Challenges of Teaching African American History in Secondary Schools
There are Four Perspectives in this article
Teaching the APâ African American Studies Course By Imani Hinson
Students Hunger for Cultural Knowledge By Romelo Green
Emphasizing Cultural Relevancy & Providing Different Cultural Perspective By Nefe Abamwa
Focus on Mass Struggle, Not Just the Black Elite By Adam Stevens
Imani Hinson, Romelo Green, Nefe Abamwa, and Adam Stevens
Imani Hinson, Romelo Green, Nefe Abamwa, and Adam Stevens presented on a panel at the 2025 conference of the American Historical Association. Hinson is a social studies teacher in the Howard County Maryland School District who formerly taught in Brooklyn and an item writer for the College Board AP African American Studies program. Green and Abamwa teach at Bellport High School in Suffolk County, New York and Stevens teaches at Brooklyn Technical High School. The session was chaired by April Francis-Taylor of Hofstra University and also included papers by Alan Singer of Hofstra University and Justin Williams of Uniondale High School.
Teaching the APâ African American Studies Course
By Imani Hinson
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” – Maya Angelou
Each year I start my students off with a week of lessons to understand why we study history in the first place and to get students specifically to understand why varied viewpoints are so important. This year I had my students reflect on a quote from Maya Angelou and asked them why they thought some political leaders across the United States did not think African American history was important and why they thought this history was considered controversial.
My students responded with the understanding that by learning history we can hope to not repeat it but also that learning this history does not aim to make individuals feel bad for the deeds done but rather understand the historical situations in which our country was founded and the continued history that is shaping the way our country is moving forward today. Despite the pain and suffering lived by many in this country, especially African Americans, it is important to uncover truths about our shared history. The APâ African American Studies curriculum provides students with a chance to do just that; tackle tough questions, tough realities, glean an understanding of the world that they live in today, and it gives them a chance to acknowledge a history that many of them have not learned before.
The APâ curriculum has a fantastic starting place with the African Kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, the Hausa States, and more. Students are able to do a deep dive into the history of Africa that many of them had never been taught about before. A question I get often from my students is “Ms. Hinson why are we not taught this in World History or any other history class?” The truth is that a lot of this history was unknown or kept secret for many years. In my classroom, we delve into the nuances of this history so that students understand how it differs from the traditional documents and writings they usually learn about in Eurocentric history classes. I introduce them to griots and students learn that different cultures pass down history in different ways. Much of the early history we know from African civilizations was passed down orally making it much harder for historians to uncover truths about these societies. My students learned that Christianity was in Africa before European arrival when they study about places such as Lalibela. They learn about trade starting in the 8th century along the East Coast of Africa that connect places with the Mediterranean region and Central and East Asia. Students uncover truths about the Great Zimbabwe and amazing structures, built not by Greeks or aliens, but by the local Zimbabwean people who garnered their wealth from the Indian Ocean trade routes. Timbuktu is not a fictional place, but a nation where trade, advanced institutions of knowledge, and wealth resided.
Before being exposed to this curriculum, my students were taught that Africa was backward, a continent ripe for exploitation. They saw Africa, not as the birthplace of humanity with rich cultures, but rather a place that Europeans conquered and a continent that continues to have issues to this day.
Challenging misleading notions continues as students learn about the African diaspora. Before being exposed to this curriculum, they believed African Americans had no culture and were only brought to the Americas for harsh work and enslavement because of the color of their skin. I overheard an exchange in my classroom in which one student of color was poking fun at another. A West African student asked another Black student, “Hey, where are you from?” The student responded, “Oh well, I am just Black.” The West African student laughed and said “Oh, I’m so sorry y’all don’t have any culture.” That was an eye-opening exchange. I joined the conversation and asked, “What do you mean by that?” The student explained that they never heard of any African American culture and that Black people did not know where they came from. The conversation continued:
“Well why do you think that African Americans don’t know where they come from?”
“Well, I am not sure I guess slavery.”
“Correct, but do you know about all that Black people had to do to overcome of the obstacles of enslavement? Do you know the years of oppression that then followed enslavement that African Americans continued to make strides towards crafting a new identity?”
“The music you listen to is African American culture, some of the pieces of clothing or slang that you use are African American culture. The food that you eat, a lot of is African American culture.”
“Wow I never thought about that.”
“You should take the APâ African American studies course so you can learn more about Black culture!”
