just an elective or an add-on so this this history just is empowering to me to hear that this is this struggle has happened before and we can continue in that Legacy right so thanks for sharing those
Stories thanks yes I love that and I love that you’re also just really lifting up the the power and how profound this curriculum was for so many people and how that gets lost in history textbooks so can you talk about some of the obstacles to the implementation of the supplement supplementary units into
The Chicago public schools and the eventual end of the Intercultural movement what was the role of McCarthyism and the Red Scare and ending it and just as a quick note we have a lesson to teach about McCarthyism because it’s either missing or mis represented in most textbooks and we see
Those same McCarthyism era tactics and chilling effects on teachers today so can you give us a little bit of that historical context yeah sure um I think you know one of the major obstacles to to her movement and to the supplementary units you know as I mentioned a little
Bit earlier is that many teachers especially white teachers in 1940s Chicago were simply not ready to teach this material right no matter what was mandated uh they weren’t going to do it um and some who were willing to do it were underprepared right they never been taught this material before themselves
Um and I think that you know as we’re speaking about Echoes of today right um you know we can talk about teacher training right and and equipping teachers to be able to have these types of discussions um you know in terms of what actually spells the end of of her
Curricular experiment though I think it’s that the convergence of interest between white policy makers and black Educators that sort of held up during the War years begins to fade after 19 4 so we have black soldiers and white soldiers coming back home to Chicago and almost immediately starting this new war
With each other right um the 1940s late 1940s is this period of hidden violence in the city of Chicago where you have all of these smallscale race riots because blacks and whites are fighting for housing they’re fighting for jobs they’re fighting for space in public parks they’re fighting for schools right
Um and there’s this really violent white backlash uh to the fact that black folks have made some Headway during the War years um and so the mayor at the time gets ousted because he’s too friendly to the black community uh the superintendent at the time has his house
Firebombed um because he’s trying to end uh a transfer system that allow white parents to get out of schools and flee schools um if the schools became too black right um and then like you said on the national level we’re seeing the the switch from fighting fascism to fighting
Communism right and so anyone who’s deemed to be a little too far left is liable to be targeted right um and so in that sort of context I don’t think a project like meline Morgan’s was was able to thrive really yeah so you gave us so much here
To discuss so I’m really glad that there’s now time to digest all that we have been talking about so we’re going to head to breakout rooms in just a second well welcome back uh Dr Hines we appreciate you being here with us absolutely thanks you enjoy
The study the the breakout group I did I did I got to sit in on a conversation it was awesome thanks yes and I saw your note in the chat about teaching in PG County yeah I got so excited when when Prince georgees got mentioned I taught
At Bladensburg High School that was my the first school I ever taught at so shout out to Prince George all right I love it I I first started teaching in Washington DC in anashia just right on the the border to PG County so Y and
That that’s where I am now so we’re all all connected uhuh have to talk about friendship public charter schools I for them for a couple of years in Anacostia wow yes yeah what a small world yes it is no doubt no doubt well we had a couple more questions for you before we
Let you go um this book just is so rich and there’s so so many lessons to dig into but I really appreciated uh something that you wrote in the introduction and that I wanted to follow up on and you said uh few black women in early 20th century gained access to the kinds
Of credentials often associated with historical scholarship and you said that black women acted as quote historians without a portfolio um so I was wondering if you could say more about that and why why we don’t know and why most students aren’t taught about these incredible figures like meline
Morgan yeah so um the the phrase historians without portfolio is from a um scholar named perro dagbovie um who’s a historian of the early black history movement um and like you were saying it it means that uh there are these generations of women before uh sort of
The mid 20th century who are doing all of this incredible work this historical work um but are going unrecognized because they don’t have the phds The Graduate degrees the the offices on college campuses um and sort of the status symbols that are associated with you know quote unquote professional
Historians right um and so I think you know there are a lot of reasons that madin Morgan story is sort of overlooked but I think a lot of it is the intersections of her identity right um so first she’s a black person in America right second she’s a black woman in
America um and then third I think is really important for for this story is she’s a classroom educator um so on the first side right we know that too often the historical narratives that we tell are still centered around uh what historians call great man history right
Um and we know that even that impacts even right black historians right so even in the historiography of the black Freedom struggle there’s this tendency to search out uh charismatic male leaders individual charismatic male leaders right and Center those stories so whether it’s king or whether it’s
