1 Introduction

Research has exposed a pro-White American narrative largely silent on race in textbooks, standards, and classrooms (Shear, 2015). Social Studies, in the U.S., continues to largely incorporate a pedagogy that avoids an inquiry-based understanding of race (Chandler, Branscombe & Hester, 2015). Black Americans are often introduced as enslaved people in the Civil War. They then disappear for a hundred years before showing up during the Civil Rights Movement and then magically racism ends and Barack Obama is president. There is often no mention of 1619. There is no continuation of the histories of Black people in the United States. Essentially Black histories lack complexity in US classrooms (King, 2020). The most commonly taught Black histories topics are taught as islands, lacking any connections. By doing this our children are robbed of the opportunity of seeing how these events shape societies today. The ultimate goal of the book is to demonstrate, through examples that can be used, how to teach Black Histories through rather than about. In order to do this, the chapter authors use a Black Historical Consciousness framework as a guide in their instruction.

Brief Overview of Strategy Implementation

This book is the culminating part of a project of workshops on Black histories and geographies that spanned over a year and a half, from December 2021 through September 2023, thanks to a couple of grants that enabled the Center for Geography Education in Oregon (C-GEO) and its partners to run six workshops around the state of Oregon and included taking 14 teachers on the Civil Rights Trail in parts of Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia, that focused on using primary sources to teach Black histories and geographies. Many of the attendees participated in the process of creating this open-source electronic book of K-12 lesson plans using primary sources (and the Library of Congress analysis tools) to teach Black histories and geographies while decentering the teacher’s voice. There were three stages to this project. The initial stage of the institute included two workshops. One was in Portland and the second in Coos Bay, at the site of Oregon’s only confirmed lynching of a Black Oregonian. The second stage of the institute was a 6-day trip to Georgia and Alabama in which 14 “core” teacher participants traveled to significant Civil Rights sites and museums in order to gain a deeper understanding about the history and geography of the Civil Rights Movement.

The 6-day trip portion was the one portion of the project that did not include use of TPS grant funds. This portion was funded by C-GEO. The third stage of the institute included implementing the project portion in which participants were writing chapters for a “reader” (E-book) on Black Histories and Geographies that included primary sources and analysis from the Library of Congress’ analysis tool. Additionally, during this stage we ran 4 more workshops, focusing on analyzing primary sources and BIPOC histories, for new teacher participants, throughout the state, in geographically diverse areas (i.e. Portland, Lincoln City, Talent, and Bend, Oregon). During the course of the grant, in addition to the workshops and stipends provided for book chapter reviewers, the grant allowed us to bring in expert speakers, provided travel funding to be able to reach school districts in geographic areas that we often have not been able to reach.

Our partners included the following: Social Science Specialist at the Oregon Department of Education, The Oregon Historical Society, The Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE), Civics Learning Project, Coos History Museum, North Lincoln County Historical Museum, Talent Historical Museum, and the High Desert Museum. We also want to thank all the educators who put in hours of reviewing and providing feedback the authors’ work (their names are listed after the Table of Contents page. Additionally, Dr. Carmen Thompson was a key consulting contributor throughout the process of our workshops and E-book framework construction.

The social science specialist of the Oregon Department of Education helped facilitate each of the workshops and to assure book chapters (from the E-book) are aligned with Oregon ethnic studies integrated social science standards. The Oregon Historical Society provided access to their primary source collections and support training to use their resources through their expert librarians and archivists. The OJMCHE and Civics Learning Project provided professional development sessions on Black history, geographies, and alignment with the ethnic studies standards throughout phases 1 and 3 of the project. Additionally, each of the museums listed and the Oregon Historical Society) provided resources and locations for us to hold workshops.

At the six workshops that took place throughout the state of Oregon, educators ranged from grades K-12. The secondary teachers were primarily social studies teachers. A few were language arts teachers. Participants also, included some school district administrators, specifically a few district administrators that oversee the social studies curricula.

