TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Buried beneath Florida’s manicured golf courses and sprawling suburbs lie the artifacts of Florida’s slaveholding past: the long-lost cemeteries of enslaved people, the statutes of Confederate soldiers who still watch over town squares, the ancient plantations turned up-to-date ones Settlements that bear the same name. But many students don’t learn this kind of black history in Florida classrooms.
In an ancient wooden bungalow in Delray Beach, Charlene Farrington and her staff gather groups of teenagers on Saturday mornings to teach them lessons she fears public schools wouldn’t offer. They talk about South Florida’s Caribbean roots, the state’s dim history of lynching, how segregation still shapes the landscape, and how grassroots activists mobilized the civil rights movement to end generations of oppression.
“You need to know how it happened before so you can decide how you want it to happen again,” she told her students as they sat at their desks, the morning featherlight illuminating historic photos on the walls.
Florida students are giving up their Saturday mornings to learn about African American history at the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum in Delray Beach and similar programs at community centers across the state. Many are supported by Black churches, which have helped shape the cultural and political identities of their congregants for generations.
Since Faith in Florida developed its own Black history toolkit last year, more than 400 congregations have committed to teaching the lessons, the advocacy group says.
Florida has required public schools to teach African American history for 30 years, but many families no longer trust the state education system to adequately cover the topic.
According to the state’s own data, only a dozen school districts in Florida have demonstrated excellence in teaching Black history by demonstrating that they integrate the content into lessons throughout the school year and receiving buy-in from the school board and community partners have.
School district officials across Florida told The Associated Press that they are still following the state’s mandate to teach about the experience of enslavement, the abolition of slavery and the “vital contributions of African Americans to building and strengthening American society.”
But a common complaint from students and parents is that the lessons seem to be circumscribed to heroic figures like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and rarely extend beyond Black History Month in February.
When Sulaya Williams’ oldest child started school, she couldn’t find the comprehensive instruction she wanted for him in the area. So in 2016, she founded her own organization to teach black history in community settings.
“We wanted to make sure our children knew our stories so they could pass them on to their children,” Williams said.
Williams now has a contract as a Saturday school teacher at a Fort Lauderdale public library, and her 12-year-old daughter, Addah Gordon, invites her classmates to join her.
“It feels like I’m really getting to know my culture. Like learning what my ancestors did,” Addah said. “And most people don’t know what they did.”
The mandate on Black history came at the time of the atonement
State lawmakers unanimously approved the commitment to African American history in 1994, in a time of reconciliation with Florida’s history.
State-commissioned historians had just released an official report on the deadly 1923 attack on the town of Rosewood, when a white mob razed the majority-black community and displaced its residents. When the Florida legislature approved financial compensation for Rosewood’s survivors and descendants in 1994, it was considered a national model for reparations.
“Decades ago there was a moment of enlightenment in Florida. “That really existed,” said Marvin Dunn, who has written several books about Black Floridians. “But that was short-lived.”
Three decades later, the teaching of African American history in Florida classrooms remains uneven, inadequate in the eyes of some advocates and under fire from the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has championed efforts to limit race, history and discrimination has can be talked about in the state’s public schools.
DeSantis has led attacks on “wokeness” in education that have galvanized conservatives across the country, including President-elect Donald Trump. In 2022, the governor signed a law restricting certain racist conversations in schools and businesses and banning the teaching that members of an ethnic group should feel guilt or responsibility for the actions of previous generations.
Last year, the DeSantis administration blocked the implementation of a novel Advanced Placement course in African American studies in Florida, saying it violated state law and was historically inexact.
A spokesman for the College Board, which oversees Advanced Placement courses, told the AP that it was not aware of any public schools in Florida that currently offer the African American studies course. It is also not listed in the country’s current course directory.
Representatives from the Florida Department of Education and the state’s African American History Task Force did not respond to AP requests for comment.
“People interested in advancing the history of the African diaspora cannot rely on schools to do that,” said Tameka Bradley Hobbs, manager of the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center in Broward County. “I think it’s even clearer now that there has to be a certain level of autonomy and self-determination when it comes to passing on the history and legacy of our ancestors.”
Most schools in Florida do not offer history classes for blacks
Last year, only 30 of Florida’s 67 established school districts offered at least one stand-alone course in African American history or humanities, according to state data. Although not required by law, establishing a dedicated black history course is a measure of how districts are meeting the state mandate.
Florida’s immense urban districts are far more likely to offer these courses than diminutive rural districts, some of which have fewer than 2,000 students.
According to Brian Knowles, who oversees African American, Holocaust and Latino studies for the Palm Beach County School District, some teachers are afraid of violating state laws, even in districts that have staff dedicated to teaching black students deal with history.
“There are so many other districts and so many kids that we miss because we tiptoe around what is essentially American history,” Knowles said.
Frustration with the limitations teachers face led Renee O’Connor to take a break last year from her job as a black history teacher at Miami Norland Senior High School in the majority-black city of Miami Gardens. Now she’s back in the classroom, but she’s also helped community groups develop their own Black history programs outside of the public school system.
“Of course I wish all kids could take an African-American history class,” O’Connor said, “but you have to pivot if that’s not happening in schools.”
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Kate Payne is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
