Although I have been accused of being “woke,” it is not a term I have ever used to describe myself — nor have I ever used it to describe anyone, for that matter. Quite frankly, it is not my term to use. Yet people from Tucker Carlson on down the…

Our culture likes to bathe in “I have a dream,” and ignore the radical side of Martin Luther King, Jr. Much of what we think of Martin Luther King, Jr. today has been filtered through a lens that minimizes his work as a social activist. We see Martin Luther King…

The story of Harry Washington is one that reveals much about how our nation’s history is told. You mean you haven’t heard of Harry Washington? Well, sit back. It’s a wild ride. Harry Washington was born in West Africa around 1740. He was captured in his early 20s, placed in…

If you went to the Bronx Zoo in 1906, you undoubtedly would have found yourself at the exhibit of Ota Benga, a man kidnapped from his home in Africa and displayed in a cage along with an orangutan. People threw him food, taunted him; applauded when he did something they…

Calle de los Negros was an infamous street in Los Angeles that had a history of violence, including public lynchings of Black and Mexican residents. But, by the 1870s, there was a new target: Chinese immigrants. Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles had made Calle de los Negros their home. Not…

History, as is taught in our country, lionizes and mythologizes Robert E. Lee. Even as a high school student in the North in the 80s, I was not immune to this. I remember being told three things about Robert E. Lee: 1) He hated slavery and had freed his slaves…

The unpleasant aspects of our history are often told through purposeful obfuscation. Consequently, what people in this country think they know about race and slavery, in particular, are viewed through minimalization, carefully selected words that obscure the actual history, and purposeful omission of events and people. A friend recently turned…

American history is a history of paradoxes. If you want to really get into the history of race in America, you can start with the American Revolution, the ultimate of paradoxes. Justified by the words “all men are created equal,” the revolution itself did nothing to provide that equality to…

As a history teacher, these last couple of weeks have been wrought with a realization that most white people in this country do not know history. Don’t get me wrong. I have always known this. But the responses of late to the mass unrest that has occurred over the murder…