Black Education / Schools : Brave black students who paved the way for schools and college to teach Black History.

nilevalley

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Dec 18, 2014
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It's been over fifty years since young black voices raised in protest and union across America for colleges and high schools to include Black Studies in their white curriculum studies. Very little was
mentioned about the contributions Africans Americans made to this nation. The protests paid off
and now practically every school high school and college level has a Black Studies program.

But now in 2016 you hear many blacks complaining when black history is mentioned to them. They don't feel it's necessary to talk about it anymore, I remember a few years back I was trying to talk
to my brother-in-law about the period of slavery when he stop me short and asked why was I talking
about "something like that" and he accused me of being a "joy killer".
This is becoming common. Very common, just to think we have gone from protesting and holding strikes on college campus to have Black Studies included in schools courses to being indifferent or bit angry
when black history is mentioned. Oh well, below is one example of the gallant black people of the
late 1960's who paved the way for Black Studies to be accessible in schools across America.



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FOCUS ON MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION, FALL, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, 2002, THEME ARTICLES, CURRICULUM, MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION, POLITICS, RACIAL EQUITY,SEGREGATION AND DESEGREGATIONSeptember 25, 2002 — 1:31pm
1967: African American students strike, survive police riot to force change

A student protest 35 years ago can be seen as the birth of multicultural education in Philadelphia
by Ron Whitehorne



In 1967, African American students all across the nation’s college campuses were shutting down classes and sitting in administration offices to demand Black Studies and the recognition from university faculties that history is not synonymous with the doings and viewpoints of white Europeans.

The students were part of a broader movement for “Black Power”– for an end to the exclusion of African Americans from those institutions that control their lives.

Schools in big cities like Philadelphia were a case in point. By the late 1960s, the Philadelphia public schools were predominately African American, but policy-making remained largely in the hands of white elites and politicians. The overwhelming majority of African American students attended segregated schools, with inadequate resources and a curriculum that reinforced the racial and social status quo.

Students met with repression

Inspired by the activism on the campuses and in the community, African American high school students here organized to demand changes in their education.

On November 17, 1967, 3,500 students walked out of their classes and marched to the Board of Education to present their demands. The students called for the teaching of African American history, the right to wear African dress and the renaming of several predominantly Black high schools after African Americans who have contributed to our history.

They were met by what many observers later characterized as a police riot.

Assembling peacefully at the Board of Education headquarters at 21st and the Parkway, the students were confronted by two busloads of police, led by then Commissioner Frank Rizzo. Participants reported that Rizzo led the charge, telling his troops to “get their Black *****.”

The result was that 22 people were seriously injured and 57 were arrested. The police acted on the initiative of Rizzo, whereas the reform-minded superintendent, Dr. Mark Shedd, reportedly favored negotiations with the students.

While many leaders in the City spoke out against the unprovoked and /putal attack on the students, others defended Rizzo as the man who was “keeping the lid on” in Philadelphia. Rizzo rode this reputation to two terms as Mayor, becoming a darling of the Right across the nation.

Fruits of the struggle

The School District did respond positively to many of the students’ concerns. Following the student demonstration, an Ad Hoc Committee for the Infusion of African and Afro-American Heritage was created. The Committee made a series of recommendations which became the basis for School District policy.

In April 1969, a directive from the Deputy Superintendent of Instruction announced that “the policy of the School District of Philadelphia requires every school to provide a well-rounded program of African and Afro-American history and culture for every child as an integral part of his total school experience.” A nine-point plan for implementation included staff development, curriculum reform, courses for parents, and the production of instructional materials.

The District published a range of resource guides, model curricula, and other instructional material. Local activists and historians as well as scholars with national reputations were involved in creating these materials. A curriculum specialist position in African and Afro-American Studies was also created.

In 1971, Rizzo made good on a campaign promise to sack Superintendent Shedd and put the brakes on many of the reforms of his administration, including the infusion of African American studies. But more recently, the District has publicly reaffirmed its commitment to the inclusion of African and African American studies and prioritized these goals in the curriculum.

The struggle today is to translate the goals identified in the curriculum into pervasive and effective classroom practice. But the inclusion of African American experiences and perspectives is now School District policy. For that we need to honor those 3,500 students who, thirty-five years ago, had the courage and vision to stand up for their rights.






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very insightful.

unfortunately, the attitudes of today will prove detrimental to the WHOLE struggle. Today, you see fewer and fewer activities taking place during Black History Month...because of the lack of participation, due to a lack of interest. yes, there is some interest...you have a handful of "pockets of interest," where they are as enthusiastic as those students were in 1967...I acknowledge that. but, generally speaking, there are so many more that have lost interest, it's disheartening, to say the least.
 
very insightful.

unfortunately, the attitudes of today will prove detrimental to the WHOLE struggle. Today, you see fewer and fewer activities taking place during Black History Month...because of the lack of participation, due to a lack of interest. yes, there is some interest...you have a handful of "pockets of interest," where they are as enthusiastic as those students were in 1967...I acknowledge that. but, generally speaking, there are so many more that have lost interest, it's disheartening, to say the least.
You are so right. Maybe it will take a massive crisis in the national black community to shake us back to our senses and make us rethink about our past again. As much as I disdain Donald Trump.
I wish sometimes he would win. After he takes Black America through the fire, I bet we all couldn't run fast enough
to pick up those black books and journals and we probably would vow never to neglect our history again.
 
