As written By Kiara Alfonseca
The deadly voting rights campaign known as Freedom Summer, the successful Black labor rights movement during the Great Depression, and the long fight for desegregation in schools are among the many lesser-known stories that help shape our understanding of U.S. Black History.
Black history in the classroom has become a source of contention in K-12 schools, colleges and universities across the country.
Several laws have been implemented in recent years that restrict certain lessons on race in classrooms in Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, and others. This has impacted what books can be made available in some school libraries, has led some schools to reject AP African American history classes, and has put some teachers on edge about what they can speak about.
Historians interviewed by ABC News argue that these restrictions will limit the information taught about racial history in the United States.
In a 2022 Quinnipiac University poll, only 27 percent of Americans said the American History they were taught in school reflected a full and accurate account of the role of African Americans in the United States, while 66 percent said what they were taught in school fell short on that.
For Black History Month, ABC News asked historians and museum curators about events and movements in Black history they say reflect upon the current issues facing the U.S.
“We’re fighting to ensure that the most accurate interpretation, the most factual, empirical analysis of our experience is made available to our people and to the world,” said Sundiata Cha-Jua, an associate professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Freedom Summer
The fight for voting rights was a dangerous and sometimes fatal fight for activists.
In 1964, activists attempted to register as many Black voters as possible in Mississippi in what is known as Freedom Summer or the Mississippi Summer Project. The National Archives recorded that more than 60 churches and homes were bombed or burned, four civil rights workers were killed, at least three Black Mississippians were killed, 80 workers were beaten and more than 1,000 people were arrested in connection with the effort.
Several civil rights organizations collaborated to send thousands of out-of-state volunteers — “young people, the children of prominent lawyers, doctors, politicians in the North” — to help Black Mississippians safely register to vote, according to Cornelius L. Bynum, the director of African American Studies at Purdue University.
The belief in doing this was that “local Mississippi authorities might be more hesitant to respond with violence than they had been” and that there would be more media focus on the efforts to generate an effective vote for African-Americans in the state,” Bynum told ABC News.