February 2024: Black History and Black Futures
At CHSSP this February we are honoring Black History Month, while also incorporating UC Davis’s recognition of February as Black Futures Month. Black Futures Month is defined as “a shared vision of the trajectory for Black life on the UC Davis campus & beyond.” This vision encompasses the sharing and learning of Black history while also acknowledging current context and continued liberation.
Featured Teaching Resources:
This second-grade primary source set features the biographies of several famous African American figures in U.S. history, including George Washington Carver, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Zora Neale Hurston, and Thurgood Marshall. Through these biographies, students learn about a variety of African American heroes whose achievements have directly or indirectly touched their own lives or the lives of others.
In this eighth-grade lesson plan, students will answer the inquiry question: “How effectively did Frederick Douglass’ 1845 autobiography respond to the claims from the 1830s that slavery was a ‘positive good?’” With the assistance of targeted literacy support strategies, students will read and analyze excerpts from John C. Calhoun’s infamous 1837 speech and Douglass’ autobiography and will determine the persuasiveness of each figure’s claims. Through this lesson, students gain an understanding of the importance of figures like Frederick Douglass to the abolitionist movement, as well as greater Black history in the United States.
This eighth-grade inquiry set examines the actions of the enslaved, free blacks, and whites who worked to bring about an end to slavery. Key sources include an excerpt from Freedom’s Journal, which was the first black-owned and operated newspaper in the United States (1827), and a lecture given by Maria W. Stewart, a free-born African-American feminist and abolitionist, who some historians believe was the first woman to stand before a public audience made up of men and women to deliver a political speech (she made the first of four such speeches in 1832).
In this lesson plan, ninth-grade students learn about W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The Exhibit of American Negroes” at the 1900 World’s Fair. Among its many offerings, the collection included photographs and hand-drawn graphs to describe the collective progress of African Americans in the years following emancipation. These documents challenged the racist beliefs of the era that labeled African Americans as incapable of contributing to the advancement of American society. Students answer the inquiry question: “How did W.E.B. Du Bois’ research challenge dominant narratives about black Americans during the Jim Crow period?”
In this eleventh-grade lesson plan, students examine excerpts from two documents: “A Call for Unity” and “A Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” While in jail after taking part in a nonviolent protest against segregation, King got a copy of a newspaper in which Christian clergymen had published a statement entitled, “A Call for Unity.” This statement criticized the Civil Rights Movement and King for provoking violence. King’s response – first written on the margins of the newspaper – became the “Letter from a Birmingham jail.” Students will cite evidence from both documents to answer the following question: “How did the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” address those opposed to the civil rights movement?” This lesson aligns with the 9th & 10th grade reading and writing literacy standards, as well as the 11th-grade history standards.
This primary source set for eleventh-grade students demonstrates how the Black Civil Rights movement served as an inspiration and encouragement to other groups – including women, Hispanics and Latinos, American Indians, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Americans, students, and people with disabilities—to mount their own campaigns for legislative and judicial recognition of their civil equality. It includes an audio recording of Audre Lorde’s reading and comment on her poems, as well as an extensive list of additional resources linked at the end.
Current Context: Youth in Action
In the wake of student protests against gun violence in the late 2010s, this current context examines the history of various student protest movements throughout U.S. history. Such groups include the Student-Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the modern Black Lives Matter movement. As members of a demographic in which not all are old enough to vote, students bring a distinct voice to the national debates regarding matters of safety, equality, immigration, health, the environment, and more.
Recent Scholarship
Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, Charisse Burden-Stelly (Nov 2023)
From Chicago University Press:
“In Black Scare / Red Scare, Charisse Burden-Stelly meticulously outlines the conjoined nature of these state-sanctioned panics, revealing how they unfolded together as the United States pursued capitalist domination. Antiradical repression, she shows, is inseparable from anti-Black oppression, and vice versa.”
Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics, Edited by Michael G. Long (Sept 2023)
From NYU Press:
“[Bayard Rustin] was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. With expansive, searching, and sometimes critical essays from a range of esteemed writers—including Rustin’s own partner, Walter Naegle—this volume draws a full picture of Bayard Rustin: a gay, pacifist, socialist political radical who changed the course of US history and set a precedent for future civil rights activism, from LGBTQ+ Pride to Black Lives Matter.”
Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean, Imani D. Owens (July 2023)
From Columbia University Press:
“As writers and performers sought to convey the terror and the beauty of Black life under oppressive conditions, they increasingly turned to the labor, movement, speech, sound, and ritual of everyday “folk.” Many critics have perceived these representations of folk culture as efforts to reclaim an authentic past. Imani D. Owens recasts Black creators’ relationship to folk culture, emphasizing their formal and stylistic innovations and experiments in self-invention that reach beyond the local to the world.”
Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Bobby J. Smith II (Aug 2023)
From UNC Press:
“Drawing on multiple disciplines including critical food studies, Black studies, history, sociology, and southern studies, Smith makes critical connections between civil rights activism and present-day food justice activism in Black communities, revealing how power struggles over food empower them to envision Black food futures in which communities have the full autonomy and capacity to imagine, design, create, and sustain a self-sufficient local food system.”
