Whenever I tell high school students in the classes I visit that I appreciated learning about slavery as a child growing up in the Caribbean, they often look confused.
They ask why I liked learning about something so horrible and harsh. How could I value being taught about something that caused so much pain?
I explain that my teachers in St. Thomas—and my fourth-grade history textbook—didn’t focus solely on the harsh conditions of slavery. They also highlighted Black freedom fighters like Moses Gottlieb, better known as General Buddhoe, who led a nonviolent revolt that resulted in the abolition of slavery in the Danish-ruled West Indies on July 3, 1848. This historic date is now celebrated as Emancipation Day in the United States Virgin Islands.
The holiday and the lessons I learned about it instilled a sense of cultural pride in me and helped me appreciate the sacrifices Black people made for freedom. It also encouraged me to persevere when faced with challenges.
I bring this up because I believe Juneteenth—which commemorates the date in 1865 when Union troops notified the last remaining slaves in Texas that they were free—holds similar promise for Black students throughout the United States.
Students often tell me they’re not learning much about slavery beyond its suffering and harsh conditions. As a historian specializing in how slavery is taught in K-12 classrooms, I believe educators can incorporate Juneteenth into their instruction to give students a broader understanding of how Black people resisted slavery and persevered despite it. Here are a few ways to do that:
Start Early, but Keep It Positive
As early childhood experts from the National Museum of African American History point out in a guide they created to help develop lessons about Juneteenth, children in the U.S. will likely hear about slavery by age five. Lessons about slavery at that age should avoid focusing on pain and trauma. Instead, they should celebrate and teach stories of Black culture, leadership, inventions, beauty, and accomplishments. This approach will better equip children to later hear about, understand, and emotionally process the terrible truths about slavery.
Juneteenth events can be wonderful opportunities to introduce the concepts of slavery with a focus on resilience and within an environment of love, trust, and joy,the guide states.
Focus on Black Resistance
Many Juneteenth celebrations not only commemorate the end of slavery but also honor the generations of Black men and women who fought to end slavery and for racial justice. As Black history education professor LaGarett King explains, Black people have always “acted, made their own decisions based on their interests, and fought back against oppressive structures.” Emphasizing this can help students see that although Black people were victimized by slavery, they were not just helpless victims.
Juneteenth provides opportunities to acknowledge and examine the legacies of Black freedom fighters during slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Sojourner Truth.
Connect Juneteenth to Current Events
Juneteenth can also help educators connect historical struggles for freedom to contemporary demands for racial justice. That’s what George Patterson, a former Brooklyn middle school principal, did a few years ago during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Patterson believes that studying Juneteenth helps students understand the historical underpinnings of contemporary events and put current demands for racial justice into context.
Teachers don’t have to wait for Juneteenth to be included in textbooks to teach it. “If it’s not in the textbook, then we need to introduce it, we need to teach it,” Odessa Pickett, a teacher at the Barack Obama Learning Academy in Markham, Illinois, stated during an interview about incorporating Juneteenth into lessons. “We need to bring it to the forefront.”
Educators can make Juneteenth about much more than the end of slavery. Teaching lessons about the holiday offers an abundance of opportunities to explore what it means to fight for freedom and maintain a sense of self-determination in the face of oppression.
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Raphael E. Rogers is a Professor of Practice in Education at Clark University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article [here](https://theconversation.com).
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