The African American Museum’s library is filled with decades of Black history from rare books like The Negro In Our History to The Souls of Black Folk.
This summer, the library is the classroom for the museum’s Freedom School program, which invites community members to learn about prehistorical Africa to the 1619 slave trade and the Black Arts Movement of the ’60s and ’70s.
The program harkens back to the freedom schools launched by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. The education programs followed a legacy of efforts from secret “pit schools” for African slaves in the 19th century to the citizenship schools created by educator and activist Septima Clark in the 1950s.
Faith Golden, the museum’s archivist who sometimes teaches in the Freedom Schools, said given limitations to teaching Black history in schools, from federal diversity, equity and inclusion bans to the passing of Texas legislation restricting the teaching of race and slavery in public schools, the continuation of Freedom Schools is as important as ever.
“I guess I was preparing myself for such a time as this,” she said. “We don't consider ourselves teaching African history or African American history. We consider ourselves teaching American history. This is all part of our history, and it's not whole and complete without us.”
Marvin Dulaney, the museum’s deputy director and chief operating officer, launched courses on African American history at the museum more than 35 years ago.
Dulaney has been a history professor for 50 years and is the former president for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. The museum’s Freedom School through The Association is one of the branches in Texas, Florida and other states that are aiming to fill in the gaps in public education.
He said the lack of Black history education has a powerful impact on communities.
“By restricting the teaching of Black history in our public schools, we lose the empathy that one would develop by learning the history of the various peoples in this country,” Dulaney said.
Golden said she started learning about that history as a student of Dulaney’s at the University of Texas at Arlington. She said she remembers sitting in class as a young Black woman feeling ashamed that she didn’t know her own history.
“So I'm realizing what a big miss it is to become a full adult and not know any of your history, at least in the United States. … It's become more and more important.”
That ongoing hunger for knowledge led her to start attending the museum’s Freedom Schools in 2018. Each year she kept coming back, which eventually led her to transition from being a student to assisting Dulaney with teaching.
This year, she’s leading classes herself and is entering a role at the museum as an archivist.
“I'm taking a hobby into a mission,” she said.
The current session is full and the museum will update its website when a new session opens. Each year, the 10-week program is offered to community members ranging from high school students to working professionals and retirees. The course includes homework, readings and quizzes.
“We teach, but it's also very conversational because we all have a perspective and an experience. So I would invite anybody and everybody to bring their knowledge and their experience to the class,” she said.
All she asks is that students come with an open heart and mind.
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