America, Goddamn: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice, Treva B. Lindsey (Aug 2023)
From UC Press:
“Echoing the energy of Nina Simone's searing protest song that inspired the title, this book is a call to action in our collective journey toward just futures. America, Goddam explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today. Through personal accounts and hard-hitting analysis, Black feminist historian Treva B. Lindsey starkly assesses the forms and legacies of violence against Black women and girls, as well as their demands for justice for themselves and their communities.”
A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity, Tyesha Maddox (Feb 2024)
From Penn Press:
“A Home Away from Home examines the significance of Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations to the immigrant experience, particularly their implications for the formation of a Pan-Caribbean American identity and Black diasporic politics.”
Half American: The Heroic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, Matthew F. Delmont (Oct 2022)
From Penguin Random House:
“More than one million Black soldiers served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units while waging a dual battle against inequality in the very country for which they were laying down their lives. The stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” And yet without their sacrifices, the United States could not have won the war.”
Mary McCleod-Bethune: The Pan-Africanist, Ashley Robertson Preston (May 2023)
From the University Press of Florida:
“Bethune served as director of the Division of Negro Affairs for the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and later as associate consultant for the United Nations alongside W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White, using her influence to address diversity in the military, decolonization, suffrage, and imperialism. Mary McLeod Bethune the Pan-Africanist provides a fuller, more accurate understanding of Bethune’s work, illustrating the perspective and activism behind Bethune’s much-quoted words: “For I am my mother’s daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart.”
Picture Books (#KatesBookClub)
Fighting With Love: The Legacy of John Lewis by Lesa Cline-Ransome. John Lewis left a cotton farm in Alabama to join the fight for civil rights when he was only a teenager. He soon became a leader of a movement that changed the nation. Walking at the side of his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Lewis was led by his belief in peaceful action and voting rights. Today his work and legacy live on. Terrific biography with rich and descriptive text and beautiful illustrations.
Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller by Breanna J. McDaniel. The first Black coordinator of children’s services at all branches of the New York Public Library, Augusta Braxton Baker grew up listening to her storytelling grandmother in Baltimore. The descriptive language is beautiful, “Her grandmother’s lilting, titling voice shaped incredible worlds…” and “Through that voice she traveled to where Br’er Rabbit laughed in briar patches and where Arthur gallivanted with Excalibur.” Baker dedicated her life as a librarian championing books, writers, and illustrators of Black stories. Fabulous read.
How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee by Carole Boston Weatherford. In 1936, eighth grader MacNolia Cox became the first African American to win the Akron, Ohio Spelling Bee. With that win, MacNolia qualified to compete at the prestigious National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, where she and a girl from New Jersey were the first African Americans invited to participate since its founding. MacNolia left her home state a celebrity—right up there with Ohio’s own Joe Louis and Jesse Owens—with a military band and a crowd of thousands to see her off at the station. But the celebration turned chilly when MacNolia’s train crossed the state line into Maryland, where segregation was the law of the land. Prejudice and discrimination ruled—on the train, in the hotel, and, sadly, at the spelling bee itself. Excellent epilogue with details on MacNolia’s life after the Bee.
Major Taylor: World Cycling Champion by Charles R. Smith, Jr. One hundred years ago, one of the most popular spectator sports was bicycle racing, and the man to beat was Marshall "Major" Taylor, who set records in his teens and won his first world championship by the age of twenty. The first African American world champion in cycling and the second Black athlete to win a world championship in any sport, Major Taylor faced challenge after challenge, including the grueling Six-Day Race, a test of speed, strength, and endurance. Major powered through exhaustion, hallucinations, and racist abuse from fellow riders, who tried to crash his bike throughout the competition. Educator resources designed by the Indiana State Museum can be found here.
Someday is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-Ins by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. More than a year before the Greensboro sit-ins, a teacher named Clara Luper led a group of young people to protest the segregated Katz Drug Store by sitting at its lunch counter. Clara led young people to “do what had to be done.” Perfect for elementary students in encouraging them to do what is right and stand up for what is right, even at great cost. Clara Luper taught her students the steps of nonviolent resistance - Investigation, Negotiation, Education, and Demonstration. Many opportunities to support the story with primary sources. And who doesn’t like a great teacher story?
There Was a Party for Langston by Jason Reynolds. Back in the day, there was a heckuva party, a jam, for a word-making man. The King of Letters, Langston Hughes. His ABCs became drums, bumping jumping thumping like a heart the size of the whole country. They sent some people yelling and others, his word-children, to write their own glory. Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and more came be-bopping to recite poems at their hero’s feet at that heckuva party at the Schomberg Library, dancing boom da boom, stepping and stomping, all in praise and love for Langston, world-mending word man. There was hoopla in Harlem, for its Renaissance man. A party for Langston.