Popular culture mainstays like television commercials or your favorite advertising jingles never made it around to rendering the label of “patriot” to African Americans. The same is true for grade-school textbooks, small-town Independence Day celebrations, and propaganda seeking America’s “best and brightest.” When I was growing up, the terms “patriot” and “patriotic” were hardly, if ever, used to name or describe Black people. My children and my students likely share this experience. As a student and teacher of history, I’m saddened by this because Black people are indeed patriots. Acclaimed artist Amy Sherald believes this, too. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, she explained why: “I don’t think there’s anybody more patriotic than a Black person,” she said. “We’ve been here since the inception of this idea of what ‘American’ is. We are deeply ingrained in the fabric of this country. This country would not be if it was not for us . . . . I’m the definition of an American.”

In The Progressive, I’ve documented the importance of teaching Black history, whether it involves learning about the origins of our nation, Juneteenth, the Reconstruction era, or the history that informs critical race theory. A result of the discomfort that can come from learning history and experiences that run counter to popular American mythology is backlash, and there has been backlash: the crescendo being an Executive Order meant to restore “truth and sanity to American history.”

Whenever race is mentioned in a conversation and someone asks, “Why is everything about race?” or “Why must you always bring up race?” it’s an indicator that they’re ignorant of the role race has had in America’s founding and its continuance, as well as racism’s impact on people. It largely has to do with the refusal of many to acknowledge—much less teach in schools and society—the ugliness that is the history of the United States. Much of the blame is on white people, conservatives and liber...

The state of Georgia murdered Troy Anthony Davis by lethal injection on September 21, 2011. He had been convicted of killing a police officer and sentenced to death. At trial, numerous witnesses for the prosecution said Davis was guilty. Davis’s legal team appealed, citing recanted testimony from seven of the nine prosecution witnesses due to coercion by police. The pleading identified a different culprit altogether. Scores of celebrities and activists, including Harry Belafonte, the Reveren...

Years ago before I began teaching, I became friendly with a maintenance crew member on the job. He was a brotha, but what connected us was our shared religious beliefs. We would engage in water cooler talk about faith, sports, the weather, and current events. But after about a year of this, the conversations stopped. Soon after, I no longer saw him. Before his departure, we had a conversation in early 2010 lamenting the situation in Haiti. The nation had just experienced a devastating earthquake

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. His father, Michael King Sr., when inspired by a visit to sites associated with the German protestant reformer Martin Luther, changed his name to Martin Luther King Sr. and his son’s to Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. would become a scholar, a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and an activist on behalf of not only Black people but all of the oppressed. His efforts resulted

For years, the trend in K-12 education policy circles has been to push public schools to offer more courses teaching students about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), sometimes at the expense of humanities courses. This is particularly true for the mix of history, civics, and the social sciences that we call social studies. Many states require high school students to take computer science while cutting or deemphasizing social studies requirements. And presidential

There is a war against Black history. Educators didn’t enlist in this fight, but their classrooms are now battlegrounds. Efforts to silence Black history are part of an overall scheme by conservatives to erase inconvenient truths, such as white supremacy, racial capitalism, and systemic racism—as these truths explain many, if not most, of the challenges we face as a society. For that reason, educators must teach these truths and defend the right and obligation to teach them. Another truth tha

Growing up, I attended a small, private Catholic school in Camden, New Jersey. Although the school was different from the local public schools, what I did find to be similar was what was taught about history. Private school kids and public school kids always compared their experiences and the things they learned. I realized quickly that the history I learned wasn’t different from what my public school friends were learning. We were taught that George Washington was heroic, that Abraham Lincoln

Since last January, thirty-six states have taken steps to limit the teaching of racism, white supremacy, and white privilege—concepts that conservatives have mistakenly labeled as critical race theory (CRT). With the support of rich Republican donors, fourteen states have passed bills that outright ban discussing these topics in the classroom. But, as much as they amount to an attack on free speech (and on history itself), the anti-CRT effort may not actually make that much of a difference in t

“Helping kids of color to feel they belong has a negative effect on white, Christian, or conservative kids,” Mary Beeman, the campaign manager for a Republican school board candidate in Connecticut, said in October. Beeman’s comments were made during a virtual forum on the subject of critical race theory (CRT), and to what extent it was or wasn’t being taught in public schools. Beeman later apologized for what she called her “poorly worded” statement, which, she claimed, was shown “out of content."

State takeovers of struggling school districts have always been controversial, and more states are getting out of the business of directly running local schools. But in Camden, New Jersey, the state takeover of the city’s schools shows that not everyone is ready to abandon this vestige of the education reform movement. ImpactED, an evaluation and research center at the University of Pennsylvania, recently released a report finding that Camden public school students in grades three-to-eight have

During the Obama Administration, thousands of public schools were closed due to being deemed “low performing” because of their students’ test scores. This was part of Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, and it resulted in school closures in cities across the United States—including Chicago, Cleveland, New York City, and Philadelphia—in a misguided attempt to improve the education of Black and brown children. In 2012, Race to the Top caught on in New Jersey, where state officials determined that

A few weeks ago, a verdict was rendered: Derek Chauvin, guilty on all three counts for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May. Floyd’s family — and, by extension, Black America — saw the system hold a police officer accountable for killing a Black person. The verdict is a modicum of justice at best, and an anomaly at worst. Sadly, the work of fighting police brutality is far from over. We are still waiting on the criminal legal system’s handling of the recent police killings of Dau

Black History month is a time to commemorate the accomplishments of Black people. It must also be a time to reflect on the strivings of Black people—because, sadly, many of the same battles launched generations before continue to be fought today. One of those enduring battles is the systematic erasure of Black teachers from U.S. schools. An enduring legacy of the Brown v. Board decision, which ordered the racial desegregation of white-only schools, is that it led to the mass firing of Black

Sadly, school closure announcements in the city of Camden, New Jersey, are all too common. Currently three schools—Cooper’s Poynt Family School, Ulysses S. Wiggins Family School, and Harry C. Sharp Elementary School—are slated to be closed. While the goal of these closures among school district officials and policymakers is to improve the educational opportunities of Camden children, the current course for achieving that goal is the wrong one. It was said previously by then-governor Chris Christie

President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has been an absolute disaster for public education and especially historically marginalized students. She cancelled an Obama Administration policy regarding school discipline guidance designed to lower the rates whereby Black children are suspended from school and referred to law enforcement, even using racist pseudoscience to justify her action. She fought against union representation, specifically by attempting to nullify the role

My grandmother was born and raised in Camden, New Jersey. When she was young, she would accompany her parents on family trips to where they had grown up: Melfa, Virginia, a tiny enclave at the bottom of the Delmarva Peninsula, between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It was on one of those trips that she learned why her parents had decided to make New Jersey their home: Melfa, at that time, was still very much in the Jim Crow South. When she was sent to the local store to pick up

In the middle of a global pandemic and a racial reckoning—with schools removing the names of racist namesakes, baseball players taking a knee to protest police brutality, and federal agents kidnapping protesters in Portland—Tom Cotton, a U.S. Senator from Arkansas, has decided to take up the cause of preventing The New York Times’ 1619 Project from being taught in America’s schools. The critically acclaimed 1619 Project, spearheaded by Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, is a compilation of essay

President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are determined to reopen the nation’s schools for full-time, in-person learning, going so far as to threaten schools with defunding if they fail to do so. Sending students back to school every day, as Trump demanded, is especially dangerous for Black children because Black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. An analysis by APM Research Lab this month found that African Americans have died from COVID-19 at twice