The Board of Education for the state of Florida approved a set of new curriculum standards for African American history as the state continues to be the epicenter of a nationwide debate over how to teach issues of race in the classroom.
The new standards require lessons on the cultural contributions of African Americans, the history of the slave trade, the Jim Crow era, and race massacres in Tulsa, Atlanta, and elsewhere. The standards also require middle schools to teach students about skills that slaves developed that could have been beneficial to them.
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The new standards come as the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has faced repeated criticisms from black advocacy groups and other liberal organizations for allegedly sanitizing the teaching of African American history.
The governor and the Republican-controlled legislature have passed some of the nation’s strictest bans on teaching critical race theory in classrooms. Earlier this year, the state blocked the College Board from piloting an AP African American studies course in Florida high schools because some of the concepts in the course included “black queer studies” and other concepts the state deemed in violation of state law.
The NAACP, which has issued a travel warning for Florida, blasted the new standards for conveying “a sanitized and dishonest telling of the history of slavery in America.” The group particularly took issue with the notion that slaves developed beneficial skills.
“Today’s actions by the Florida state government are an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history. We refuse to go back. The NAACP has been fighting against malicious actors such as those within the DeSantis Administration for over a century, and we’re prepared to continue that fight by any means necessary. Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Florida Department of Education spokesman Alex Lanfranconi said the state department is “proud of the rigorous process” that was undergone to develop the new standards.
“It’s sad to see critics attempt to discredit what any unbiased observer would conclude to be in-depth and comprehensive African American History standards,” Lanfranconi said. “They incorporate all components of African American History: the good, the bad, and the ugly. These standards will further cement Florida as a national leader in education, as we continue to provide true and accurate instruction in African American History.”
Amid the criticisms of the standards, William Allen and Frances Presley Rice, two members of the workgroup that developed the standards said that the requirement that schools teach about the skills developed by enslaved people was to “show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefitted.”
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“This is factual and well documented,” Allen and Rice said. “Some examples include: blacksmiths like Ned Cobb, Henry Blair, Lewis Latimer and John Henry; shoemakers like James Forten, Paul Cuffe and Betty Washington Lewis; fishing and shipping industry workers like Jupiter Hammon, John Chavis, William Whipper and Crispus Attucks; tailors like Elizabeth Keckley, James Thomas and Marietta Carter; and teachers like Betsey Stockton and Booker T. Washington.”
They continued: “Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history. Florida students deserve to learn how slaves took advantage of whatever circumstances they were in to benefit themselves and the community of African descendants. It is disappointing, but nevertheless unsurprising, that critics would reduce months of work to create Florida’s first ever stand-alone strand of African American History Standards to a few isolated expressions without context.”
