My first three posts this Black History Month have invoked Carter G. Woodson, “the father of Black history,” and his seminal work, The Miseducation of the Negro, published in 1926. Most importantly, Woodson, the creator of Black History Month, gave Black folk something to be proud of.

In my post of February 3, 2024, “Correcting the Miseducation of the Negro,” I referenced my educational odyssey, which continues to this day — I am a lifelong learner. There is nothing more important in one’s educational journey then, first and foremost, to learn one’s history; for Black people this is Black history, which is given short shrift within American history courses, though Black history is American history! Black history, including Critical Race Theory, and the 1619 Project, is not “revisionistic.” The term is used negatively, as if correcting the historical record of exclusions and whitewashing of American history is made up history, though the mythological and propagandistic nature of American history is not called into question. And as I previously wrote, at 17, in my first year of college, I was introduced to critical thinking and instructed to question every theory and position I encountered.

During my educational odyssey, I remember all the Black teachers I had, at first not because they made a great impression on me, but because they were Black. Sadly, from pre-k to 12th grade, I only had three Black teachers: Mrs. R in elementary school (PS 148); Mr. J. in intermediate school (IS 318); and Mr. R. at Alexander Hamilton (now Paul Robeson) High School. Mrs. R. was “motherly” — we all thought of her as our mother. She believed in us and believed that the world we were inheriting would be much better than hers. Misters J. and R. were music teachers. Mr. J. taught us that music resided within us, within our souls, and that our heartbeats were like the drumroll heard at creation. And though Mr. J. did not reference W.E.B. DuBois’ “gift of story and song,” he instructed us how to embody a song and make it our own! To this day, my favorite song is, “Touch Me in the Morning,” by Diana Ross, to which we sang out our little hearts, which I learned by heart in Mr. J’s chorus class. We sang the song as if as teenagers we knew what love was, to have it, and to lose it. Mr. R. was the coolest and stylish teacher I had through 10th grade. He was cultured in the way that white folk think of culture, but he embodied that “duality” DuBois wrote about, American and African. Mr. R. had us listen to Bach, and we watched how it transported him as we listened, and from simply watching him we learned about the transcendent nature of music, of the Arts. And because we were living through the Black Power Era, Mr. R. gave us heavy doses of James Brown, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud!” Whenever I left Mr. R’s class, I held my head high and walked with the rhythm of the drumbeat of my heart.

Black history is the heartbeat of America.