The sad reality is that so many of our students think this way. They believe that Black people are a people without history and this misleading notion really stems from the fact that we have not done a good job as a society to unpack these misconceptions. In some states they still teach that slavery was a benevolent work system where the enslaved learned important skills, sugarcoating the reality of what enslavement was. Why don’t students learn that there was slavery in New York and in other northern localities? Why don’t students learn that Free Blacks and people who escaped from slavery played a crucial role in the abolitionist movement and that African Americans have fought in every war in the United States even before its inception, that 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought in the Civil War to end slavery and the right to be full citizens of the nation of their birth?
The hardest part about teaching APâ African American studies course is getting students to relearn the history that was taught to them over and over again since they entered school. Black people were slaves, the Civil War happened, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction took place, African Americans got some rights, then skip to the Civil Rights Movement, and that’s Black history. But there is so much more to African American history. Students truly do not understand that African Americans as a people continuously strove to be accepted as valuable contributors to this great nation. Even when they were told to “go back to Africa,” they stayed and fought for equality. It is hard to teach history in a society that try to erase the African American past by making it seem Un-American to shed light on the contributions of Black people to this county.
As a society we have prevented students of color from learning the truth about their heritage and culture and permitted all students to believe in a factionalized past. As a corrective, APâ African American studies is not just a class for students of color. Ideally, African and African American history should be interwoven into World History and United States history classes, not just relegated to an elective. Black history truly is both World and U.S. history.
It is challenging for many young people to see the correlation between history and the world that we live in today. I started a lesson on sugar being the driver for enslavement in the Americas showing students newspaper headlines discussing chocolate companies using child slave labor and asked students would they still eat chocolate knowing where it came from. Many of the students had to think long and hard about it, but eventually most of them confessed that “yes, they would still eat it.” After a gallery walk showing various documents about the correlation between sugar and enslavement and economics, we came back together to have a discussion. I asked my students how the legacies of sugar plantations and slavery continue to impact economic disparities and race relations today? A student raised her hand and said, “what we see is that enslaved people were working for free and that their enslavers were making loads of money because of their hard work.” I asked, “What does that mean for the Black community today?” Another student responded, “Well this means that many Black communities don’t have the same amount of money as white people because they got rich while we didn’t get anything.”
Another student added, “Well that is the reason why so many Black people have struggled to make generational wealth. It is almost as if we started at a different place” and then another explained “they basically had a 300-year start.” This is the reality that people who criticize the APâ African American studies curriculum are afraid of students uncovering; uncovering how this history continues to play out in America today.
Some people fear the acquisition of knowledge because they know that with knowledge can come change. The APâ African American studies course should not be labeled controversial or Un-American; in fact, it is the exact opposite. African Americans fought to be a part of this country and continue to fight for the country to stand true to its democratic values of all people having the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The course does not blame students for the past but rather brings them into the conversation about how we can continue to hold America to its promise by including the history of all of the people who helped to build this great nation. Thank you.
Students Hunger for Cultural Knowledge
By Romelo Green
My name is Romelo Green. I am a social studies teacher in the South Country Central School District located on Long Island, Bellport, New York. I teach 11th-grade U.S. History & Government and 12th-grade AP U.S. Government & Politics. In both courses, African American history is a component of the course framework. Being a social studies teacher in the contemporary societal and political landscape presents various challenges. As historians and educators, we are entrusted with the responsibility of addressing topics that can often be sensitive and complex. It is imperative that we present these subjects in a balanced manner, offering to our students various perspectives. Many of these topics are deeply rooted in political discourse, requiring us to navigate these discussions with care. Moreover, we face the ongoing challenge of countering the misinformation that our students see daily through various social media platforms. We also must remain informed about rapidly evolving current events. We must be equipped to respond to our students’ questions with a neutral stance. Additionally, it is essential for us to remain compliant with state standards, ensuring that we cover all mandated material effectively, and thereby preparing our students for state assessments.
As an African American growing up, I did not hear many lessons pertaining to the deep roots of my own culture. This would include my high school and college experience. Many of the more nuanced topics in (African) American history were only brought to the surface for me once I became a teacher and began to conduct my own research, or through collegiate circles within my own department. This would include the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Haitian Revolution, the true history of policing in America, and the fact that Africans sold other Africans into slavery. I almost never heard of the achievements of African Americans except for the popular few who are always brought to light at certain points in American History (MLK, W.E.B Dubois, Malcolm X, etc…) The drastic omission from our curriculum and our textbooks leaves us with a very limited view of the African American experience.
