Florida has cultivated a landscape of education policy amounting to state censorship and the dilution of African-American history curriculum to the point of inaccessibility.

The primary legislation deployed in their effort has been HB-1069.^[1] The bill summary explains its purpose as “[protecting] children” and requiring “enhanced … transparency and review of materials available to students in public schools.”^[2] This summary does not include the words “book” or “ban,” but its enforcement has undeniably led to an increase of exactly that: book bans.

The Orlando Sentinel listed 673 books removed from Orange County School District, including award-winning novel “Beloved” and titles considered quintessential to American English courses such as “Catch-22” and “Brave New World.”^[3]

Florida has also targeted regulation of African-American history and defended their controversial rejection of the A.P. College Board’s African-American history course.^[4] As an alleged substitute, the Florida D.O.E structured its own course and standards for the subject. However, scholars and local educators alike argue Florida’s curriculum distorts the state’s role in slavery.^[5]

While there has been nationwide outrage with Florida’s decision to ban a prominent and popular course option,^[6] Black churches in Florida have had a particularized response that follows their history of stepping in to fill educational gaps manufactured by the state.

During Reconstruction, the Black church’s influence expanded. While America attempted to actualize a new reality wherein societal and economic structures abandoned dependency on chattel slavery, Freedmen^[7] expressively lacked equal treatment. This was especially true in regard to access to education. Absent equitable opportunities from the state, Black churches developed an inextricable connection to education — and succeeded at an impressive rate.^[8]

For generations, America continued to teeter between progressive policy advancement and retrenchment. The Black church’s inherited responsibility to educate Black youth re-emerged with “Freedom Schools” during the Civil Rights Era.^[9] And while it may be unclear how our present-day ‘era’ of America will be referred to by historians, the role of Black churches is certain to have another chapter.

Facing the familiar reality of state barriers to education, Pastor Kenneth Johnson is one of more than 200 Black religious leaders “taking steps to teach Black history [in response to] restricted and ‘watered-down’” curriculum offered under the state’s new policies.^[10] While the lessons are voluntary and hosted at Pastor Johnson’s church, the Friendship Missionary, he affirms their materials (e.g., a Black history toolkit) “would [pass] any muster as a legitimate class.”^[11] Rhoda Thomas, Executive Director of “Faith in Florida,”^[12] shared similarly passionate sentiments regarding what she referred to as “a responsibility” to preserve the truth about American history and African-Americans’ role in shaping and experiencing it.

Johnson, Thomas, and their peers continue a legacy developed over a series of American eras wherein the Black church refused to leave Black education in the hands of a neglectful, dismissive government.

Their efforts echo Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem bearing the namesake of a Black history icon, Paul Robenson:

“we are each other’s

harvest:

we are each other’s

business:

we are each other’s

magnitude and bond.”

 

^[1] Fla. Sen., Bill Summary, CS/CS/HB 1069: Education, https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1069 (last visited March 4, 2023).

^[2]  Id.

^[3] Leslie Postal, Orange school district pulls 673 books from teachers’ classroom shelves, orlando sentinel  (Dec. 20, 2023),  https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/12/20/ocps-books/^..

^[4]  Sarah Mervost, DeSantis Faces Swell of Criticism Over Florida’s New Standards for Black History, new york times, (Jul. 21, 2023) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/us/desantis-florida-black-history-standards.html.

^[5] Ana Ceballos, Alyssa Johnson, Florida reviewers of AP African American Studies sought ‘opposing viewpoints’ of slavery, miami herald, (Aug. 31, 2023) https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article278582149.html#storylink=cpy. (The Miami Herald interviewed several scholars in African-American studies following the Florida Department of Education’s decision to reject the AP Board’s curriculum. These interviews included “Alexander Weheliye, African-American studies professor at Brown University, who said the evaluators’ comments on the units about slavery were a “complete distortion” and “whitewashing” of what happened historically; and Mary Pattillo, a sociology professor and department chair of Black Studies at Northwestern who said, “[t]here is no other perspective on slavery other than it was brutal.”).

^[6] Nicole Chavez, College Board release revised AP African American Studies course material, cnn (Dec. 6, 2023). https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/06/us/ap-african-american-studies-revised-course/index.html (“An estimated 13,000 students across the country are currently enrolled in a pilot version of the course, which is being offered in nearly 700 schools in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia, the board said. The pilot course was first offered in 60 schools during the 2022-2023 academic year.”)

^[7] Freedman, “a person freed from slavery,” merriam-webster (last visited Feb. 19, 2024), https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freedman.

^[8] Juan f. Pera, et. al, Race and races: cases and resources for a diverse America (2023) (“Seldom in the history of the world has an almost totally illiterate population been given the means of self-education in so short a time.”).

^[9] See generally, Teaching Freedom: SNCC and the Creation of the Mississippi Freedom School, Daniel Perlstein, History of Edu. Quarterly (1990) (“[A] network of alternative schools flourished as a central component of the civil rights movement in Mississippi. The Freedom Schools of the Mississippi Summer Project were sponsored by COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations, an alliance of civil rights groups led by SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Through COFO, SNCC activists brought hundreds of northern [volunteers], most of them white, to Mississippi for a few months to register voters and to teach in forty-one Freedom Schools. The schools offered young black Mississippians an education that public schools would not supply, one that both provided intellectual stimulation and linked [learning] to participation in the movement to transform the South’s segregated society.”)

^[10] Deborah Barfield Berry, Black churches in Florida buck DeSantis: ‘Our churches will teach our own history.’,usa today, (Sept. 8, 2023)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/08/desantis-banned-some-black-history-classes-these-churches-fought-back/70783000007/.

^[11]  Id.

^[12] See generallyhttps://www.faithinflorida.org/aboutus (Last visited March 6, 2024). (Faith in Florida is a certified 501(c)(3) organization and describes itself as aiming “to build a powerful, multicultural, nonpartisan network of congregation community organizations in Florida that will address systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families”). The website’s “Black History” includes a range of resources and features the following quote from executive director Thomas: ““one of the first things enslavers did was enact laws to criminalize our ancestors to keep them from reading. They feared that if the enslaved Africans read books, they could not suppress them. The slave masters knew what power books held. Those books had stories and knowledge of where our ancestors came from and who they used to be. Discovering this would disrupt the chattel slavery system they were trying to build.”)

^[13] Gwendolyn Brooks, “Paul Robeson,” in bean eater (1960).