About 8 years ago, I began to learn about Black History. In school in NYC, we learned the same kind of minimal information that the author of this article did. I have travelled a good bit all over the US and even lived in Nashville for a while and I learned snippets here and there, like the John Brown memorial in Harper's Ferry (although a memorial to a white guy) and the Smithsonian. I became aware of the great extent of Black history that is never mentioned. I had never heard about Juneteenth until it was tossed to Black Americans as a crumb of appeasement. I am a well educated person who never knew about the atrocities Black Americans faced until I began looking into the subject after the death of Eric Garner; I am originally from Staten Island. So, Mr. Spivey and others whose articles you publish here, thank you for writing these articles that inform me about Black history. It is exponentially more abhorrent that I ever knew.
Thank you, Catherine. I’m still amazed at all the things I never heard about until recently, and only then because I was looking or stumbled upon it while researching something related.
When we are children, we Don't Understand the World We Were Born Into. The morals and miseries of knowing come later. You just a kid and Big Names and Grand Concepts just kind of hover on the periphery of your kid like until you are old enough to understand, See and Put The Pieces Together.
When it comes to Racism and The History of People Of Color in the United States of America, we are given scant information, and that, usually loaded with bias with the intent of minimizing the impact if not erasing it entirely.
What you Don't Know as a child, you don't Know. What You Don't Know As An Adult You Don't Want To Know. The Trith, The Facts, The History, The "I Was There" Stories Are Within Reach Of Every Semi-Educated Person With Access to a Computer or A Library. The only excuse for Not Knowing, well, there are three, Misinformation Overload, Outright Obfuscation, And Denial.
It helps to Not Want To Know, but Denial means You Do Know, But You Don't Want To Talk About It or You Minimize The Impact.
Speaking of holidays and the civil rights movement, the college where I used to work didn't even celebrate the ML King holiday. The people there cared so little that they bargained to work on that day just so that they could have a 4-day weekend later in the school year.
I miss Marshall U in Dinky Town. It seems worse that the first High school in Mpls. to voluntarily integrate was torn down and is now home to a Target.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and for providing so much of the history that remained hidden and buried. Black history, Native/Indigenous history, women's history - all of their contributions ignored because it didn't fit the white narrative. I'm grateful their histories have started being told, saddened that I didn't learn any of that while in school, and now am enraged that they are being destroyed, deleted, buried once again.
Your experience is, sadly, a pretty common one. I used to teach at a college in Montana, and so many students had never experienced any of this history until I tried to teach them about it. And several members of the board of the college hated me for doing it, too.
Appalling for college board members to object to educating students, or (gasp) give students a sense of pride in what their ancestors may have contributed. Our history has often ignored the truth about who actually did the work and lauded those who stole the work and got the credit. Thank you for trying.
Yes, the board members were very much of the "Founding Fathers are Heroes" and everything else about US history follows from that, type of view about history. My efforts to include regular people and marginalized groups in the curriculum in a substantial way was heretical to them.
So, now I'm on Substack hoping to have a better experience doing the same thing here.
Thank you Mr Spivey for giving me a history of your life growing up in Minneapolis. I am 72 years young and I grew up in Jim Crow Columbia South Carolina in 1952-1965. I lived on Benedict College Campus from the age of 7-10 years where my father was the head football 🏈 coach and Professor 👨🏾🏫. He died of
Kidney failure due to malignant hypertension when I was 10 years old. My Dad 👨🏾🦱was a Navy veteran serving in World War Two. He was honorably discharged due to his kidney disease. I remember his students on campus protesting against segregated businesses in our city. Segregation was a part of our lives. I grew up thinking that this was a normal way for Black people to live. After my father died in 1963 we moved to Detroit Michigan in 1965 to live with my grandmother 🧓🏽until my mother got her license to teach in the Detroit Public Schools in 1966. Living in Detroit in the 1960’s was an amazing time for me because there was no blatant segregation in businesses and in the schools. But we did live in a neighborhood where white people were moving out into the suburbs while we were moving in to their neighborhoods within the city of Detroit. Then during the summer of 1967 we had the riots that changed my entire city. White people fled to the suburbs and took their businesses with them. We are still trying to recover from those years of political unrest. I was 15 years old and for the first time I saw the National Guard military troops trying to restore order to our neighborhoods. After that my church which was Plymouth Congregation began inviting youth ministers to teach us about our Black history. We would fellowship with them in our youth fellowship meetings on Sunday evenings and hear various speeches from these amazing young Black men and women activists. This was a turning point in my life where I became more interested in reading about my black history. I didn’t have a black history course until I was a freshman in college! But I was always aware of my history thanks to my parents and grandmother who was always talking about our culture and history. I lived through the murders of our young Black Men who were outstanding leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, etc. I lived through the Vietnam War where some of my relatives were drafted to fight in the Vietnam 🇻🇳 War. My Mom would take us to the Shrine of the Black Madonna store where we would buy Black history books 📚 and dashiki fashions. I proudly wore my Afro to my senior prom. I was Black and proud ✊🏾! Now I am living to see our Country being led by a blatant racist who is trying to send us back to the Jim Crow era where we had no civil rights!😡 History is repeating itself. I just hope that we survive the next civil war in this country.😔✊🏾
About 8 years ago, I began to learn about Black History. In school in NYC, we learned the same kind of minimal information that the author of this article did. I have travelled a good bit all over the US and even lived in Nashville for a while and I learned snippets here and there, like the John Brown memorial in Harper's Ferry (although a memorial to a white guy) and the Smithsonian. I became aware of the great extent of Black history that is never mentioned. I had never heard about Juneteenth until it was tossed to Black Americans as a crumb of appeasement. I am a well educated person who never knew about the atrocities Black Americans faced until I began looking into the subject after the death of Eric Garner; I am originally from Staten Island. So, Mr. Spivey and others whose articles you publish here, thank you for writing these articles that inform me about Black history. It is exponentially more abhorrent that I ever knew.
