“We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history.“

-Dr. Carter G. Woodson

Chevara Orrin

Several weeks ago, a few days before the celebration honoring the birth and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I created a Civil Rights history quiz in response to disturbing and disheartening conversations with dozens of students.

In informal settings, I asked them to tell me what they knew about the Civil Rights Movement how it related to their everyday lives. One student replied, “I don’t know much” and even when prodded was unable to share anything at all. A few students commented, “Blacks stood up for their rights against laws that were discriminatory.” The remaining students spoke vaguely of sit-ins at lunch counters, lynchings, Brown vs. Board of Education and voting rights. Only a few were able to articulate a direct or indirect connection to modern day struggles of poverty, educational disparity, gender bias, homophobia and violence.

These were college students. Black college students. On a predominately Black college campus.

The quiz and subsequent conversations revealed that many of them didn’t know the year Dr. King was assassinated or where. Some had no knowledge that a sanitation strike and the fight for economic justice was what led Dr. King to Memphis, Tennessee and ultimately to the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he was brutally murdered. They had never seen images of hundreds of men marching through the streets proudly and boldly carrying “I AM A MAN” signs as they demanded an end to the neglect and abuse of Black employees, including the horrific deaths of two Memphis trash collectors, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, who were “crushed like garbage” by a malfunctioning truck.

They didn’t know that Fannie Lou Hamer was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention. They thought “Jim Crow” was a man who owned slaves in the south. They were unfamiliar with the acronyms NOW, SNCC, CORE, SCLC, and EEOA. One half of those who took the quiz identified 1945-1972 as the years associated with the Civil Rights Movement.  One-third thought the enrollment of nine Black students at Central High School occurred in Memphis, Tennessee or Tupelo, Mississippi. And, no one knew the name of Governor Orval Faubus who called in the National Guard to block those students from entering that school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The grainy YouTube images of several hundred thousand exhilarated marchers seemed far removed a few of the students remarked. No, they had never marched. Or raised their voices in protest for or against anything. Or even knew where the campus “free speech zone” was located.

I watched these Millennials intently, searching for recognition in their eyes and connection to the struggles and hopes of the throngs of people stretched wide in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

I Googled. They stared in silence. Some grimaced at the swollen and disfigured face of Emmett Till, but made no connection to the wrongful imprisonment of Darryl Hunt. The “whites only” signs and burned bus carcasses with fleeing Freedom Riders elicited a few gasps and one student said that he had seen “Mississippi Burning.” I explained that the movie was a dramatization not a documentary and suggested he research further.

It is unreasonable and saddening to me that any college student with access to a computer or smart phone be unaware of our collective history. It’s a keystroke away. It is possible because they don’t recognize the connection between Fannie Lou Hamer’s account at the 1964 Democratic National Convention of being brutally beaten with a blackjack for registering to vote and President Obama proclaiming at that same convention 40 years later “that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted at least, most of the time.” It is possible because they don’t connect the dots between Hamer’s forced sterilization in Mississippi in 1961 and the tireless advocacy of Representative Larry Womble to compensate North Carolina victims.

It is possible because there hasn’t been a student movement that rallied and stirred the soul of the nation since the SNCC sit-ins.  It is possible because we haven’t challenged them to think critically and empowered them to Occupy Themselves from within.

The recent viral video of comedian Dave Ackerman in blackface “testing the [Black history] knowledge” of Brigham Young University students has outraged people across our nation. I wasn’t surprised when students were only able to name one or two people from the textbooks of Black history. Most of the students I spoke with could only recite Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X.

I remember the faded pictures on the walls every February in every classroom first through sixth grade at Peabody Elementary. The etched wisdom wrinkles of Sojourner Truth, wearing a white bonnet with a white scarf draped around her shoulders; Harriet Tubman, regal and resilient; Frederick Douglass’ long white hair and beard; and Dr. George Washington Carver sitting in a laboratory. They were the staples. The consistent figures that we learned about year after year. Every now and then, a teacher might sprinkle in Crispus Attucks or Marian Anderson.

When I became a parent in the early 1990’s, I was hopeful that times had changed – that we had made progress and that there would be far more images spanning a wider range of Black experience on those walls. I walked cautiously into my son’s elementary school in Cobb County, Georgia and there they were, like long lost aunties and uncles. Astronaut Ronald McNair had been added along with Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson. By the time my son transitioned to middle school, I was demanding that the school administration stop using a history textbook that included a sentence that read “Most slave owners were kind decent people.” Michael was mortified when I tore out the page and stormed into the principal’s office. He was sure we’d have to pay for the book and afraid that I’d be arrested for destroying state property.

As for those college students?  I taught them a Freedom Song. Their rich voices connecting us to Sojourner, Frederick, Malcolm, Martin, and President Obama.

The responsibility of integrating our history belongs to us all. The student must desire to learn. The teacher must find joy in teaching. And we, the community must care.

There is an obvious disconnect between the struggle of the past and privilege not yet attained.

Our history is more than a connection to our past. It is the gateway to our future.

Chevara Orrin of Winston-Salem is a community activist and university administrator.