Research and Course Guides: Teach-in Tuesday companion guide: A Need for a Black Historical Consciousness

A Need for a Black Historical Conciousness

The United States has always been a racially contentious space. Attempts to mark the United States as post-racial have failed considering continued examples of racist attitudes and actions directed toward racialized people. Those even considered progressive and non-racist also have been guilty of racist behaviors. Reasons are plentiful, but Dr. LaGarrett King will explain how history is connected to some of the solutions. Dr. King will introduce Black historical consciousness and explain how the history we learn is naturally anti-Black, which influences how we understand Black people as a contemporary racialized group. He puts forth some solutions to this enduring issue.

Image information (click image for larger version)

Image Description: Congress of Racial Equality and members of the All Souls Church, Unitarian located in Washington, D.C. march in memory of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victims. The banner, which says “No more Birminghams”, shows a picture of the aftermath of the bombing.

Image is in public domain as part of the U.S. News & World Report collection at the Library of Congress. Photographer: Thomas J. O'Halloran

Dr. LaGarrett King's Writing

Articles & Chapters

When Lions Write History
LaGarrett King (2014). Multicultural Education, 22(1), 2–11.
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"Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter." —Chinua Achebe, “The Art of Fiction,” 1994.
Race is a Highway: Towards a Critical Race Approach in Economics Classrooms
LaGarrett J. King and Shakealia Y. Finley (2015). In "Doing Race in Social Studies : Critical Perspectives," edited by Prentice T. Chandler.
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This chapter attends to the gap in social studies literature concerning the nuanced ways that teachers and teacher educators can explore the nexus between Critical Race Theory (CRT) and economics.
The Status of Black History in U.S. Schools and Society
LaGarrett King (2017). Social Education, 81(1), 14-18.
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The year 2015 marked a century since Carter G. Woodson and his colleagues created the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (originally ASNLH, now ASALH), the first Black history organization that successfully "promoted, researched, preserved, interpreted, and disseminated information about Black life, history, and culture to the global community."
Once a Year to be Black: Fighting against Typical Black History Month Pedagogies.
LaGarrett King and Keffrelyn Brown (2014). Negro Educational Review, 65(1–4), 23–43.
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This study examined the experiences of three middle school teachers who created their own Black History Month curriculum. The goal was to uncover various ways in which teachers navigate or interrupt "official curriculum" that marginalizes the history of Black Americans.
Black History, Inc! Investigating the Production of Black History Through Walmart’s Corporate Web Site
LaGarrett King and Anthony Brown (2012). Multicultural Perspectives, 14(1), 4–10.
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Social and public sites are becoming a popular medium for intellectual consumption of Black history. Given the educational climate in which many students’ exposure to Black history may come from outside of schools, the authors examine how Walmart's Black History Month Web site produced simplistic and safe narratives about African American history.
Narratives of Black History in Textbooks: Canada and the United States
LaGarrett King and Crystal Simmons (2018). In "The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning," edited by Scott Alan Metzger and Laren McArthur Harris.
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The authors argue that Black history curriculum is part of a larger goal of situating Black history as a space to humanize the Black experience.
"A Narrative to the Colored Children in America": Lelia Amos Pendleton, African American History Textbooks, and Challenging Personhood.
LaGarrett King (2015). Journal of Negro Education, 84(4), 519–533.
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Numerous research studies have investigated the racist undertones of traditional history textbooks of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century. Few studies, however, have thoroughly and theoretically explored how African American history textbooks and African American educators have responded to these racist textbooks.

Books

The Curriculum by João M. Paraskeva (Editor); Shirley R. Steinberg (Editor)
Call Number: Keffer Library LB1570 .C883755 2015
ISBN: 9781433114212
Publication Date: 2016-01-20
In particular, see the chapter: "Revisionist Ontology and the Historical Trajectory of Black Curriculum" by Dr. LaGarrett King.
Link to LibrarySearch record
Doing Race in Social Studies by Prentice T. Chandler (Editor)
Call Number: e-book
ISBN: 9781681230924
Publication Date: 2015-07-15

