A Lenten Practice: Reimagining History and Releasing White Supremacy
The vast majority of us have learned U.S. and global history through a White and Western lens, which sacrifices and hides the creativity, wisdom, and stories of so many of God’s beloved.
In the U.S., February is designated as Black History Month or African American History Month. Historian Carter G. Woodson first created “Negro History Week” in 1926, which surrounded two celebrated dates within Black communities of the time: the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln on February 12th and Frederick Douglass on February 20th.
In the Church, we have entered the season of Lent, and invite you to:
1) Give up the White supremacist lens on history and peoples; and
2) Engage in deep learning about about the creativity, wisdom, and stories of Black and African American people and communities in February, through Lent, throughout the year, and in your everyday ways of engaging the world around you.
We’ve curated a few resources and opportunities below to help guide you in celebrating Black and African American history and people. We hope you will continue to expand your knowledge well beyond these resources so that Black and African American history is U.S. and global history in you life, family, and congregation.
In Christ,
Rev. Dr. Jenny Whitcher, Ph.D.
Minister of Prophetic Formation
"Black History Month: Teaching the Complete History"
Read more (excerpt below) from: “Black History Month: Teaching the Complete History”, by Coshandra Dillard, January 29, 2020 in Learning for Justice.
It’s not uncommon for educators to focus on slavery, segregation and other forms of oppression during Black History Month.
But only teaching a Black history steeped in trauma and struggle provides a very narrow view of Blackness and perpetuates the false notion of Black people’s inferiority. This limited teaching of history can actually be violent.
Stephanie P. Jones, founder of Mapping Racial Trauma in Schools and an assistant professor of education at Grinnell College, examines the severity of such approaches in “Ending Curriculum Violence.”
Jones’ research shows that, too often, “the transatlantic slave trade and its resulting horror within the American slavery system are essentialized as all Black history itself.”
She found that the hard histories of slavery, the civil rights movement and other traumatic events in Black history are frequently mistaught or introduced with little context. Curriculum violence occurs when, as too often happens, educators ask students to act out this history or empathize with enslavers’ and other oppressors’ perspectives.
As a result, students come away with a warped understanding of how racial inequity manifests today. And repeated instances of curriculum violence contribute to a larger traumatic experience at school—experiences that can affect Black students’ mental health.
This doesn’t mean you should skip teaching hard histories for fear of inflicting curriculum violence. Instead, you can take care to teach the truth and avoid harm in the process. Jones’ article offers guidance on how to accomplish that. One way to start right away is to tell the whole story—not just a small part—of Black history. A first step is to commit to decentering racial trauma during Black History Month.
New Documentaries
More and more amazing documentaries, movies, and television shows are helping teach a fuller history and U.S. culture by focusing on Black and African American stories. Here are just a few recent documentary releases:
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021, HBOmax)
Judas and the Black Messiah, is a movie about the betrayal and assassination of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Black Panther Party. Starring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield.
“You can murder a revolutionary, but you can’t murder a revolution."
Chairman Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was assassinated by the FBI, who coerced a petty criminal named William O’Neal to help them silence Hampton and the Black Panther Party. But they could not kill Fred Hampton’s legacy and, 50 years later, his words still echo…louder than ever. I am a revolutionary!
John Lewis: Good Trouble (2020)
Using interviews and rare archival footage, John Lewis: Good Trouble, chronicles Lewis’ 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health-care reform and immigration. Using recent interviews with Lewis, Porter explores his childhood experiences, his inspiring family and his fateful meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957. In addition to her interviews with Lewis and his family, Porter’s primarily cinéma verité film also includes interviews with political leaders, Congressional colleagues, and other people who figure prominently in his life.
Black Art: In the Absence of Light (2021, HBO)
Inspired by the late David Driskell’s landmark 1976 exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” the documentary Black Art: In the Absence of Light offers an illuminating introduction to the work of some of the foremost Black visual artists working today.
Directed by Sam Pollard the film shines a light on the extraordinary impact of Driskell’s exhibit on generations of Black artists who have staked a claim on their rightful place within the 21st-Century art world. Interweaving insights and context from scholars and historians, along with interviews from a new generation of working African American curators and artists including Theaster Gates, Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, Amy Sherald and Carrie Mae Weems, the documentary is a look at the Contributions of Black American artists in today’s contemporary art world.
Make a donation to support stories that need to be told
“She Quit” a documentary about Black women by a Black woman.
Black women are often forced to explain how they are being discriminated against in the workplace to White coworkers and supervisors. We do this at our own peril. Alerting a supervisor that he or she is racist usually leads to series of trumped up workplace violations followed by a dismissal. "She Quit" will take the burden of explaining the impact of everyday racism off the shoulders of Black women. Additionally the series will explain the hazards workplaces pose for us, as well as offer solutions to help make the workplace a safer, more equitable space for Black women.
Back this project by making a donation on IndieGoGo, here.
Book: Four Hundred Souls
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
The story begins in 1619—a year before theMayflower—when the White Lion disgorges “some 20-and-odd Negroes” onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.
Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.
This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.
Coloring Pages: Black History-making Scientists
ColorMePh.D. has free downloadable coloring pages with links to additional biographical information featuring Black history-making scientist, engineers, and physicians (free throughout February). Gather your colored pencils, markers, or crayons and color while you learn about these extraordinary people.
For example, Dr. Jane Cooke Wright, the inventor of Chemotherapy:
We invite you to make an offering today.An offering is a way we share with one another in support of the whole, and as a loving act of co-creating a new way of being together and with God as we prophetically reimagine the Church.
For all of the ways you give your spirit, heart, gifts, talents, and resources, we thank you.