When we learn about our culture in a public setting, it is usually generalized and only discusses the traumatic experience of African Americans rather than highlighting the achievements of individuals representing our culture. In my school some of the teachers (who are here with us in the audience today) conducted a study using focus groups to try and create a more culturally responsive classroom. Through their research they found that students representing various cultural groups have high interest in learning more about their own culture, however, the students stated that when it is taught in the classroom it is either generalized or just taught wrong. In other words, they know more about their own culture than their teachers.
What I see is that we have two factors at play.
- Our students hunger for cultural knowledge.
- Many teachers are unable to conduct such discourse freely and/or accurately.
For example, the legacy of slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights Movement are pivotal components that require a sensitive and comprehensive examination. Inaccurate or incomplete teachings risk perpetuating misunderstandings and stereotypes. What we then need to do is find a balance where teachers are enabled to speak freely in the classroom providing students with facts and hard truths about historical cultural experiences. The students need to be inspired to think critically and be leaders of inquiry-based research. As such, the role of the teacher extends beyond mere instruction to include being a facilitator of dialogue, ensuring a supportive educational environment that encourages critical thinking and open discussion, while carefully steering conversations to be constructive rather than polarizing.
A teacher’s freedom of speech in the classroom is one that is of great complexity, although we all have freedom of speech under the first amendment, our right to freedom of speech in educational settings is not absolute. The question then becomes what must we do as educators? With greater political pressure from the media, parents and the community, how do we still educate and fulfill the students’ drive for knowledge, while maintaining accordance with school or state policy? I think this is where we lean on our students and allow them to be leaders in the classroom. Allow our students to ask the questions and conduct the research, allow them to present information to each other and to hear the perspectives of their peers. As I mentioned our job is now to facilitate and ensure dialogue proceeds in a constructive manner. In order to do this successfully, our students need lessons on misinformation, fact-based research, and evaluating reliable sources. All of which is in alignment with NYS standards. Our teacher preparation programs also need modules on culturally responsive teaching, equipping our prospective teachers with the tools needed to navigate sensitive material respectfully and effectively.
Lastly, professional development for educators is also essential. Teachers need training and resources to confidently navigate the difficult and often sensitive topics inherent in African American history. By investing in their development, schools can create more informed educators who are better equipped to address the diverse needs of their students.
Emphasizing Cultural Relevancy and Providing Different Cultural Perspectives
By Nefe Abamwa
Good morning, my name is Nefe Abamwa. I teach 9th and 10th grade Global History, as well as Pre-AP World at Bellport High School on Long Island. Today’s panel is geared towards the challenges of teaching African American history and how to make the content more relevant. However, I believe it is also a part of a larger conversation on how to make the classroom culturally relevant as well.
As a first-generation Nigerian-American, my culture has greatly shaped me. My parents immigrated from Nigeria to America in the 80’s and early 90’s for better employment opportunities. My father became an accountant for the NYC Comptroller’s Office, while my mother became an RN, ultimately practicing at Pilgrim State Psych Ward. They’ve always emphasized and instilled the value of education in my siblings and I. We were raised to view education as an essential tool for success and advancement. Nigerians often tend to joke that we have three options for careers; to either become a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. In our culture, an advancement in education and an outstanding career is nothing short of an expectation. Growing up in a household and with family where these values were the norm, you could understand the confusion I faced when I began to attend Amityville Public Schools. A district notoriously known for violence, poor academics and administration, and its low-income community.
Throughout my educational career in Amityville, there were many issues I observed that made an impact on me, in regard to the staff and students. I noticed a cultural disconnect between teachers, who were predominantly white, and students, who were predominately black. I noticed that many of my peers did not value school and did not seem to understand, or care, that it could lead to endless opportunity and an escape from their environment. Lastly, the most impactful observation I noticed was that many students and staff were very ignorant and uneducated about African culture. Unfortunately, many of these observations continued to trend throughout my college, postgraduate, professional, and personal life overall. From interactions with colleagues, college professors, church members, peers, and most recently a NYSUT a union member; African culture and history tends to be stigmatized, stereotyped, and homogenized. As I faced these experiences, I would often have conversations with my parents unpacking these interactions and how disappointing it was to have these encounters so often. During these discussions, my parents would share their own experiences in America, where they too have faced racism and ignorance from people of all races, backgrounds, and levels of education.
