Educating Our Children

Educating Our Children Table

Some African-American Firsts & Inventions / Moratorium on School Closings in Baltimore / The Dropout Challenge

Cuba Gooding, Jr. in Red Tails

Interview with Kam Williams

First students graduate from Winfrey's South African school

By Donna Bryson

James Forman: Albany, Georgia Movement / James Forman: Unemployment and Poverty Action Committee / James Forman: The Black Panthers / James Forman: Response to Reparations

Rev Shuttlesworth Story / Fred Shuttlesworth: My Relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr. / Fred Shuttlesworth Overview / Fred Shuttlesworth: Stopping at Nothing for Equal Rights

Black Art / French Mulattos / The Achievements of Elijah Muhammad / Full Moon Night and Other Poems / Of Obama and Oakland / Which Way Freedom / Vashti McKenzie

Tennessee Tea Party to Children What Slaves?—Abby Zimet—Showing a marked aversity for anything remotely resembling the truth, Tennessee Tea Party leaders have issued "demands" to state legislators that schools stop teaching—through "neglect and outright ill-will"—all that bad stuff about our fine Founding Fathers like the "made-up criticism" that maybe they owned slaves or killed Indians or did other icky things, and that, “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens.” This, after Texas approved 100 revisions to textbooks for its almost five million kids that would rename slave trade "Atlantic triangular trade," explore the "unintended consequences" of affirmative action," emphasize the role of the Christian Church in the nation's founding, call for studying iconic conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and The Moral Majority, and otherwise twist "history" to their liking."We seek to compel the teaching (of) the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”— Commondreams

Tea parties issue demands to Tennessee legislators—13 January 2011—“Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.” That would include, the documents say, that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.” . . .“No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”—CommercialAppeal

King: Montgomery to Memphis / Pogus Caesar—Portrait Of Handworth riot in 1985 / Rage Against The Machine—Revolution in The Head

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage

By William Loren Katz

Christmas Eve marks the anniversary of one of the least known battles for freedom and self-determination fought in North America. In 1837, in what had become the state of Florida less than a generation earlier, the freedom fighters were members of the Seminole Nation, an alliance of African slave runaways and Native American Seminoles.

They faced the strongest power in the Americas, the combined armed forces of the United States Army, Navy and Marines, whose goal was to crush the bi-racial alliance and return its African-American members to slavery. . . . This battle took place during the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), which involved U.S. Naval and Marine units, at times half of the Army, and cost 1,500 military deaths and U.S. taxpayers $30 million [pre-Civil War dollars].

After his decimated army limped back to Fort Gardner, Zachary Taylor won promotion by claiming, “the Indians were driven in every direction.” Later, using his reputation as an “Indian fighter,” Taylor won election as the 12th President of the United States. The Seminole alliance at Lake Okeechobee delivered the Army’s worst defeat in decades of Florida warfare. However truth about the battle and the three wars long remain buried, hidden or distorted.— ConsortiumNews

Fifty Influential Figures in African-American History / A Caring and Just Society (President Barack Obama) / 50 Fascinating Facts for Women’s History Month

Post Katrina One Hundred Thousand Yet to Return (Junious Ricardo Stanton) / Creating an Oasis in Overbrook / Don't Get Snookered by Obama Reforms

Mismanaging Education in Philadelphia

Business as Usual

By Junious Ricardo Stanton

Unschooler Education Celebrated by CNN

By C. Liegh McInnis

We’ve Lost The Moral Imperative    / The Jig Is Up (Stanton)

Fanon: A Novel by John Edgar Wideman / The Wretched of the Earth / We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For / Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher

The Black Dutchmen: The Story of African Soldiers / Ten Paces / Shailja Patel on her poetry and new book, Migritude / Black Mexicans & Afro-Latino Identity

Child Humiliated By Mock Slave Auction at Elementary School—By Samuel Aleshinloye—4 March 2011—Gahanna, Ohio—An African-American mother and son were astonished after a History teacher at Chapelfield Elementary School held a mock slave auction, dividing the class into “Slaves” and “Masters”. The class only had two black students in the class; one was assigned “Master”, and the other, Nikko Burton, was assigned “Slave.”

Burton, 10, was sent to his seat after he refused to be poked, prodded, and be humiliated during the reenactment. A spokeswomen for the school maintains that the lesson is part of a “state required” curriculum. While a representative for the school has apologized to the family over the phone, 10 year old Burton wishes that the teacher would have apologized to him personally.—NewsOne

Ebony's Fifty Influential Figures in African-American History -- Frederick Douglass / W.E.B. Du Bois / Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . .

Men We Love, Men We Hate
SAC writings from Douglass, McDonogh 35, and McMain high schools in New Orleans.

An anthology on the topic of men and relationships with men

Ways of Laughing
An Anthology of Young Black Voices
Photographed & Edited by Kalamu ya Salaam

Poems by Kalamu : Govern Yrself Accordingly   / You Can’t Survive on Salt Water / If You’re Still the Same Afterwards . . . / Be About Beauty / Flying Over America

Detroit Ordered to Close Half Its Public Schools Amid Budget Crisis—22 Feb 2011—Tylan Franklin, 8, stands outside Bunche Elementary in Detroit on March 17. The school closed in June, and now Detroit has been ordered to close half its remaining 142 public schools over the next four years to make up a $327 million deficit. . . . The plan, mandated by state education officials, will reduce the number of schools in the district from 142 to 72.

Robert Bobb, the district's emergency financial manager, said he was preparing a list of recommended school closures and that layoffs would be announced closer to April, according to The Detroit News. But Bobb said he doesn't think the plan will be effective because it's likely to drive students out of the district, making the fiscal crisis worse. He expects the district's 74,000 students will have been reduced to 58,570 by 2014.
The Detroit school budget is weighed down with $53 million in pension costs, $45 million for health care and $27 million for utilities. The district has lost 83,336 students in the past 10 years, which translates to a loss of more than $573 million in funding.—AOLnews

The Matrix / President's Forum with Young African Leaders   / Troy Davis about to be killed by the state of Georgia / Eduardo Galeano: Mirrors: Stories

Yelli—Baka women yodelers / Amanda Mutamba Muhunde—Africa’s rape victims   / Liberia’s first postwar generation starts school / K'naan—Wavin' Flag

A Time for Peace—A Time for War

By Wilson J. Moses

The Michael D Terry Scholarship Board Presents

Celebrating the Promise of Our Youth Luncheon

Saturday, April 30, 2011 4:00 p.m.

Holy Comforter Church Hall / 5513 York Road

Baltimore, Maryland 21212

Romare Bearden's Southern Sensibility / The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child. (Kahlil Gibran)

Michigan School Official Begs Governor, “Make My School A Prison”—Thursday May 26, 2011 –Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day, access to free health care, Internet, cable television, access to a library, access to weight rooms, and access to computer labs. While in prison they can earn a degree. Convicts get a roof over their heads and clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.We treat our prisoners better than we treat our school children. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so they can be big and strong.

We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of our youth, who represent our future? You’d think we’d to more to secure the future of our own students. Instead, we keep hammering the educational institutions to do their jobs better with less money. It would be nice if our prisoners could start living a little leaner and with fewer resources.—Nathan Bootz, Letter to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

There's no big accomplishment in acting white (after being subjected to some third stream muzak) / I Choose Us: The African Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

Men We Love, Men We Hate
SAC writings from Douglass, McDonogh 35, and McMain high schools in New Orleans.

An anthology on the topic of men and relationships with men

Ways of Laughing
An Anthology of Young Black Voices
Photographed & Edited by Kalamu ya Salaam

Cuba— Performing Arts—Today, the Cuban government's ongoing commitment to arts education means that it is constantly looking for new and better ways to deliver it. This includes training young art instructors from the age of 14 to teach music, dance, drama and the visual arts in primary and secondary schools across the country. Cubans believe that school should be the cultural centre of the community. It should be a place where young people can learn about their cultural heritage, and develop the skills to express themselves creatively. Teachers TV

My Holy Bible for African-American Children

King James Version. by Cheryl and Wade Hudson

Book Review by Kam Williams

Recent Incidents of Students in 'Blackface' Arise in Texas and Maryland -- Students at Texas A&M University, University of Texas at Austin, and John Hopkins University have recently participated in behavior that is degrading and offensive to students of color. E urWeb

African American Family Histories at Monticello

"I was born at Monticello...." Peter Fossett, 1898, and Henry Martin, 1914. Over the decades, hundreds could have spoken those words. Below are profiles of a few of those born into slavery at Monticello. For more information about these people, their descendants, and members of other families with ancestral ties to Monticello

   Plantation Database   Monticello Getting Word   Monticello Classroom

Students at the Center (SAC) is an independent program that since 1996 has worked within public schools in New Orleans. The students of SAC participate through English and elective writing and social studies classes in their schools. We teach both regular and advanced core curriculum classes that are open to all students. In addition to the daily classes, since Hurricane Katrina, SAC graduates have worked as key staff members, serving as resource teachers in public school classrooms, organizers for youth involvement, and producers of youth media. SACnola

Black History (audio) by Gil Scott-Heron / Gil Scott-Heron & His Music Reviews by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya Salaam

