#Florida students are giving up Saturdays to learn #BlackHistory lessons their schools don’t teach
By KATE PAYNE
Updated 12:15 AM EST, December 21, 2024
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — "Buried among Florida’s manicured golf courses and sprawling suburbs are the artifacts of its slave-holding past: the long-lost cemeteries of enslaved people, the statutes of #Confederate soldiers that still stand watch over town squares, the old #plantations turned into modern subdivisions that bear the same name. But many students aren’t learning that kind of Black history in Florida classrooms.
"In an old wooden bungalow in Delray Beach, Charlene Farrington and her staff gather groups of teenagers on Saturday mornings to teach them lessons she worries that public schools won’t provide. They talk about #SouthFlorida’s #Caribbean roots, the state’s dark history of #lynchings, how #segregation still shapes the landscape and how #grassroots #activists mobilized the #CivilRights Movement to upend generations of oppression.
[...]
"When Sulaya Williams’ eldest child started school, she couldn’t find the comprehensive instruction she wanted for him in their area. So in 2016, she launched her own organization to teach Black history in community settings.
"'We wanted to make sure that our children knew our stories, to be able to pass down to their children,' Williams said.
"Williams now has a contract to teach Saturday school at a public #library in Fort Lauderdale, and her 12-year-old daughter Addah Gordon invites her classmates to join her.
"'It feels like I’m really learning my culture. Like I’m learning what my ancestors did,' Addah said. 'And most people don’t know what they did.'"