My cultural values and upbringing, compared to my educational experiences, inspired me at a very young age to go into education. I felt there was a strong need and lack of support for students in low-income communities that may not have proper guidance otherwise; I wanted to show students of color that there are opportunities beyond their environment; and I wanted to make the classroom experience more culturally relevant. I began to instill these changes during my student teaching assignment in a 6th grade classroom at Washington Middle School in Meriden, Connecticut. The demographics there were very similar to Amityville Public Schools, as were the observations I made initially throughout my primary and secondary educational experience. In my class, I began a daily segment at the beginning of the period called “Figure of the Day”. “Figure of the Day” started off as a daily 5-minute black history lesson, during Black History Month, after learning that students knew very little about any historical black figures. These 5-minute sessions would often unintentionally run over time due to the conversations and engagement it brought out of students. Soon enough, students were so intrigued, they would request people they wanted to learn more about. Eventually, that grew into wanting to conduct their own research and present their own projects. And it ended with us expanding “Figure of Day” to cover other races and cultures, well after Black History Month had ended. With each lesson presented, whether it was from me or their peers, I could tell each student found a connection, was inspired, and genuinely excited by what they were being taught because not only was it interesting, but very relatable. Many would go home and discuss what they learned with their parents and share more with their peers the following day.
During my first year at Bellport High School in 2020, I taught my very first Global 10 class. To describe that experience as challenging would be an understatement. 10th graders and 6th graders are quite different, as you can imagine. And this was during covid. Half of my students were in person, half of them online and I’ve never met, and engagement was at an all-time low. That year I decided to conduct a project to reflect on revolutions, a prominent topic in Global 10. Throughout the year, students learn about many revolutions including the French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions, as well as unifications such as the German and Italian. All of these movements highlight the effects of nationalism, or pride in one’s country or culture. I wanted to show that many of the issues that lead to revolutions still endure today. At the time, the #EndSARS movement was occurring in Nigeria. This was a campaign to stop police brutality led by the Nigerian youth and made international news. I felt learning about this movement was a great way to connect students to issues outside of America as well as bring awareness to some African culture and societies. Students watched a cover of Childish Gambino’s “This is America” called “This is Nigeria”, which highlights political, economic, and social issues Nigerians face. Then, my students produced questions to ask one of my cousins in Nigeria about his experience there. He was able to respond to the questions with a series of videos. Through this and document analysis, students realized many of their own experiences and issues were similar. Many were also surprised to learn that my cousin had an iPhone and could make videos. For these students, this project helped humanize a continent that is often seen as lesser than and irrelevant.
Lastly, during the Imperialism unit, for Global 10, I emphasize the long-lasting effects of White Man’s Burden and eurocentrism, as many students are unaware of how these concepts influence many aspects of our lives. I include how these concepts have impacted the world’s view of anyone that is not a WASP. This is done through document analysis, where students study different events, letters, and political cartoons. I teach them to focus on tone, POV, and how images are portrayed. When conducting these lessons, it’s easier to find the British view of imperialism versus Africans. For African perspectives I use sources such as Jomo Kenyatta’s “Gentleman of the Jungle”, documentaries, primary documents, and my own parents and grandparents’ experiences of living in Nigeria and having government positions while under British occupation. We discussed how Europeans had many negative impacts, disregard and ignorance towards natives because they had different lifestyles and only cared for profit. We also study how ignorance and stereotypes play out in modern society, pop culture, and their own personal lives today. These activities often lead to discussions about common stereotypes and misconceptions about different races, cultures, and religions. When beginning these activities, students are often embarrassed and resistant to participate at first; but it opens up important dialogue about why it is dangerous to think that way. I find that not only are most students genuinely intrigued by history behind many of these misconceptions and stereotypes, but they often notice that these lasting impacts have affected them as well. What is most rewarding is when they are able to identify and call out these issues in their own lives and well after the lesson has been taught.
As a social studies teacher that emphasizes cultural relevancy and providing different cultural perspectives, I fear retaliation, being silenced, or accused of pushing certain agendas. I believe teachers must maintain a certain level of academic freedom and it is an absolute necessity for students to learn how to have hard and constructive conversations without having to agree with one another, especially in today’s climate. Unfortunately, I never experienced a teacher that brought these things to my attention but, I was fortunate enough to have a support system and grow up in an environment where I had exposure, which then fostered my own curiosity. I would like to pay that forward and not only be a support and role model for students, but to help them make the connections and realize the importance of education.