The Mis-Education of African American Youth

By Kwame M.A. Somburu

Where teachers rule—In Milwaukee, which is a national leader in the movement toward teacher-led schools, there will be at least 14 such programs next year, and that figure does not count private schools. Appleton will have two teacher-led schools next year. Minnesota, another leader in the movement, has 15 schools where the teachers are part of a workers' cooperative structured much like a law firm, so they not only make most of the decisions related to the school, but also set their own salaries. Education officials and teachers unions in California, Chicago and other places are studying the teacher-led model. "If it catches on, it could absolutely revolutionize the public system and the bureaucracy surrounding it," said Doug Thomas, executive director of EdVisions Cooperative in Minnesota. Even staunch supporters of the model concede that it is not for everyone: It requires extra time, will not work if the teachers don't familiarize themselves with the policies, procedures and politics of the district, and can be difficult to adapt to larger schools. Journal Sentinel

Black History Month 2010

We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands. Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.—Booker Taliaferro Washington

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.—W. E. B. Du Bois

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.—Marcus Garvey

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression ....If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.—M. L. King

<-------artist Chuck Siler

Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform—The current emphasis on accountability has created a punitive atmosphere in the schools. The Obama administration seems to think that schools will improve if we fire teachers and close schools. They do not recognize that schools are often the anchor of their communities, representing values, traditions and ideals that have persevered across decades. They also fail to recognize that the best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers. What we need is not a marketplace, but a coherent curriculum that prepares all students. And our government should commit to providing a good school in every neighborhood in the nation, just as we strive to provide a good fire company in every community.On our present course, we are disrupting communities, dumbing down our schools, giving students false reports of their progress, and creating a private sector that will undermine public education without improving it. Most significantly, we are not producing a generation of students who are more knowledgable, and better prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That is why I changed my mind about the current direction of school reform. —Wall Street Journal

Moratorium on Theory

A Response to Wilson J. Moses by Rudolph Lewis

Bridging the Racial Gap in Education

By Marvin X

African or American?

Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861

By Leslie Alexander

Focusing on the meaning of African heritage, Black Nationalism, community, and African emigration in New York City during the antebellum period, Alexander provides a compelling argument for the emergence of African heritage and identity and charts the waxing and waning of its meaning in the black community."—Leslie M. Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863

“Alexander brilliantly examines this topic for black people in antebellum New York City. . . . An important contribution. Highly recommended.”—Choice

Alexander's . . . survey of black leadership is excellent, her sensitivity to local black politics is admirable, and her tracing of the varied black investment in emigrations is ... correct and adds to our understanding of antebellum reform and nationalism."—American Historical Review

African or American? breaks new ground in its sustained attention to principal but little-known black community organizations and leaders in New York City. The comprehensive, in-depth treatment of the Five Points district, Seneca Village's relationship to Central Park, the Negro's burial ground, and more make this book exceptional. It is the best discussion to date of being an American in relation to antebellum blacks that I have read."—Sterling Stuckey, author of Going through the Storm: The Influence of African American Art in History

School Security Guards Beat Teen over Cake Spill: Palmdale—It all started with a piece of birthday cake, but it ended up with a high school girl being beaten and expelled. The incident, which occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale, was caught on a cell phone camera. Michael Brownlee was live in Palmdale with what the girl and her mother plan to do now— Clearly, Injustice is not just in Jena—Cynthia McKinney Leading the Negro into Modernity

From HBCUs to BCUs

Mordecai's Dream Is in Serious Jeopardy

By Roy L. Beasley

"Arise and go, your faith has made you well" (Luke 17 v. 15-19). / / / Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will (I Thessalonians 5, v. 18).
How the markets really work (from 2007): How did these comedians see it coming when financial reporters did not? Brasschecktv

A Short History of “When the Levee Breaks”—On Saturday [30 August 2008], a million citizens fled Louisiana for safer ground, after Hurricane Gustav metamorphosed into a Category 4 hurricane in a mere 24 hours. It is scheduled to slam into the U.S. almost exactly three years after Hurricane Katrina did the same, visiting the kind of disaster dystopia one usually sees in film or music. . . . Louisiana authorities explain that there will be no shelter for those left behind or who choose to stay behind. It's a familiar refrain for those caught up in this recurring environmental nightmare, perhaps more familiar than you think. "When the Levee Breaks" was first created by the Delta bluesmen Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Listen to the original. / Where's Fats Domino?

