The statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond during a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020. Credit: Ron Frazier via Flickr
This administration is turning back the clock on advances made during the racial justice uprising that began in June 2020.
Their policies are unabashedly racist. Just like the Daughters of the Confederacy, they are plastering names and images of white supremacists everywhere — erasing alternative visions of who “we” are and could become. They are returning Confederate names to national parks, military bases, and ships — and bringing back Confederate monuments. All while censoring people’s history in schools and libraries.
Therefore, let’s invite students to consider why an accurate knowledge of history matters and help them critique and reclaim those stories. Here are resources related to public monuments and historic sites — starting with the upcoming class with award-winning writer Clint Smith.
How the Word Is Passed: Don’t Miss Class with Clint Smith
In the Epilogue to his book How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith writes:
The history of slavery is the history of the United States.
It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it.
This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories.
One of the ways this foundational history enters our memories is through the classroom. That is why we are delighted How the Word Is Passed will be available in a YA edition. Join us online for a book launch on August 25 at 7pm ET. Smith will be interviewed by Jesse Hagopian and Jessica Rucker.
All of our Teach the Black Freedom Struggle classes are free, with ASL interpretation provided and PD certificates offered. Assign this class for your high school or teacher education students.
Twenty-five attendees, randomly selected, will receive a copy of the book.
Lessons on Monuments
In “How We Remember the Struggle Over Slavery in Public Places,” students read about sites of memory in How the Word Is Passed and imagine how to commemorate what occurred there. They then compare what they create to how the respective site is currently commemorated and described by docents.
This lesson gave my students the chance to become “public historians.” What I appreciated most was how this work made space for the humanity of the enslaved — especially the children. We paired the lesson with Clint Smith’s Crash Course videos on African American history. — Patrice McCullough, High School Social Studies Teacher, Jamaica, New York
Also see the lesson, How Should Rosa Parks’ Legacy Be Memorialized? Students learn the fuller story of Rosa Parks’ life and use that information to critique her statue at the U.S. Capitol and determine how they would memorialize her legacy,
National Monument Audit
Monument Lab conducted a national audit of more than 50,000 monuments. They found that more than 50 percent honor people who were enslavers. Only 6 percent are of women. The first monument to an individual person of color (Martin Luther King Jr.) was dedicated in 2011. In the introduction to the report, the authors note:
We understand that the more durable monuments do not best represent U.S. history, but are instead the result of the most abundant material resources and hegemony in its many forms: racial, ethnic, religious, gender-based.
We see that the monuments standing on our streets or in our parks have not stood there for time immemorial.
Our built environment is in motion; it always has been in motion. The National Monument Audit calls us all to do our part to change our commemorative landscape and to better capture the multivocality of our country in our public spaces.
The report is available online and includes an educators guide by Prentiss Charney fellowy Rabiya Kassam-Clay.
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