Florida requires teaching Black history. Some don't trust schools to do it justice
Thirty years after Florida required schools to teach African American history, how the subject is taught remains inconsistent across Florida classrooms, a review by The Associated Press has found
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Buried among Florida's manicured golf courses and sprawling suburbs are the artifacts of its slave-holding past: the long-lost cemeteries of enslaved people, the statutes of Confederate soldiers that still stand watch over town squares, the old plantations turned into modern subdivisions that bear the same name. But many students aren't learning that kind of Black history in Florida classrooms.
In an old wooden bungalow in Delray Beach, Charlene Farrington and her staff gather groups of teenagers on Saturday mornings to teach them lessons she worries that public schools won't provide. They talk about South Florida's Caribbean roots, the state's dark history of lynchings, how segregation still shapes the landscape and how grassroots activists mobilized the Civil Rights Movement to upend 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 as their desks, the morning light illuminating historic photographs 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 in similar programs at community centers across the state. Many are supported by Black churches, which for generations have helped forge the cultural and political identity of their parishioners.