Mayor Bloomberg's budget ax will prune key public library branches—"Queens Library was recently recognized nationally as Library Journal 's '2009 Library of the Year' in part because of the quality, depth and breadth of our programs and services," said Thomas Galante, the library's CEO. "When service hours are reduced by over 40% - as would happen with this budget - nearly every opportunity library users currently have, to improve and enrich their lives, could be lost behind locked doors." For the 50,000 people who walk through the doors of the Queens Library system each day, this would be tragic. The city's proposed budget calls for slashing $16.9 million on July 1 from the Queens Library. This is on top of previous funding reductions, bringing the total cut to $28.3 million—30% sustained since 2008. . . . "Even during the depths of the Great Depression, libraries remained open seven days a week to serve a population desperately in need." Galante said. Source: NYDaily News / Black Librarians Table

We All Live in Jena--National Student Walk-Out to rally and show support for the Jena 6

National Call to Action! / Monday, October 1, 2007 / 12:00 Noon, Central Time

For more info contact info@mxgm.org / To add your school to the list, email assata@pitt.edu or spjlewis@hotmail.com

Malcolm     Shine & the Titanic   Poem for Our Fathers   Poem for Our Mothers

By Professor ARTURO
Global News: Politics—Literature & the Arts

Queen Africa (and other poems) Dangerous Abroad   Blue Eyed Dolls in Africa Out of America or How I Became a Marxist   When I was a Tennis Player

Kwansaba for James Brown

                                  By Mary E. Weems

James Brown brought God some funk cologne

made his head tilt ace deuce, hair

fried, dyed, laid to the side, even

his angels wanted hats with chains, capes

a chance to make Maceo hit it!

At night brother Brown writes freedom! on

wings sends love South—with some skin.

Five Poems News at Noon   Argo Starch . Global News:Politics—Literature & the Arts

Other Yictove files: On the Passing of Malvina Turk    That Town Jammin   American Money Mr Politician   Blue Print Contents

Soliloquy for Cain Photograph      Grandma Turk   Tropical Love   Guest Poets Poetic Journey Yictove Obituary & Poems / In Future

Mojos in Africa & Other Poems
By Peter Eric Adotey Addo
Global News:Politics—Literature & the Arts

Africans in Dublin, Ireland—Almost all the children who could not find elementary school places in a Dublin suburb this year were black, the government said Monday, highlighting Ireland's problems integrating its increasingly diverse population. The children will attend a new, all-black school, a prospect that educators called disheartening. . . .More than 25,000 Africans have settled in Ireland since the mid-1990s. Most arrived as asylum seekers, and many took advantage of Ireland's law — unique in Europe — of granting citizenship to parents of any Irish-born child. Voters toughened that law in a 2004 referendum. Shawn Pogatchnik. Black children left out of Irish schools.

Back to School Poems for Children

By Yvonne Terry

Building African Libraries Project Cecil Elementary's Black History Month / Children Are Our Future / The Global African Presence

Seven-Year-Old Black Child Arrested, Cuffed, Fingerprinted

in Baltimore, a City with a Black Mayor, Sheila Dixon

“I am very concerned about what I am hearing. As a mother and as a parent, I am bothered by it,” she said.

“I will get to the bottom of this.”

Grace Boggs: The Worst and Best of Times Crime Among Our People The Dropout Challenge Give Detroit Schools a Fresh Start Food Future Past Going Beyond Black and White A Thoughtful Conversation about Religion

Free Shaquanda Cotton

Shaquanda Cotton, 14-year-old black freshman, shoved a 58-year- old teacher’s aide at Paris High School (Texas) in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun. She was tried in March 2006 in the town’s juvenile court, convicted of “assault on a public servant” and sentenced by Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21. . . . Backward Glance -- Paris, Texas is the home of the Paris Fairgrounds, a stage where thousands of white ’spectators’ would gather to burn and lynch blacks as if at some sort of carnival. http://freeshaquandacotton.blogspot.com/ contact http://www.governor.state.tx.us/

Supreme Courts Halts Racial Integration—“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he said. His side of the debate, the chief justice said, was “more faithful to the heritage of Brown,” the landmark 1954 decision that declared school segregation unconstitutional. “When it comes to using race to assign children to schools, history will be heard,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. . . . While Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined his opinion on the schools case in full, the fifth member of the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, did not. . . . Justice Kennedy said achieving racial diversity, “avoiding racial isolation” and addressing “the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling” were “compelling interests” that a school district could constitutionally pursue as long as it did so through programs that were sufficiently “narrowly tailored.” . . . “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Justice Breyer said. . . . “This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret.” . . . Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg signed Justice Breyer’s opinion. Justice Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion of his own, as pointed as it was brief. Linda Greenhouse. Justices Limit the Use of Race in School Plans for Integration. NYTimes