Education For Life Academy
Where Black History Lives!
The Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Curriculum
Unit Overview cont.
Fortunately, the story doesn’t end here. Despite the relentlessness of their slave masters, enslaved (and free) Africans, as well as countless white Americans and Europeans, exhaustively rejected this new philosophy of racism as propaganda, having no basis in fact. They opposed slavery on all grounds on which it was supported; presenting scores of empirical evidence that backed their position. Brilliant intellectuals and spokespersons like Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnett, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, David Walker, and Sojourner Truth among many others, stood as living contradictions to the doctrine of African inferiority. White Abolitionists in both Europe and America, such as the legendary John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, Thaddeus Stevens, and Charles Sumner, made careers of ending slavery and the new racist philosophy it spawned. They were accompanied by European historians such as Volney and Massey, whose works affirmed that black Africans were the orchestrators of ancient Egypt, and that Africa was the progenitor of civilization. Volney and Massey cited physical proof as well as the testimony of the ancient Greeks, who openly credited Egypt for much of their knowledge. Together, these individuals, and scores more, helped to counter the racist propaganda that sought to make slavery a permanent institution in the Americas, and racism a dominant world philosophy. They declared slavery morally indefensible and a mockery to the ideals of American freedom and equality and the principles of the Enlightenment. Their work became the ideological foundation of the Civil War that ultimately destroyed the institution of slavery.
After slavery, the racist propaganda that had been developed to justify slavery continued to define social relations and shape American culture. It had been ingrained in the minds of society for hundreds of years. Over time, many people – white and black – came to accept this racist indoctrination. As a result, the public education system that was created after the Civil War to educate the newly freed Blacks, or “Freedmen” as they were called, utilized textbooks and outdated materials that upheld the racist philosophy that had undergirded slavery. Although Africans were now free, the stamp of inferiority followed them into freedom. They were equal citizens in the eyes of the Constitution, yet they were still "niggers" in the eyes of the larger white world, in the South as well as in the North.
Segregation permeated public education and reinforced a racial hierarchy in which separate and degrading facilities reserved for Blacks marked their supposed inferior status. Images in popular culture portrayed Black people as mentally, physically and morally inferior. Through comically exaggerated lips, eyes, noses, teeth and other physical features, racist caricatures were created to humiliate and represent Blacks as coons, pickanninies, sambos or bumbling idiots. Through the new education system and popular representations, Americans were re-indoctrinated in white supremacy in the decades after slavery. Yet throughout the twentieth century, waves of Black consciousness emerged to combat this propaganda, including the Harlem Renaissance, the Garvey Movement, the early Black Studies Movement of the 1930s and 1940s, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Black Consciousness Movement and Independent Schools Movement in the 1970s through the 1990s. This ongoing struggle sought to restore the image of Africa in the minds of Blacks, and redeem Africa’s place in world history. The Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Black History curriculum is a part of this legacy.
This Intro Unit probes education as propaganda and the ongoing struggle to combat it. These classes demonstrate Black peoples’ perpetual battle against racist propaganda and mis-education, and the relentless war still being waged to uphold the philosophy of white supremacy. Yet many conservatives believe that only a flattering history of America and Europe should be taught to prevent generations of white students from experiencing "white guilt" over the deeds of their ancestors, and to exempt America and Europe from responsibility for past and present genocide, racism, discrimination and exploitation of the non-white world. Fortunately we are now in the Information Age. Through our Standing on the Shoulders of Giants curriculum we present the true facts of history because we certainly cannot afford to repeat it.
Page 2 of 2
Thaddeus Stevens was a Radical Republican leader and one of the most power members of the U.S. House of Representatives during Abraham Lincoln's
presidency. He fought to abolish slavery and helped draft the 14th Amendment. After the Civil War, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and other Radical Republicans actively advocated for former slaveholder lands to be redistributed to formerly enslaved Blacks. Their story is seldom told.
Steve Biko, South African author and activist,challenged the propaganda that African physical features were ugly and gave birth to the Black Consciousness Movement, which inspired the Black is
Beautiful Movement in the U.S., demonstrating the pan-African connection between black South Africans and Black Americans. Despite the propaganda, Black Americans and Africans on the continent have long supported and been inspired by each other's liberation struggles.
This is a popular button from the "Black is Beautiful" Movement of the 1970s-80s. Black is Beautiful steadily built momentum until it became the proud cry of blacks throughout the diaspora, especially in the United States.
Introductory Unit: The Politics of Education – Enlightenment or Propaganda?