Develop a Black Historical Consciousness

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander; Cornel West (Introduction by)
Call Number: HV9950 .A437 2012
ISBN: 1595588191
Publication Date: 2012-01-16
By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, relegating millions to a permanent second-class status,;even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Y. Davis
Call Number: On Display
Publication Date: 1999-01-26
Angela Davis's book is a complete revelation to me and a serious re-education.' Toni Morrison From the author of 'Women, Race & Class' comes a brilliant analysis of the blues which provides the historical, social and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday as the articulation of a black, working- class, feminist consciousness at odds with mainstream American culture.'
Sweet Tea by E. Patrick Johnson
ISBN: 0807886866
Publication Date: 2008-09-15
The voices collected here dispute the idea that gay subcultures flourish primarily in northern, secular, urban areas. In addition to filling a gap in the sexual history of the South, Sweet Tea offers a window into the ways that black gay men negotiate their sexual and racial identities with their southern cultural and religious identities. The narratives also reveal how they build and maintain community in many spaces and activities, some of which may appear to be antigay.
The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist
ISBN: 0465044700
Publication Date: 2014-09-09
The Half Has Never Been Told reveals the extent to which our country's success was irrevocably tied to the institution of slavery.
Closer to Freedom by Stephanie M. H. Camp
Call Number: On Display
ISBN: 0807828726
Publication Date: 2004-09-13
Recent scholarship on slavery has explored the lives of enslaved people beyond the watchful eye of their masters. Building on this work and the study of space, social relations, gender, and power in the Old South, Stephanie Camp examines the everyday containment and movement of enslaved men and, especially, enslaved women.
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Call Number: On Display
ISBN: 9780679444329
Publication Date: 2010-09-07
One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Call Number: On Display
ISBN: 9780399590566
Publication Date: 2017-10-03
"We were eight years in power" was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president."
A Taste of Power by Elaine Brown
Call Number: E185.97.B866 A3 1992
Publication Date: 1993-01-04
"I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, comrades? With these words, Elaine Brown proclaimed to the assembled leadership of the Black Panther Party that she was now in charge.
Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America by Wil Haygood
Call Number: Law Library KF8745.M34 H394 2015
ISBN: 9780307957191
Publication Date: 2015-09-15
Using the framework of the dramatic, contentious five-day Senate hearing to confirm Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Haygood creates a provocative and moving look at Marshall's life as well as the politicians, lawyers, activists, and others who shaped--or desperately tried to stop--the civil rights movement of the twentieth century.
Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington
Call Number: Hamline University
ISBN: 9780767915472
Publication Date: 2008-01-08
From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America's shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers--and indeed the whole medical establishment--with such deep distrust.
The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson by James Weldon Johnson; Rudolph Byrd (Editor); Charles Johnson (Foreword by)
Call Number: PS3519.O2625 A6 2008 LOCATE
ISBN: 9780812975321
Publication Date: 2008-10-21
James Weldon Johnson was also an editor, songwriter, founding member and leader of the NAACP, and the first African American to hold a diplomatic post as consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua. This comprehensive volume of Johnson's works includes the seminal novel Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, poems from God's Trombones, essays on cultural and political topics, selections from Johnson's autobiography, Along This Way, and two previously unpublished short plays: Do You Believe in Ghosts? and The Engineer.
Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon
Call Number: On Display
ISBN: 9780385506250
Publication Date: 2008-03-25
In this groundbreaking book, Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history--the re-enslavement of black Americans from the Civil War to World War II--in a moving, sobering account that explores the insidious legacy of white racism that reverberates today.

Readings mentioned in Dr. King's talk

Strange Fruit Indeed: Interrogating Contemporary Textbook Representations of Racial Violence Toward African Americans
by Anthony L. Brown & Keffrelyn D. Brown (2010). Teachers College Record, 112(1), 31-67.
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Recent racial incidents on college and high school campuses throughout the United States have catalyzed a growing conversation around issues of race and racism. The findings from this study illustrate the limited historical and sociocultural knowledge about race and racism provided to teachers and students through K–12 social studies textbooks.
Diaspora Literacy and Consciousness in the Struggle Against Miseducation in the Black Community
Joyce Elaine King (1992). The Journal of Negro Education, 61(3), 317-340.
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The transatlantic slave trade that caused the displacement and death of untold millions spanned nearly four centuries. Our understanding of this African Holocaust comes not only from modern scholarship and its representation in school texts and children's books but also from tales, narratives, and traditional music, and fictional literature. This article focuses on ideological representations of the Middle Passage and how slavery began, as depicted in classroom textbooks utilized by public schools in the state of California.
“Be Real Black for Me”: Imagining BlackCrit in Education
Michael J. Dumas & kihana miraya ross, (2016). Urban Education, 51(4), 415–442.
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The authors put forward a theorization of a Black Critical Theory, or what might be called BlackCrit, within, and in response to, Critical Race Theory, and then outline ways that BlackCrit in education helps us to more incisively analyze how the specificity of (anti)blackness matters in explaining how Black bodies become marginalized, disregarded, and disdained in schools and other spaces of education.

Baldwin by James Baldwin; Toni Morrison (Contribution by, Editor)
Call Number: On display at OSF library
ISBN: 1883011523
Publication Date: 1998-02-01
Baldwin's essay, " A Talk to Teachers" was cited by Dr. King. That essay is included in this book.

Teach-in Tuesday companion guide: A Need for a Black Historical Consciousness