As the official historian of Delaware State University, during my presentations to students, I find out by a raise of hands who the Delawareans are and then ask if any of them could tell me who Louis Redding is.
Out of more than 200 presentations I have given, only a rare few students knew he is a namesake for a Middletown school. Only once did a student correctly identify Redding as the first African American attorney in the First State. (For the less informed, Redding won a number of significant civil rights-related cases in Delaware and was on Thurgood Marshall’s legal team that argued and won the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case.)
This is emblematic of the shortcomings of the Delaware educational system where Black history is concerned. Thankfully, work is underway to correct that in the First State.
Last year, Delaware enacted legislation (House Bill 198) that now requires the incorporation of Black history as part of all education curriculum from kindergarten through the 12th grade in all public and charter schools. The law requires that the Black history instruction include the pre-U.S. history of Black folks in Africa; the relationship between slavery and the growth of the American economy; and the critical role federal, state and local laws played in the maintenance of slavery and the subsequent system of segregation that remained in place until 1968.
In the past, for many schools in Delaware, the African American story has been largely relegated to Black History Month in February — and has often been an education repeatedly revolving around the traditional themes of slavery, the Underground Railroad and the 1950s’ and 1960s’ civil rights movement. The conventional narratives of African Americans focus on the redemptive aspirational stories of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. The history of African Americans, and thus the history of the United States, however, is far more complex and demands a more thorough examination in our public school social studies and civics classrooms.
Our youths from all ethnic backgrounds deserve to know the full spectrum of American history — even if that history does not reflect well on the United States of America.
They need to hear how 12 generations of unpaid laborers — the slave populations over 246 years — made it possible for the U.S. to be transformed from a fledging country to the most powerful industrialized economy in the world (the labor value alone of enslaved people was the equivalent of $100 trillion). Our young people should understand more about the constitutional and legal structures in this country that sanctioned and kept in place that “Peculiar Institution” prior to the Civil War, as well as the subsequent 100 years of abject discrimination and segregation. They need to be enlightened not only about the story of Black people’s contribution to science, art and literature in America but also the seldom-taught history of the native people in Africa prior to the forced immigration of about 450,000 to this country (12.5 million to the Americas in total).
One reason the healing from racial divisions has taken so long has been the discomfort by many in having honest discussions about the history of U.S. race relations. That disinclination to reach a true understanding about the nation’s past has its beginnings in our secondary school systems — where most youths are intellectually developed enough to begin grasping a fuller narrative of this nation’s history. Unfortunately, our students have traditionally received an incomplete, far more palatable narrative as it concerns the African American experience. As a result, their education in American history is woefully incomplete.
At least the First State seems to be moving in the right direction. Reportedly, the work to develop the inclusion of Black history in all curriculum has begun in earnest. Hopefully, those moving this new edict forward will be able to counter any of the pushback that other states have experienced when trying to implement such measures.
Delaware State University’s Department of History, Political Science and Philosophy is one of the intellectual forces enlisted to help in the development of Black history curriculum and lessons plans — a wholly appropriate role for the First State’s only historically Black institution of higher education. The University of Delaware is also involved in the work.
Remarkably, this initiative was born from the academic desires of African American youth.
“House Bill 198 is a monumental piece of legislation because it was spearheaded by our children,” said Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, D-Wilmington, the legislation’s primary sponsor. “Students from up and down the state shared with me that they did not see themselves reflected in the curriculum.”
The time is far overdue that all youths — not just African Americans — begin receiving an inclusive American history of Blacks and other underrepresented groups in this country. The longer we fail to do so, the longer incomplete and false historical narratives will continue to thrive and be harder to correct.
Carlos Holmes is the university historian for Delaware State University, as well as its director of news services.