Malcolm or whether it’s huie or or whomever right um and then the people who don’t fit within that Paradigm right whether it’s because of their gender whether it’s because of their sexuality whether it’s for other reasons um they don’t get the attention that they deserve and so I’m thinking right now
About pioneers like Paulie Murray right or Bayer Rustin um who are so critical right to the movement who are just now getting their due um and then in the history of of the black educational struggle it means that we often Center men like you know WB de boys or Carter G
Woodson uh Booker T Washington right those are the names that grab sort of the most headlines and the most attention um even though it’s these thousands of black women um who are out here for the for the most part enacting those Visions right and creating their
Own Visions um but they get left out um and then you know lastly I would say you know tied to that for Morgan is the fact that she’s a classroom teacher right uh and that’s a group that often you know still gets overlooked in our conversations about who are you know who
Has power who are historical actors when it comes to education I taught um education policy for several years at lyola University Chicago while I was doing my graduate training and I would start the semester off by asking my students and these are all teachers and teacher candidates right in the teacher
Ed program I would ask them you know who makes education policy right who who affects change in in schools and they would tell me everyone but teachers right uh I almost had to drag the word teachers out of them right they would say you know nonprofits and government agencies and politicians and lawmakers
And parents and and and right and way down at the bottom of the list even for them was teachers um and so I think that you know the stories of uh classroom teachers um being centered is something that needs to happen more in in the histories that we tell um to to incoming
Educators to Educators who are already out in the field um because it it really changes the dynamic yes yes yes to all of that and just love how you’re lifting up the power of classroom teachers and the knowledge that they hold and continue to pour not only into the curriculum and
The pedagogy but also the policy the activism the organizing that we can learn so much from classroom teachers and you also made me think about this quote from Monique kson as she said black women they know what they know and they know that they know it and that
Sticks with me uh particularly as you’re lifting up the power and the intersections of that experience that then lends them to a type of knowledge um and so one thing that you also wrote you said her Reliance so meline Morgan’s Reliance on scholarly communities outside of the boundaries of the school
System including local history clubs libraries sororities and civil rights groups highlights the robust networks of support and sustenance that remain although in different forms in the present and that makes me think about the teaching for black lives study groups right we just heard from two facilitators to leaders there’s many
Leaders on the call and thinking about Zen education project and rethinking schools Educators and black lives matter at school Educators that I’m in community with DC area Educators for social justice shout out just all of these groups of folks that I get to learn with outside of uh the the
Academic space and all of the teachers that I get to learn from their pedagogy and so can you talk about the networks of support that meline Morgan leaned into and and how did that shape her how did that shape her activism and her teaching yeah um so I think your your
Spot on um one of the the big takeaways from this project for me was the power of these networks of teachers that are that are outside of the formal system so you know in the 1920s 1930s when madelin was coming up it was you know black teachers associations it was um very
Powerfully uh black sororities and fraternities right um it was the association for the study of negro life and history you know the NAACP the Urban League right um it was women’s clubs uh like the nacw and the ncnw um so you have these layers and layers and layers of organizing um sort
Of on top of one another that she can draw from um and I’m really interested in what that looks like today and you’ve named some of the the ways that that’s still out there I think that um you know like Lee Patel says right the sort of study and struggle are always being
Intertwined right so there’re these spaces that are still existing um where people are doing the work of studying the hard work of studying um and it’s informing the struggle so I think out here in in the Bay area where I am now I think of things like the Oakland black
Teacher project right um when I was in Chicago it was you know it was about the surge Institute um which is this sort of like amazing Network of black and brown Educators um and then you know to hear you talk about the study groups through
Zen Ed and and some of the the um programs in DC um yeah it’s just one of the reasons that I was really happy to be here because this is the sort of thing that is continuing that Legacy and and continuing to build those those networks of
Support right on are there are there um are there other teachers like meline that we should know about I mean and if you think of other ones later we can always add them to the email we send to teachers but if there’s some off the top that we should begin to look
Into I’d be curious yeah um I mean so many so many uh teachers need their do and and need their stories written um you know so when I was doing this archival work in Chicago um you know going back to the networks I was sort of um mapping out who Madeline was in
