Concerns about Black history education are rising as the 100th year of Black History Month celebrations arrives amid what advocates describe as a discouraging federal climate for teaching and publicizing African American history in the United States. Reporting ahead of the milestone year points to a new wave of free resources and curriculum efforts even as some educators and local governments weigh whether they could face repercussions for what they teach.
In that context, longtime activist and Campaign Zero executive director DeRay Mckesson said, “States and cities are nervous about retribution from the White House,” adding, “So even the good people are just quieter now.” Mckesson’s comments came as civil rights organizations, artists and academics prepare lectures, teach-ins and new books spanning nonfiction and graphic storytelling for the centennial year of the observance.
The reporting ties the heightened anxiety to President Donald Trump’s second-term posture on how African American history should be taught. It says Trump, after proclaiming February as National Black History Month, began his second term by claiming that some African American history lessons are meant to indoctrinate people into hating the country. Black history advocates, in turn, said they viewed the administration’s actions and their chilling effect as “scary and unprecedented,” including changes connected to Black history at national parks.
The reporting also describes a specific example that advocates pointed to: the removal of an exhibit on slavery in Philadelphia last month. Organizers and scholars framed those actions as part of broader pressure on how public history is presented and supported, even as the current political climate energized efforts to engage young people with what they described as a full telling of America’s story.
Amid the concerns, Campaign Zero and Afro Charities launched a campaign aimed at supporting classroom teaching for the milestone year, with Mckesson saying the groups are working with more than 150 teachers around the country. Mckesson said the effort is designed to ensure that young people “continue to learn about Black history in a way that is intentional and thoughtful,” and the reporting describes the campaign as focused on expanding access to educational materials produced with leading Black scholars.
The milestone year is also marked by new storytelling projects connected to Juneteenth. The reporting describes a new graphic novel retelling of Opal Lee’s story that Angélique Roché has been writing after accepting what she was called a “once-in-a-lifetime” invitation. Opal Lee, described as the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” is credited with helping drive federal recognition of the June 19 holiday commemorating the day when enslaved people in Texas learned they were emancipated.
Roché’s book, “First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth,” is described as being released Feb. 10 and as drawing on Roché’s archival research, phone chats and visits to Texas, including time with Lee and Lee’s granddaughter, Dione Sims. In comments included in the reporting, Roché said, “There is nothing ‘indoctrinating’ about facts that are based on primary sources that are highly researched,” and said she hopes the book reaches libraries and classrooms. The reporting also says Roché used the novel to spotlight less-known historical figures, including William “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald, described as Texas’ first Black millionaire, and Opal Lee’s mother, Mattie Broadous Flake.
The reporting describes Juneteenth’s federal status as also shifting under Trump’s policies: it says Juneteenth is no longer a free-admission day at national parks. Against that backdrop, the graphic novel and other planned educational outreach are positioned by organizers as a way to keep students learning the historical record, including by tracing the centennial story that began with Carter G. Woodson’s work.
The reporting returns to Woodson as a starting point for understanding the present push. Woodson, born in 1875 to formerly enslaved parents, helped pioneer “Negro History Week” in 1926, and later his efforts influenced the monthlong observance. Robert Trent Vinson, director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, said Woodson believed education could empower Black people and that Woodson was disillusioned by how Black history was dismissed, according to the reporting.
Vinson described a period in which popular stereotypes, including blackface and minstrelsy, were used in place of knowledge about Black experience, and he said that helped shape Woodson’s strategy. Vinson said Woodson created educational space outside formal schooling by building Black history clubs and inserting historical lessons “on the sly” in publications such as the “Journal of Negro History” and the “Negro History Bulletin.”
As educators respond to today’s resistance, the reporting says that Vinson believes Woodson would see the backlash over Black and African American studies as an indication that people are “on the right track.” Mckesson also described today’s resistance as cyclical, saying, “We will go back to normalcy,” and adding, “We’ve seen these backlashes before,” while pointing to informal networks of Black people who have resisted in past generations.
The reporting also describes new publishing tied to the centennial. It says Harvard professor Jarvis Givens, who was teaching in London when Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders were issued, began working on a book aimed at honoring the legacy behind Black History Month. Givens’ book, “I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month,” is described as coming out Tuesday and including four in-depth essays, with the title drawn from a 1920s James Weldon Johnson poem. Mckesson said the research and book work would connect to a “living history campaign” tied to Campaign Zero and Afro Charities, with the goal of teaching younger generations how to discern fact from fiction.
Tang reported from Phoenix.