Monday, February 01, 1999
Black history still ignored in school
Even now, teachers dig for resources
BY MICHAEL D. CLARK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Before he went on to make Ohio history, William Mallory Sr. was first a victim of it.
As a student in Cincinnati's city schools of the 1940s, he and other African-Americans weren't exposed to knowledge about their own culture.
“I didn't learn about African-American history from Cincinnati Public Schools. I didn't learn about it until I went to college at Central State University,” said Mr. Mallory, a West End Democrat who held the highest legislative rank of any black state lawmaker in Ohio history before retiring in 1994.
February is Black History Month, a time when schools across the country dedicate time and resources to tell about the accomplishments of black Americans. A look at several Greater Cincinnati school districts shows that the quality of black history instruction has vastly improved since Mr. Mallory was in school.
Resources lacking
But some area educators report battles, not with overt racism but with student indifference, inadequate textbooks and financial obstacles in teaching African-American history.
“It's a struggle getting African-American history into the schools,” said Sean Lewis, a teacher in Cincinnati Public Schools' Pleasant Ridge Elementary.
Mr. Lewis, who teaches in a district where the enrollment is now 70 percent black, solicits outside help. He brings in black speakers and performance groups, such as the Bi-Okoto Drum & Dance Theatre, which specializes in West African folklore and culture.
Numerous Tristate teachers are like Mr. Lewis: They often have to use non-textbook materials, often supplied free by corporate sponsors, to effectively teach black history. Textbook features on black history tend to be limited, simplistic and lacking in scope, educators say.
Library materials are in valuable, especially to teachers in such financially strapped districts as Cincinnati Public Schools.
Texts fall short
Pleasant Ridge teacher Deborah Holloway, an African-American and a veteran teacher who has taught in city schools with both black and Appalachian student majorities, criticized textbooks as “not appropriate at all.”
“A lot of these textbooks don't have black history. But we need to provide these kids with some historical foundation,” said Ms. Holloway, who spends some of her own money for black history instructional materials.
“When it works, it's magical. The kids bubble over with excitement and the questions don't stop,” she said.
Stephanie Patton, a black social studies teacher at Princeton High School, describes her exposure as a youth to African-American history as “less than adequate.”
Though Princeton Schools' enrollment of 7,000 is about 50 percent black, black students comprise almost 100 percent of Ms. Patton's African-American culture class.
“It saddens me,” she said. “I miss having a racially diverse class. I don't think they (non-black students) think this relates to them.
“It's very important ... to include black history in American history so everyone can feel they are part of our society,” she said.
There have been success stories in suburban districts when it comes to teaching black history.
In Warren County, Mason Schools addresses black history and culture in a variety of subjects that have proved popular with the largely white student enrollment. The district is 1.6 percent black, and 1.9 percent are Asian-American.
“We want to expose kids to as many different cultural aspects as we can,” said Mason Schools spokeswoman Shelly Benesh.
Lawrenceburg Schools in Indiana has only a 5 percent non-white enrollment among its 1,600 students, but officials say they work hard to incorporate multiculturalism into their curricula.
Rarely of help, however, are standard textbooks, said Bonnie Kelley, chairwoman of the Language Arts Department at Lawrenceburg High School.
The effectiveness of textbooks is hampered, she said, by publishers' attempts to “be so politically correct by trying to cover and include every group” that the books tend to lack depth and scope.
In Butler County, the Fairfield district is trying to teach black history year-round — and not just in February.
“It's much more real now than before (when) we stopped everything and concentrated on one culture for a month,” said Bonnie Fitzharris, Fairfield Schools' curriculum supervisor. The district's enrollment of more than 9,000 students is about 5 percent black.
In Clermont County, white students are being prepared to understand and interact with America's growing non-white citizenry. For instance, when Milford School officials created a racial diversity course in 1994, students from the almost entirely white district flocked to it.
With about 2 percent of the district's 5,739 students being black, the Milford high school diversity class, which covers African-American history, is a popular elective.
“We need to expose our students to the multicultural workplace,” said Beth Tope, Milford's director of curriculum and instruction.
But to successfully do that, Milford educators had to go far beyond the rudimentary entries in school textbooks.
“We had to find so many different resources on our own,” Ms. Tope said.
Mr. Mallory — the former majority leader of the Ohio House — said any debate over the teaching of black history should itself be a thing of the past.
“There really shouldn't be any issue about this,” he said. “How can you accurately learn about history and not include all people?”
Mr. Mallory dropped out of Cincinnati city schools, but he returned to graduate. Realizing that the then-predominantly white school system would make no effort to enlighten blacks about their own America, he embarked on his own historical research.
His first copy of John Hope Franklin's 1947 book, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes, soon grew tattered from re-readings.
The book became his personal black history textbook and he honed a lifelong appreciation for history.
“History answers the question of who am I and it propels you toward your destiny,” he said.
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