Thank you, Catherine. I’m still amazed at all the things I never heard about until recently, and only then because I was looking or stumbled upon it while researching something related.
Excellent Article!
When we are children, we Don't Understand the World We Were Born Into. The morals and miseries of knowing come later. You just a kid and Big Names and Grand Concepts just kind of hover on the periphery of your kid like until you are old enough to understand, See and Put The Pieces Together.
When it comes to Racism and The History of People Of Color in the United States of America, we are given scant information, and that, usually loaded with bias with the intent of minimizing the impact if not erasing it entirely.
What you Don't Know as a child, you don't Know. What You Don't Know As An Adult You Don't Want To Know. The Trith, The Facts, The History, The "I Was There" Stories Are Within Reach Of Every Semi-Educated Person With Access to a Computer or A Library. The only excuse for Not Knowing, well, there are three, Misinformation Overload, Outright Obfuscation, And Denial.
It helps to Not Want To Know, but Denial means You Do Know, But You Don't Want To Talk About It or You Minimize The Impact.
Speaking of holidays and the civil rights movement, the college where I used to work didn't even celebrate the ML King holiday. The people there cared so little that they bargained to work on that day just so that they could have a 4-day weekend later in the school year.
Thanks Mr. Spivey.
I miss Marshall U in Dinky Town. It seems worse that the first High school in Mpls. to voluntarily integrate was torn down and is now home to a Target.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and for providing so much of the history that remained hidden and buried. Black history, Native/Indigenous history, women's history - all of their contributions ignored because it didn't fit the white narrative. I'm grateful their histories have started being told, saddened that I didn't learn any of that while in school, and now am enraged that they are being destroyed, deleted, buried once again.
Your experience is, sadly, a pretty common one. I used to teach at a college in Montana, and so many students had never experienced any of this history until I tried to teach them about it. And several members of the board of the college hated me for doing it, too.
Appalling for college board members to object to educating students, or (gasp) give students a sense of pride in what their ancestors may have contributed. Our history has often ignored the truth about who actually did the work and lauded those who stole the work and got the credit. Thank you for trying.
Yes, the board members were very much of the "Founding Fathers are Heroes" and everything else about US history follows from that, type of view about history. My efforts to include regular people and marginalized groups in the curriculum in a substantial way was heretical to them.
So, now I'm on Substack hoping to have a better experience doing the same thing here.
Thank you Mr Spivey for giving me a history of your life growing up in Minneapolis. I am 72 years young and I grew up in Jim Crow Columbia South Carolina in 1952-1965. I lived on Benedict College Campus from the age of 7-10 years where my father was the head football 🏈 coach and Professor 👨🏾🏫. He died of
Kidney failure due to malignant hypertension when I was 10 years old. My Dad 👨🏾🦱was a Navy veteran serving in World War Two. He was honorably discharged due to his kidney disease. I remember his students on campus protesting against segregated businesses in our city. Segregation was a part of our lives. I grew up thinking that this was a normal way for Black people to live. After my father died in 1963 we moved to Detroit Michigan in 1965 to live with my grandmother 🧓🏽until my mother got her license to teach in the Detroit Public Schools in 1966. Living in Detroit in the 1960’s was an amazing time for me because there was no blatant segregation in businesses and in the schools. But we did live in a neighborhood where white people were moving out into the suburbs while we were moving in to their neighborhoods within the city of Detroit. Then during the summer of 1967 we had the riots that changed my entire city. White people fled to the suburbs and took their businesses with them. We are still trying to recover from those years of political unrest. I was 15 years old and for the first time I saw the National Guard military troops trying to restore order to our neighborhoods. After that my church which was Plymouth Congregation began inviting youth ministers to teach us about our Black history. We would fellowship with them in our youth fellowship meetings on Sunday evenings and hear various speeches from these amazing young Black men and women activists. This was a turning point in my life where I became more interested in reading about my black history. I didn’t have a black history course until I was a freshman in college! But I was always aware of my history thanks to my parents and grandmother who was always talking about our culture and history. I lived through the murders of our young Black Men who were outstanding leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, etc. I lived through the Vietnam War where some of my relatives were drafted to fight in the Vietnam 🇻🇳 War. My Mom would take us to the Shrine of the Black Madonna store where we would buy Black history books 📚 and dashiki fashions. I proudly wore my Afro to my senior prom. I was Black and proud ✊🏾! Now I am living to see our Country being led by a blatant racist who is trying to send us back to the Jim Crow era where we had no civil rights!😡 History is repeating itself. I just hope that we survive the next civil war in this country.😔✊🏾