Black History Should Be Taught in All Public High Schools Essay Example

The history of black excellence should be taught in all public school systems. The importance of the matter is that most African Americans do not know their heritage, the public school system shows the importance of knowing who the president is or what goes on in the justice system but doesn’t integrate black history into the mix. Students learn the history of the white man but not the history of the black man; they are both equally important; they coexist with each other. 

To show, the percentage of African Americans enrolled into public high schools is “24% (in 2018), that’s about 7.7 million” (National Center for Education Statistics). 7.7 million students are not getting proper education. The school systems teach us the basics like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks but never Malcolm X or  Emmett Till. The heritage of African Americans will continually fade out because of the school systems. Malcolm X was an African American civil rights movement leader, he supported nationalism and urged the African Americans to use protection by any means necessary. Sadly he was assassinated like many grand leaders. The story of the 14 year old Emmet Till has many different versions but the main one is where he whistled at a white woman and that would be the decision between life and death. Emmet was mutilated, lynched, and beaten unreconnizable. There are multiple stories of the backlash of African Americans, simply being in an elevator, talking to a white woman, etc. Another thing that hurts African Americans is wanting change, change brings forth death. The school system will mainly talk about how Africans/ African Americans were slaves and the Middle Passage. Those two things are too broad and do not show the full side of African/ African American history.

Without question a huge argument that is underrated is who actually built America. Throughout United States history it is well known that the Native Americans were here first they lived all over the United States. The Natives or Indigenous people had a high drive for agriculture, they cultivated and developed many plants, most of them that we use today are: sweet potatoes, corn, beans, tobacco, chocolate, peanuts, cotton. “The Indigenous people used plants to create dyes, medicines, soap, clothes, shelters and baskets'' (Native American Contribution number 1). Fast forward a few hundred years and “African Americans are the foundation of growth and economic development” (Asha Banerjee and Cameron Johnson). Black workers produced cotton and tobacco for centuries, creating equity. Between 1839-1859 enslaved African Americans accounted for 12% of the population, a more surprising percent is how much money was created in these 20 years. “Between 18.7% to 24.3% per capita'' was created and integrated into the United States economic system. (Kathryn Zickuhr).  The slave owners and preisdents did not do much besides strip the voices of African Americans and claim there labor as their own. The type of evidence needed was very hard to accumulate. The ‘Great Migration’ is one of the more important things, it was one of the revolutionary points. “African Americans migrated from the South to large cities in the North and West” (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica). Going on a tuff but amazing journey to create a new foundation and future for themselves. The African Americans always knew there would be hardships, always a prejudiced person, always a struggling time because no one would help. Those are the things that should be taught in school, the importance of knowing the United States of America, which was created by Indigenous and African American people, along with the harsh but needed leadership of the white man.

Poverty is something that millions of people go through, a 2020 census said that “37.2 million people '' live in poverty (The United States Census Bureau). African Americans have endured through poverty for centuries, furthermore African Americans have been denied time after time. People like to judge other people’s situations before they even know their story, similar to how a plethora of African Americans were and are in poverty. In the 1970s African Americans had a poverty rate of 32.5% (The New York Times) and the most recent evidence of poverty percentages for African Americans in 2019 is at 23.8%; America has not improved much over the years. Ghettos were formed due to the denial of high wages and doing white collared work, most jobs required an education, African Americans were most of the time (in the south) denied a job because of institutional racism. Segregation also was involved in the term ghetto, simply whites denied blacks because of their history and prior slavery. African Americans moved into ghettos because that was the only place that didn’t deny African Americans. The worst part about the ghetto or “the hood” is that since jobs weren’t at large for African Americans, they mainly sold drugs just to support their family.  This is something that should be instilled into public high school systems. 

In contrasting viewpoint white people see Black History Month as cultural ignorance, there have been multiple reviews and documentaries that say that Black History Month (B.H.M.) should not be included as an actual celebratory month. “... Fox News personality Stacey Dash said that it should be abolished.” (MSNBC). The weakness in this claim is that you cannot simply abolish black history, black history is American history. The people that made those claims are talking out of emotion, there is no reason in their claims. An appeal based on emotions is not beneficial to anyone because that person can manipulate situations without logic, research, or reason.

In the final analysis of this essay, it is clear that black history should be taught in all public high schools. There are multitudes of students, millions of African Americans who do not know their origin, years of institutional racism, and much oppression. Without the internet most people, not just African Americans, would not be able to know where they come from. It is true that the black man and the white man coexist off of eachother, from economic issues to working together for the greater good. Throughout history it is a known fact that African Americans always had a grim life. Events like Seneca Village and The Tulsa Race Massacre will most likely never be taught in a public high school, unless the people of America advocate for change. 

Works Cited 

Ap. “Census Bureau Reports 1980 Poverty Statistics.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Aug. 1982, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/22/us/census-bureau-reports-1980-poverty-statistics.html.

“African American Workers Built America.” CLASP, 23 Apr. 2021, https://www.clasp.org/blog/african-american-workers-built-america.

Bureau, US Census. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020.” Census.gov, 1 Mar. 2022, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20there%20were%2037.2,and%20Table%20B%2D1).

“Great Migration.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Migration.

Native American Contributions - USDA. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs141p2_024206.pdf.

“New Research Shows Slavery's Central Role in U.S. Economic Growth Leading up to the Civil War.” Equitable Growth, 30 June 2021, https://equitablegrowth.org/new-research-shows-slaverys-central-role-in-u-s-economic-growth-leading-up-to-the-civil-war/.

“Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools.” Coe - Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge#:~:text=About%2024%20percent%20of%20Black,of%20the%20students%20were%20Black.

Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cge.pdf.

“The Black History Month Debate Is Back.” MSNBC, NBCUniversal News Group, 22 Jan. 2016, https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-black-history-month-debate-back-msna779486.