Focus on Mass Struggle, Not Just the Black Elite
By Adam Stevens
“Is Black resistance the highest form of Black excellence?” During Black history month the past few years this has been the focusing question in the Black history class I teach at Brooklyn Technical High School. By February we have been together since September, and the range of opinion on this question is wide. The room crackles with intellectual energy. Scholarship and emotion combine to produce forceful arguments. Radical and conservative traditions contend. Outside the classroom we are saturated by a media environment where images of Black wealth are iconic, think Beyonce and Jay-Z. From time to time these Black images compete for our attention with images flowing out of what I’ll call a Black radical or activist tradition – think ‘End Racism’ appearing in NFL end zones or black screens on social media in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Inside our K-12 school buildings Black achievement is generally embodied in homage to great Black individuals, our unspoken mission is to lift our students out of the working class into the middle class or to keep them firmly planted in the American middle class. We may even provide a platform for a handful to become truly rich, to achieve ‘generational wealth.’. This unspoken mission is shared by parents, and if we are being honest, we hold it as a mission for our own children as well.
Our schooling involves an implicit renunciation of working-class life; under capitalism, workers are not winners. Yet workers are what most of our students will be. Black history in the United States is, by and large, the history of a working people. I have my students read passages from Barbara Fields’s seminal essay “Race, Slavery and Ideology in the United States.” Fields is careful to remind us that plantations in the American South existed to produce cotton first, not white supremacy. In small groups my students are taken aback by a passage that describes the numerous recollections of planters, overseers and enslaved persons of circumstances where the ‘smooth running’ of the plantation required the planter taking the word of the enslaved over that of the overseer, or of overseers being dismissed because of their management practices.
The power of economic development and class goals continued after the end of slavery. During a century of Jim Crow, a Black middle class and Black elite clawed their way up out of economic precarity, even as state-sponsored and vigilante racist terror haunted them. In the post-Civil Rights Movement era, a Black middle class was consolidated. In April of 1968 elite institutions threw open their doors to the Black in a cynical but consistent response to the mass uprisings after the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of 1968.
Should curriculum focus on the history of a Black elite? The tenets of ‘social history’ seek to ground historical investigation in the lived reality of the masses of the people, to get us away from understanding history as the work of ‘great men.’ When the masses are white, the rules of American racism have meant that we are studying a group that, over time, has experienced great chances for uplift, for rising in social status. Social history of the white working-class rests on a certain implicit substrate of hope. The problem in Black history is that for the whole era of slavery and much of the period after that ‘hopeful narrative’ is by definition closed.
This continent would not house a world power if it were not for the stolen labor and amassed capital of the slavery era. Silence on slavery and its afterlife suits a ruling class that would have us forget this one fact. This is why the hysteria over Critical Race Theory. Forget slavery. Forget Jim Crow. Forget George Floyd. The U.S. ruling class knows what they did to get where they are, what they do to stay there, and they don’t want the next generation being reminded of it.
In the face of these stark facts of history and given the political headwinds, teaching of Jim Crow by retreating into the salve of figures of Black Excellence such as Madam CJ Walker feels safer not just in the face of conservative school boards, but as a way to boost the morale of a room where the course material can otherwise feel like a catalogue of Black suffering. Of course, by neglecting struggle, we don’t know what to do with Nat Turner, let alone John Brown, or Paul Robeson, or Claudia Jones, or W.E.B. DuBois.
That’s why historians and teachers matter so much. We need historians and teachers who can foreground the majesty of the Black struggle for liberation, for justice. We need historians and teachers who invite us to have pride in the broad masses of our ancestors, not just the elites. We grasp intuitively, perhaps, that it was the action of these broad masses that formed the motive force behind every great liberation movement of our history. Black history as hero worship of great leaders disempowers every student who can’t see themselves becoming the next Martin Luther King. This problem is one that King grappled with himself on the day he died, there in Memphis, binding himself more closely to the cause of the sanitation workers of that city. He was building a Poor People’s Movement with a strong anti-imperialist element. The images of those Black workers with signs reading “I Am a Man” are iconic but they are iconic as protesters, not just as workers.
Eugene Genovese (Roll, Jordan Roll, Book Three, Part Two) helps my students understand slavery as a world where far more choice was exercised by the enslaved than we are given to imagine. I teach the returning veterans from World War I and World War II whose refusal to accept the business as usual of Jim Crow. Their energy gave birth to a Harlem Renaissance and a Civil Rights Movement. To see Black workers gathered in their masses, politicized, in motion against racism as the most powerful force in history, to see honor and glory in joining such a movement, this is an alternative view of Black Excellence and approach to curriculum. Teaching the struggles of ordinary Black people for dignity and equality is the curriculum focus we need to empower our students to survive and defeat the growing threats of fascism and war and to avert climate disaster.
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