Decentering the Teacher’s Voice: Teaching “Through” Black Voices Rather Than “About” Black Histories

In order to bring more voices and perspectives into a story the teacher’s voice must be decentered. While understanding the responsibility teachers have in the primary source analysis process, it is also critical for teachers to avoid spending the majority of the time teaching about (i.e. centering their own voice) and rather focus on teaching through Black perspective by having students read and listen to members from Black communities speak about their histories and experiences. Teachers should also provide a more robust and complex presentation of Black histories. The framework shared in this book does this and has the potential of disarming the biases discussed in the proceeding sections. Ideally, primary sources from Black voices should be used whenever possible. As a framework to bring in a more rounded teaching of Black histories, stories, and voices LaGarrett King (2020) has identified a Black Historical Consciousness Framework (Table 1.1). For these reasons, we asked that chapter authors use this framework’s dimensions in their chapters. Each chapter uses one or more of the dimensions in the lesson plan discussed.

Chapter Formats

Each lesson chapter includes a similar format. The chapters begin with an introduction that provides a chapter overview. Within this introductory overview, each chapter author explains their interpretation of teaching through Black histories rather than about black histories and how the chapter does this. That is followed by a framework section that provides an overview of how this fits into a Black Historical Consciousness. The chapter then turns to an overview of the pedagogical applications applied in the chapter (i.e. analyzing primary sources and the lens used, etc.) and how this fits into teaching through rather about Black histories.

Each chapter includes a completed lesson plan template (Table 1.2) and the lesson narrative, which provides the essential and supporting questions, featured sources, and performance tasks. The chapters conclude with ways the activities can be adapted or extended and will reiterate how you are teaching through rather than about Black histories for this topic and why this is important.

Chapter Overviews

The remainder of this book consists of 13 chapters. The next chapter provides suggestions on primary sources analysis. After that we share 11 chapters of model lessons on teaching Black Histories using various dimensions of the previously discussed Black Historical Consciousness framework. The chapters consist of three middle school chapters, and eight chapters dedicated to high school lesson plans. In the initial middle school chapter, Gricelda M. Harshbarger has students exploring primary resources that highlight the resistance efforts of Black women throughout history. Amit Kobrowski, next, demonstrates how students can use primary sources to explore the prevalence of racism in Oregon’s laws before statehood and the actions of resistance and resilience by a free Black Oregon businessman, named A.H. Francis, who lived and operated a business in Oregon for several years. The third middle school lesson, which comes from Lisa Colombo, again highlights the Portland Black Panthers, as students investigate the media’s portrayal of them and how that portrayal influenced community opinions.

The remaining lesson plan chapters are high school examples. Kristen Grosserhode has students investigate Ethiopia’s story through Ethiopian sources during a unit on New Imperialism in order to flip the constant narrative of European dominance. In a chapter that has students exploring the United States’ racist past and its impact today, Murray Carlisle has students exploring the question, How do African Americans make social change? In the third high school chapter, Nick Tayer shares a case study on a small town that has students exploring Oregon’s Back Exclusionary Acts. In the next chapter Karli Olson has students looking at various dimensions of the Black Historical Consciousness framework in an inquiry lesson on children foot soldiers. This is followed by Rebecca Eisenberg’s chapter, in which students explore primary sources to learn about the Black Women’s Club Movement. In the second to last high school chapter lesson, Tabitha Richards provides examples of how localized primary source investigation can teach Black Histories. The seventh high school lesson is a chapter by Lynesy Turner, in which students explore the systemically racist impacts of various US presidential administration’s War on Drugs policies on Black Americans. In the final chapter, Charles Williams provides a lesson in which students explore the Tuskegee airmen’s pursuit of equity in a US society that continued to present many roadblocks for non-White citizens. We end the book with a concluding chapter that provides additional resources on teaching Black histories and primary sources. While sharing our vision for future projects within this E-book.

References

Chandler, P. T., Branscombe, A. & Hester, L. (2015). Using authentic intellectual work and critical race theory to teach about race in social studies. In P. T. Chandler (Ed.), Doing race in social studies: Critical perspectives. (pp. 153-169). Information Age Publishing.

King, L. J. (2020). Black history is not American history: Toward a framework of Black historical consciousness. Social Education, 84(6), 335-341.

Shear, S. B. (2015). Cultural genocide masked as education: U.S. history textbooks’ coverage of indigenous education policies. In P. T. Chandler (Ed.), Doing race in social studies: Critical perspectives. (pp. 13-40). Information Age Publishing.