How I Taught ALL of American History 50 Years Ago: Part 2

I am SO glad I’m not a teacher these days…

Photo Credit: Unsplash

By Pamela Hilliard Owens

Preface

Yes, it’s been about FIFTY YEARS since I graduated with my undergraduate degree in education and special education and started teaching sixth grade in a primarily white mostly rural public elementary school about 35 miles west of my hometown of Detroit, Michigan.

Yes, things have definitely changed, and not always for the best since I became a teacher lo those many years ago.

I recently published Part 1 of this story. Here is the link.

Here in Part 2, I am discussing some details and memories about the first couple of years I was a teacher and taught ALL of American History to my 6th-grade students.

Black History Month wasn’t official yet, but that didn’t stop me.

• Even though Black History Month wasn’t yet an official state or federal holiday, it was being celebrated in the early 1970s in the Black community as an extension of Negro History Week. I assigned my 6th graders to do a report on a famous Black person from any area or industry. I brought in copies of my own Ebony and Jet magazines for them to use to get information and to cut up for pictures for their reports. 

  • I distinctly remember one boy who refused to do the assignment and so received an “F” for the unit. His father came in and finally conceded that it was important for his son to learn about “colored people” (his words). 

• When I taught about how Africans were conquered and brought to this country to be sold into slavery, I had my students experience what it was like to lay for months in the bottom of a slave ship. I got some jump ropes from the gym teacher, pushed the desks to the side of my classroom, separated the boys from the girls, and very loosely tied the ankles and wrists of my students as they lay on the hardwood floors. 

  • They stayed there on the floor for about 20 minutes, long enough to start getting sore and stiff from the position. They learned something, but they didn’t really complain.

• When I taught my students that Indians were not “savages,” but they were fighting for the land and culture that was theirs for thousands of years, it totally changed the perception of Indians, not only with my white students but most importantly, with the one Indian child I had in my class, a boy named Dennis. At first, he was getting “Ds” on his report card, but after I continually taught him and the class that Indians were people with their own culture and their own civilizations, Dennis started proudly wearing his headbands, and his grades improved to “Bs.” 

  • The memory that still brings tears to my eyes these many years later happened when I finally met Dennis’ father. Dennis’ parents never came to parent-teacher conferences or to any other school events. But on the very last day of school, when the students were finished but the teachers were turning in their records, etc., I saw a man with tears in his eyes running down the hall towards me. It was Dennis’s father, and he said that he had to thank me for teaching the truth about the history of how Native Americans were treated and misunderstood in this country. Changing his son’s perceptions of Indians in general and himself as an Indian child in particular also changed his son’s life.

Teaching the Black National Anthem and about an Impressive Black Scientist to the entire school

• There were eight 6th-grade classes in that school, four classes on the first floor and four classes on the third floor (where my classroom was). Each class had about four Black students each. My first year teaching, right before Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s January 15th birthday (remember, Dr. King had been assassinated just three years earlier), I told my principal that I was going to teach the Black National Anthem to all of the 6th-grade Black students, and then we were going to sing the anthem to the entire school over the P.A. system, and that is exactly what happened. (I didn’t exactly ask permission…) I brought all of the Black students from all of the 6th-grade classes to my classroom during lunch hour, put the 45 RPM record of the song on the record player, and taught the students all three verses. 

  • When we sang the song to the whole school, I didn’t hear about anyone complaining. It was just my way of teaching that part of Black History to the Black students and to the entire mostly white school.

• Finally, during my second year of teaching, all of the 6th-grade teachers got permission from the school board to modify our class schedules to better meet the needs of our students. (Oh for the good old days when the administration actually listened to the teachers!)

  • For each pair of 6th-grade classes, one teacher would teach social studies to his/her class and to the class of his/her partner, and the other teacher would teach science to both classes. I was much stronger in social studies than in science, and my partner across the hall was stronger in science than in social studies. 

  • All classes in the school were required to present a play to the entire school sometime during the school year, and that year, my partner who taught science decided to do a play about Thomas Edison. 

  • Well, I decided that everyone needed to learn the truth about the invention of the electric light bulb. Yes, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but the bulb didn’t work correctly until a Black scientist and engineer named Lewis Latimer perfected the carbon filament and a process for their manufacture. Mr. Latimer received patents for both inventions.

  • I insisted that my partner write a role for Lewis Latimer into his play, and I decided that a quiet Black boy student of mine should play that role. The entire school learned about Lewis Latimer when the play was presented.

It IS Possible to Teach ALL of American History Without Controversy or Making White Students “feel uncomfortable”

This is what I learned during my first few years of teaching as a person who was just over twenty years old. I learned how to “insist” on the truth from the strength of my elders who taught me so well. 

All through my life, including my educational career and my other sales and solopreneurship careers, I continued to tell the truth about ALL of American history.

I truly hope that I helped to “open the eyes” of the many people with whom I interacted over the decades. 

It is possible to tell the truth without “hurting” others.

I really don’t know what I’d do or how I’d handle all of the pressures and attacks on teachers these days.