With Cab Calloway's “Minnie the Moocher” playing in the background, 13 teens at St. Ursula Academy re-create art from the Harlem Renaissance era that transformed African-American identity.

        Some students are on the floor, leafing through art books and tearing photos from magazines for collages that will reinterpret the work of Renaissance artists from the early 1900s.

        It's all part of Transitions in African-American Lives through History and Literature, a class that chronicles the development of African-American culture in America.

        While many schools only focus on African-Americans during Black History Month, this school with a 90 percent white student body offers the class as a junior and senior elective twice a year.

St. Ursula seniors Stephanie Haller (left) and Lauren Major work on an art project emphasizing the values of racial diversity. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        “It challenges our kids to think clearly about their own values and roles in a pluralistic society,” said Greg Saelens, academic dean. “It's a tribute to our students who want to learn about people who are not like themselves.”

        Besides reading the history and literature of African-Americans from the the time when Africans were brought to America as slaves to the present, students learn through videos, music, art, re-creation, journaling, field trips and guest speakers. They're also writing a newspaper that traces the dreams and promises after slavery's end.

        “We find out the dream has not played out the way we thought it would,” said Sue Loechle, who team teaches the course. “We talk a lot about slavery. A lot of problems we still live with today are traceable back to slavery. Slavery is a shared experience. It is not a black experience.”

        The class, now in its second year, is taught by Ms. Loechle, an English teacher who is white, and Pam Smith-Dobbins, a social studies teacher who is black. That itself, Ms. Loechle said, sends a subtle message to students, who see teachers of different races as friends working cooperatively.

        “We're trying to be part of a process to change hearts, but we're trying to change hearts though intellectual challenge, as well,” Ms. Loechle said.

        The class is timely, given Cincinnati's race riots last month. Students who have learned about the struggles of African-Americans have a better understanding of pent-up emotions that fueled the riots.

        Becca Maur, an 18-year-old Bridgetown senior, took the class two terms ago because she was curious and knew she was naive about the African-American experience.

Shelby Stone, a junior from Paddock Hills, works on her diversity art project. | ZOOM |

        “It was unbelievably hard,” she said of African-American struggles. “It made me more aware there is much more work out there. I really did not know how bad it was today. Still, with the riots, you kind of got a clear picture. I started crying. I felt it was a big step backwards.”

        Ms. Smith-Dobbins hopes the class helps students understand racism is a continuing problem in the United States, and that the Cincinnati riots can be linked to not finishing the job after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Blacks were not given land after the war. Poll taxes and voting restrictions were imposed.

        “Even though we had the 14th and 15th Amendments on the books, the Southern states found ways to get around that and Northern states allowed that to happen,” she said. “Not only will they not have an economic way out of poverty. They won't have a political way either.”

        Shelby Stone, a 17-year-old African-American junior from Paddock Hills, said it's important to offer this class in a primarily white school. “This class expands their horizons. Now, they're learning about blacks throughout history. They can see the struggles and everything we've been through.”

        While students come to understand those hardships, they also celebrate the culture, too, through the Harlem Renaissance lesson. In the early 1900s, especially in the 1920s, African-American literature, art, music, dance and social commentary began to flourish in the Harlem section of New York City.

        Meghan Murphy's Renaissance collage is a collection of beads, buttons, shells, ribbons, magazine cutouts and a piece of paper her mother made. As she worked, the 18-year-old senior from Sycamore Township talked about why she took the class.

        “There are so many schools that don't offer anything like this,” she said. “I felt it was such a blessing to make myself more culturally aware.

        “I used to view blacks as simply another race. Now, I view them as a beautiful culture of things I haven't begun to delve into in my life in the suburbs. I can afford to go to a wonderful school. I have everything I want and need, yet I don't have this cultural immersion I need to live a well-rounded life.”
       

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