Black History For The 2021 Generation
“Those who can not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it.”
-George Santayana
Once there was a great explorer named Christopher Columbus who discovered America while searching for a new trade route west to China, but landed in the already inhabited Caribbean. He did most of this for personal greed and power for the Spanish and yet gets an American National holiday even today. Then, 200 years later the Pilgrims escaped from religious persecution to this new land and were counseled and aided by the Indians there in order to survive. They had a big dinner and were best friends. However, Colonial times really doesn’t talk much about their Indian friends…at all. This is probably because later they were massacred and run out of their own land and even now are having their human rights violated and land desecrated by the American government. Black people show up on plantations as slaves where they are forced to labor, deprived of education and dehumanized for 400 year, until Lincoln signs a piece of paper that freed them all…except not actually! Civil Rights was a movement, that began just about 60 or 70 years ago led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It sought to end the continued separation and inequality between races. He gave a great speech that everybody loved and now there’s peace. The End! Oh, wait…only he wasn’t the only leader of import, he was assassinated and villainized in his time, and news flash, we are far from equality or peace.
Unfortunately, some version of the above is the history in American history books that we have been fed in schools and through our American culture for years. But for the children of 2021, this story does not compute. They wake to a world where glaring injustice and inequality prevails across the systems of our great land, and if not properly educated become either another cog in that ignorant systems survival or worse, a victim of it. That, parents and educators, is where we come in. We are charged with learning the truths that have come to pass and in turn educating ourselves and our children to BE THE CHANGE. That begins with a bigger conversation. One that involves how this land we inhabit was first invaded 500 years before Columbus by the Vikings, that Native American were brutalized for generations in an attempted genocide, that slavery was replaced by our prison system, Jim Crow laws, and another 100 plus years of systemic racism across housing, employment, education, and medical care to the plights of today. No more tip toeing around each other, or pretending not to see the uneven land upon which we all stand. THAT is how we make America great, and not AGAIN, for it has never been, but FINALLY UNITED and EQUAL for all.
Here in New Orleans, we have some great historical resources, to African-American, French, Latin, Hispanic, Irish, and Native American history. The culture here is literally an interwoven quilt of all these ancestors and yet few of us can say that we have been properly educated in all or most of theirs stories. Advocacy knows no race and no time. Anyone can begin and if we begin to seek out the information, face the atrocities, understand how they came to be, how we got here, we can finally deliver a generation who has the chance to change it all. That belief is part of the reason I became am educator. I refuse to regurgitate the limited and altered history we were delivered. Introduce our children not only to European explorers and black slaves but instead to warriors, inventors, doctors, lawyers, writers, artist, and laborers of every race, gender, and nationality whose blood, sweat and tears truly built and advanced this country this Black History month and the rest of the year as well. Representation matters, the hidden figures of our history matter, and we must bring it all to light through books, movies, and art education as well. As parents, you are your children’s first teacher. Our experiences in this country are not the same! The have never been! However, the fact of our shared humanity is. Teach them to see the wrongs that have been done, as they see the results that persist, not some fairy tale with clear heroes and villains that had some cut and dry end, so we can come together to find a way to right them. That our pasts be buried, so their futures can truly be free.
Here are 3 cultural museums located right here in New Orleans:
Studio Be (pictured above)
-located on Royal St. Open Wed-Sat 2pm-8pm
bmike.com
Backstreet Cultural Museum (excellent for Mardi Gras season)
-located at 1116 Henriette Delille St. Open Tues. - Sat 10am-4pm
backstreetmuseum.org
Lower 9th Ward Living Museum
-located at 1235 Deslonde St. Open Tues.-Sun 12pm-5pm
For more historical locations visit: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g60864-Activities-c49-New_Orleans_Louisiana.html