Tag: Black History Month 2021

Thank You, Black Artists!

National youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman reading her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at the Presidential Inauguration dazzled, and Shonda Rhime’s Netflix series, Bridgerton took me to an alternate reality where I swooned and laughed.

These women grew hope for the year ahead and reminded me what ‘normal’ feels like. Sending heaps of gratitude – keep making more!

Wishing you a joyful Black History Month 2021!

More inspirational Amanda Gorman poetry and music by John Batiste who brings smiles and musical accompaniment to Stephen Colbert‘s monologues.

American Black History Study Resources

“If you don’t know better, you can’t teach better.” – Dr. Bettina Love | Sierra Writers Conference 2021 Keynote Talk

For Black History Month 2021, I’ve curated a YouTube playlist and additional study resources that have been helping to fill gaps left in my public school history education. 

Every video in it is associated with longer documentaries, films, podcasts, and/or books and audiobooks, as well as museums. The last video featuring Stanford Psychology Professor, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt talks about what needs to be done to slow automatic bias within the brain.

Roughly organized along a historical timeline, the video collection includes the following topics; cotton and sugar industries, the New York Times 1619 project, early free Black communities, slavery, Reconstruction, The Lost Cause, lynching, policing, Civil Rights, Confederate statue removal, historic figures, and contemporary work on caste, racism, and implicit bias.

Additional Resources:

Biology: Race is a Myth – Interview with Alan Goodman, Hampshire Collge Biological Anthropology Professor & Co-editor of Genetic Nature / Culture: Anthropology and Science Beyond the Cultural Divide and Building a New Bio-Cultural Synthesis (PBS) | Video: Cautionary Notes on Using Biology to Infer Identity and Ancestry

There’s No Such Thing as Race (Newsweek 2014)

1619 New York Times podcast series

“Facts – The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)” Nps.gov.

“What This Cruel War Was Over The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it” The Atlantic. Coates, Ta-Nehisi 

Education, The Lost Cause & Monuments

Lost Cause of the Confederacy  – Wikipedia 

“The ‘Lost Cause’ That Built Jim Crow“. New York Times. Gates Jr., Henry Louis (November 2019)

Make It Right (MIR) Project was a multimedia campaign from 2018 to 2020 dedicated to educating the public and strengthening the media capacity of the national movement to remove and replace Confederate monuments and memorials.

“The South’s Fight for White Supremacy” The New York Times. Meacham, Jon (August 2020)

“Texas Mother Teaches Textbook Company a Lesson on Accuracy” Nytimes.com. Fernandez, Manny; Hauser, Christine (October 2015)

Lesson Plans

Abolitionist Teaching Network

Facing History and Ourselves (Lesson Plans) – Facing History’s resources address racism, antisemitism, and prejudice at pivotal moments in history.

Pulitzer Center – The 1619 Project Curriculum 

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Racism Inserted into Popular Culture

The Birth of a Nation’ Shown” Washington Evening Star

“Romanticizing Confederate cause has no place onscreen” San Francisco Chronicle.  LaSalle, Mick (July 24, 2015)

“Regarding ‘Song of the South’ – The Film That Disney Doesn’t Want You to See.” IndieWire.com, Sergio (February 2016)

Vigilantism

“When Bigotry Paraded Through the Streets” The Atlantic. Rothman, Joshua (December 2016)