![]() Although the events of the last few months have opened up many opportunities for discussing social justice in my household, the funeral of Congressman John Lewis recently made for yet another. My husband and I, both former history majors at UT, regularly discuss historical and current events with our two children, who are eleven and eight years old. What an inspiring life of service John Lewis had! It's not every day three former Presidents of the United States speak at anyone's funeral (plus Carter's written words). I watched President Obama's eulogy with my kids...if I'm being honest, most of it. They were getting antsy, and me just explaining to them who John Lewis was wasn’t enough. I found a clip with mixed historical footage and interviews. I told my youngest she didn’t have to watch the confrontation, but she watched what led up to it and how they kept trying to march beyond the bridge to Montgomery. I wanted them to see how brave John Lewis was. It’s hard to explain to children why these events take place. Children like mine have a hard time accepting that the answer is simply, “They were racist. They were hateful people. An unarmed man had been killed by officers. They wanted the right to vote without restrictions.” My children are fortunate and, yes, privileged for not understanding that at face value. It is a privilege to not have that experience or be exposed to those types of people. Our level of discomfort discussing these issues could never scratch the surface of what others experience. They are 11 and 8 years old, but it is not too early to start talking about it with them. Which is one of the reasons why I love my job. When I was my children's age, I wasn't aware of any titles that didn't gloss over historical events. Just as we are living in history today, with all of the complexities and all shades of opinions, every important event of the past was complex. Today, there are so many options for youth to deepen their understanding of causes of events, motivations of those involved, and how what we've been taught as fact may be something worth questioning and investigating with a healthy skepticism. When I was in school, I loved my American history classes. Kenny Reagan and Robert Parks could not have been more different, but they were engaging teachers, each in their own way, inspiring me to choose history as one of my majors. I especially loved learning about the movements an landmark events of the 1960s, which is when Mr. Parks attended our same high school, and in class we watched things like the Zapruder film and questioned the Warren Report. Yet for as open and out-of-the-box as my teachers were, they still had to wrestle with the curriculum and contend with the textbooks they were handed to use. I requested the first edition of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen as a gift, and the person who gave it to me was shocked to learn that it wasn't a parody, but an analysis of the shortcomings of American high school history textbooks. The version I recently acquired was revised for the youth audience. It challenges the notion that heroification of our leaders is best practice; as a matter of fact, it can lead to disillusionment when our present leaders don't seem to measure up to an ideal implanted by our education, with figures who never truly existed to that level of idealized statesmanship and decorum. With my own children, we talk about historical (yet flawed) figures, such as explaining Washington and Jefferson's slave ownership through lyrics from Hamilton. Not always fun. I love 28 Days: Moment in Black History that Changed the World because it doesn't just touch on the historical figures whose names surface most often in state social studies standards, like King, Tubman, and Parks. It names Crispus Attucks, the first person shot and killed by redcoat soldiers at the Boston Massacre, more than a month before the official "shot heard round the world". When my family visited Boston in the summer of 2019, we saw where Attucks was buried at the Granary Burying Ground, near Boston Common. Children--ALL children--need to hear the names of these heroes, such as Robert Smalls, Daniel Hale Williams, and Marian Anderson, amongst those our history books recycle every edition. But it's the books I hadn't touched on my shelf, the ones in a lovely slipcase, that I have been fascinated by the most lately. How could I have ignored the March trilogy by John Lewis, Andrew Aidyn and Nate Powell, for so long? I bought the set when I was in graduate school, taking a youth lit course. I had perused the first book of the trilogy, enough to get a sense of the style, but I admit, I didn't think I had the time to devote to it, or so I thought. The truth is, I didn't have time NOT to read it. I don't know why it impressed me so much that John Lewis would take part in a graphic novel memoir. I don't know why I didn't conceive that a man with such a progressive drive in everything he did would choose such a groundbreaking medium. But truly, it was the most authentic way to do so. The graphic medium demands attention. It's unapologetic, stark, and at times jarring. Flashing back from his life as a Congressman in the present, life back in the Civil Rights Era was a constant fight. I hadn't known so many of the details of the marches in Selma. Maybe I hadn't paid enough attention in class. Maybe my teachers hadn't known so much. Maybe it just took the first person narrative voice of one of our greatest leaders to finally find the best way to make his story "sing". There can never be enough books about Social Justice in children's hands. I know some adults think that children need to be shielded, protected from the ugliness in this world. But the truth of the matter is, children are keen observers. They learn so much from watching and listening, especially to the things adults tell them not to worry about or pay attention to--they KNOW those are the most interesting things of all. I'd much rather find gateways to explain things to my own children, so they can process what they observe in the news, neighborhood, and lives, than to pretend that I'm protecting them by ignoring it. These books and so many others are those gateways. References:
Lewis, J., Aydin, A., & Powell, N. (2016). March (Trilogy Slipcase Set). Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions. Smith, C. R., Evans, S., Graham, D., & Jackson, W. (2019). 28 days: Moments in Black history that changed the world. Solon, OH: Findaway World, LLC. Stefoff, R., & Loewen, J. W. (2019). Lies my teacher told me for young readers: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: The New Press.
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