Conversation with right who are her mentors who are her you know Associates who who is she running with right and that’s everybody from like the bridge club at the church where she you know plays on on Sundays you know up to like formal organizations right um and so I
Ran into just an amazing group of women so you talk about model blowfield who’s uh the first black principal in the Chicago Public Schools who’s really like a older sister figure to meline um or anida cockroll um who’s the head of f Delta Kappa sorority the the chapter
That meline is in um and then there’s this whole you know this scholarship is just starting to take off um but there’s a whole unexplored uh world of black Librarians and archist that still need their stories told as well um so there’s women like Vivien harsh um and charlot
May Rollins um Vivian harsh was the head librarian at the George Cleveland Hall branch of the Chicago Public Library Charlotte May Rollins was um was the children’s librarian um and they both you know made this library in Chicago this Hub and this Bastion for black history and it’s where meline goes to do
A lot of the research um for the curriculum that she writes right so you know the idea now um that’s being called Liberation archives right who are the who are the arch iives and Librarians and archivists that are creating these Liberation archives that are then fueling The Wider movement um and giving
Those women their due um I think is really important so shout outs to to the Librarians um and then nationally I mean there are women Jane Dabney Shackleford um Constance Ridley hlip um Vina G higin batham I mean it’s I could go on but these are these are all women that need
To be explored need to um need to have their stories told too they’re all part of the same movement and the same historical moment yeah oh that’s that’s great I know we have a lot of researchers and Educators right here with us that will dig into some of those names I I love
It yes I was trying to scribble down all of those names and I hope that we all can just give Librarians their flowers too I think about so many experiences going to to the library and it opening up New Perspectives for me and new possibilities so I just am appreciative
And grateful to you for lifting that up as part of this Rich tradition and this Legacy and so on that note mateline Morgan once said knowledge is only Power if it’s put into action love that quote so what lessons can we gain from how madaline Morgan organized and how does
Her story better help us understand how to build a struggle against current legislative attacks on black education and black history so so I think the the easiest answer the most simple answer is that it it really highlights the power of teachers um and of teacher networks like
We’ve been talking about and um so this work that we’re doing here is is a continuation of the things that people like mine Morgan were doing you know almost a century ago right um and so if nothing else I think we can be hardened by the fact that you know this is not
The first time that we’ve seen this stuff right so um Jesse you were you were saying um when we were talking about racist curricula right that some of the things that that were going on in the 30s are really like echoed in some of the things you know like Florida
Stuff today so when you see you know um slavery portrayed as something where enslaved people learned you know quote unquote valuable skills right um knowing that that’s not the first time right and that this isn’t random either right it’s not a mistake it’s not random it’s not
Just one sentence right uh it’s part of an attack that’s been ongoing for generations for decades right as part of um a historical narrative that that’s been there for a long time and that we have to fight back against and push back against um so I think drawing from the
History in that way is important um I think another thing that really stood out for me is that you know better curriculum can’t be additive right it can’t be something that’s at the margins um you know the reason why Morgan’s curriculum didn’t um didn’t take is is because it didn’t replace what came
Before so it was too easy for policy makers um to sort of abandon it when the political winds shifted uh and when their priorities shifted and you know she even saw that after the war and she worked for a bill in Illinois that would have codified black history as a
Requirement for uh graduation in her home state and you know unfortunately when that bill went to you know went to the house it was modified the language was modified right and it went from a must to a May or a must to a can right
If they want to and we all know um what happens after that right it makes it largely symbolic it takes away any of the teeth right um so I think that you know this work that we’re doing has to be done from the ground up we it can’t
Be around the margins right we can’t sort of nibble around the margins we’ve got to uproot um the curriculum and and replace it from the ground up yeah well thank you for doing all this research and letting us all in on this vital history like so many people
Here this evening are not just studying this history passively but but doing exactly what mine said in terms of putting it into action right and and there are people here not only uh teaching anti-racist curriculum but also part of the movement to teach truth and fight against these laws and and I think
We’re all stronger in this struggle now that we’ve learned this history and I hope that everybody will go get this book immediately and read the details uh and really get to know mateline Morgan in a way you can only do reading reading this book so thanks so
Much for for being with us this evening right thank you too and and thanks to everybody who came out um I really appreciate the opportunity
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