[QUOTE="nilevalley, post: 949508, member: 55344" You are so right. Maybe it will take a massive crisis in the national black community to shake us back to our senses and make us rethink about our past again. As much as I disdain Donald Trump.

I wish sometimes he would win. After he takes Black America through the fire, I bet we all couldn't run fast enough to pick up those black books and journals and we probably would vow never to neglect our history again. /QUOTE]

Isn't the crux of the grief we face both individually and collectively due to the fact that most of our people, especially our leadership is in the main comprised of somewhat inept, very obviously totally lost, baffled and confused Coloureds, Negroes, Black NEGROBOTS as opposed to fully conscious Africans, as highlighted by the manner in which most of us label ourselves as Black, when don’t we actually mean that we’re of African ethnicity?

The FACTS with regard to the so very spiritually and intellectually crippled state of the NEGROBOTS running/ misruling our communities and countries is an obvious recipe for disaster isn’t it, especially as within the very organizations/groups aspiring to lead our communities and countries forward in the 21st century, aren't even our alleged luminaries/ intelligentsia STILL so very obviously trapped in their alleged “BLACKNESS/ the totally lost and confused NEGROBOT zone” as opposed to being anywhere near being debriefed enough to be consciously embracing their African ethnicity?

Isn’t the truly critical factor here how WE consciously discern/view and label ourselves as opposed to how the rest of Humanity generally, the melanin deficient VERMIN/ literally MAD’s/MUTANT ALBINO DEFECTIVES/ POWER ELITE/ LUCIFERIAN LUNATICS inc [and their lackeys cohorts of varying ethnic origins/hues specifically, who have been/still are decimating this planet for over 2000 years now]; choose to label/tag us?

When WE still don't educate/rationally program ANY/ALL of our people to consciously acknowledge our African ethnicity [as opposed to alleged Blackness/how BLACK is Halle, Barack and many of the so diversely mixed peoples of African ethnicity] as a blessing as opposed to a curse; aren't we extremely unlikely to even begin to fulfil our main responsibility; to deduce and construct the socio-economic vehicles that will initially adequately secure our communities and countries, creating the possibility of us eventually collectively advancing and competing with the rest of Humanity in the 21st century?

Why are we the only ethnic group on the planet using a colour [Black as opposed to our original source, the African continent] to label our activities in every area of human activity as opposed to getting rid of one of the more obvious chains put in place over the last 500 years [as underlined by their being more than twice the number of USA citizens who label themselves as Irish and Swedish Americans, than the current population of Ireland or Sweden combined] whereas shouldn’t we ALL be consciously embracing our African ethnicity?

How many of us are aware of the fact that in every census to date of our community in the USA with regard to how we would like to label ourselves, African has beaten Coloured, Negro and Black by a considerable margin, as a rationalization of the fact that we cannot be as specific as the English, Irish, Swedish, Italians, Greeks and Germans etc with regard to which part of our original home [the African continent we originate from], we’re from?

What use are the majority of “Black Studies/Black History/Black Culture courses and books if the people constructing them are genuinely unaware of the fact that language is the operating system of the human brain/CPU in a similar manner to Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 are for computers; which is why doesn’t one have to be consciously selective with regard to how/what words are used to disseminate uplifting TRUTHS/ KNOWLEDGE as opposed to negativity to all of our people?

For example no one fears being Africanlisted, or Africanballed out of a clique, or organization isn’t something anyone worries/complains about, losing consciousness or all electrical power for whatever reason isn’t an Africanout, nor does anyone state that they’re not wearing a piece of clothing because it is African with dirt, it isn’t standard practice to lament when things have gone horribly wrong that it is a really African Day and no one has ever been jailed because there has been conclusive proof that they are an Africanmailer, whereas doesn’t substituting word BLACK into all of these contexts place one on a sliding scale of very very inconvenient GRIEF?

It is not too late, is it, for the African collective’s so consistently inept leadership with regard to being far more carefully selective with regard to the words we utilize to describe ourselves, in that aren’t ALL of our programmes going out as African Studies/History/ Culture Lecture Series with regard to the African experience from an African perspective, a pragmatically rational upgrade, thus at least starting out on the right foot as opposed to continuing to automatically inject very easily avoidable negativity/rubbish as standard, into the minds of the people we’re aspiring to uplift?

I am not just being pedantic, this point is very important as underlined by the glitzy looking Black Cultural Archive which opened in Brixton/South London [June 2014] not being the African Cultural Archive [THEY must just be laughing at us when even our alleged intelligentsia/elite are genuinely STILL so naive/totally baffled and confused].


BTW what do you KNOW about the Olmec Heads?
Flattop.jpg
Isn’t ANYONE who genuinely believes they are not programmed graphically illustrating that their programming is COMPLETE?
 

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