Dear Superintendent Dr. Watlington and SDP Board of Education Members:
My name is Nick Palazzolo and I teach history at Central High School. I am writing to communicate my dismay in the cancellation of the Africana Studies Lecture and Workshop Series. I’ve attended every one of the series’ Saturday events since its founding, and I can testify to the positive, transformative impact this initiative has had on teachers and students. It is imperative that the District unapologetically defend teaching Black history in the face of authoritarian attack on schools: the first step is to reinstate the Africana Studies Lecture and Workshop Series.
Ismael Jimenez developed the Africana Studies Lecture and Workshop Series with a sincerely held belief that this “field of study can offer teachers the intellectual tools to develop an entirely new conceptual framework of education—one that is liberating and more humane for everyone.” My experience exemplifies the power of this idea. The Africana Studies lecture that most directly and dramatically reshaped my own thinking and teaching was Dr. Jarvis Givens’ talk on his book, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching. My unit on Jim Crow used to focus heavily on the story of oppression. I would teach a lesson on the Daughters of the Confederacy to demonstrate how the Lost Cause narrative became so widespread. One year, a student asked me if Black teachers actually taught these narratives to Black students too; I had no sufficient answer. The Africana Studies series provided me with an answer the following year.
Dr. Givens spoke of the Black teachers who discreetly challenged Jim Crow era curriculum in order to engage their students in a study of the achievement, resilience, resistance, and citizenship of Black communities. After hearing him speak, I ordered a copy that afternoon and got to work writing new lessons for my students. I wrote a lesson to illustrate the agency and legacy of Black teachers. I went on to revise my entire Jim Crow unit, now called Pursuing Freedom from 1880 to 1950.
By exposing me to the fugitive pedagogy of Black teachers in the Jim Crow era, the Africana Studies series equipped me with the tools to design a unit that was more honest about the fuller range of Black experience. I then facilitated a workshop at the Africana Studies series to introduce teachers to the very lesson I wrote inspired by the Givens keynote.
While I am not certain of the District’s reasons for cancelling the series, I cannot help thinking about one of Dr. Timothy Snyder’s lessons from On Tyranny: do not obey in advance. In January, I gave testimony at the Board of Education meeting, warning about the White House’s coming assault on honest and truthful education. I asked the Board how you would defend the leading African-American History curriculum developed under Jimenez’ leadership. It seems I have your answer in the cancellation of the Africana Studies series in the middle of Trump’s assault on schools and the rise of what Ezra Klein has called a Blue Scare. We must not freely give authoritarians their power.
Will you show our students, our teachers, and our city that the District has what it takes to defend the teaching of Black history in the face of an authoritarian attack on schools? Will you reinstate the Africana Studies Lecture and Workshop Series?
