As a teenager in 1980s Brooklyn, Dr. Hasan Jeffries tried piecing together two different stories: the history he was learning in school and the events he was witnessing on the train to and from school. But they didn’t fit.
“It was high crime, high violence, mass incarceration and the crack epidemic was hitting really hard,” says Jeffries. “But the only explanation that I was getting in the classroom was that these were personal failings. There wasn’t any learning about systems or learning about structures or learning about society.”
Originally on a path toward science, Jeffries partook in a summer research program at Columbia University following his junior year at a science-centric high school. But as he worked inside the lab, the world outside the lab’s window overlooking Harlem kept grabbing his attention. One question was nagging at him: How can a historical lens explain the African American experience today?
Eventually, during a banquet at the end of the summer research program, each student stood and shared what they had learned. “It got to me and I was like, ‘I learned that this is not what I want to do’ — and that was the end of the science experiment,” says Jeffries with a laugh.
From then on out, it was, as they say, history. Jeffries left New York for Georgia to attend Morehouse College, an historically Black all-men’s college in Atlanta.
“Being in a space that is all Black in the late 80s, early 90s, it was refreshing,” says Jeffries. “What we were studying and learning at Morehouse was a complete change. Suddenly, not only do you see yourself in the curriculum, but there is an analysis of society that was missing before. … Suddenly all of it begins to take crystal form.”
Upon graduating, he went on to earn his master’s degree and Ph.D. in American history with a focus on African American history at Duke University. Now, as an associate professor at The Ohio State University, Jeffries dedicates his career to challenging the traditional narrative of Black history in American textbooks.
