In Harlem, N.Y., during his sophomore year of high school, Dr. James Harrison spent his study period in the library, engrossed in novels by Black authors.
He began with two books by Langston Hughes: one about the first Negro scientists and another, The First Book of Negroes, about the accomplishments of African-Americans. Harrison realized that these stories were not a part of his public school curriculum and took it upon himself to do his own research into African-American studies.
Harrison continued to study African-Americans and other minorities in the U.S. for more than 30 years. He attended Hunter College in New York, graduating with his bachelor’s in 1967. He has read countless biographies and journal articles, and attended conferences across the country, exchanging knowledge with fellow historians.
Through his research, Harrison found that the lack of African-American stories in classrooms can be traced back to the 1870s through the 1890s.
“Blacks were written out of books as a reaction to the Civil War,” says Harrison, a U.S. history professor at Portland Community College in Oregon. “The leading historians from Columbia University decided that Black people were really not important and so they were completely written out to the extent that, when I was in high school, I was told that slavery was not all that bad because there was only one rebellion, Nat Turner. Completely untrue.”
Although Harrison believes that integration of colored faces into textbooks has improved over the past decade, much of the educating that happens today still lacks pertinent contributions to American culture.
Harrison entered the field of academia to counteract many of the discrepancies he found in the classroom as a youth. His professional resume spans teaching in secondary and post-secondary schools, being a principal of a Catholic elementary school and a college counselor.
