Watching the news over the past several weeks, I have felt a mix of outrage, sadness, and horror. Since early December, federal immigration enforcement has intensified in Minneapolis, and by January, the escalation of violence became impossible to ignore. As a mother, educator, and counselor, I keep returning to our children, who are seeing and hearing much of the same things we are, but without the tools to make sense of them. In moments like these, I find myself pondering the role of educators.
Dr. Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy
While some Americans have expressed shock at what has transpired, my generation has seen this before. I came of age during the early wave of school integration in Hampton, Virginia, and I have lived through periods when state violence was justified, communities were treated as threats, and children endured the hateful wrath of adults simply for going to school. What we are witnessing now is not an aberration. It is history repeating itself within my own lifetime, and an attempt to reverse hard-earned progress, not only for Black Americans, but for all of us.
As February begins and we turn our attention to Black history, it feels necessary to situate these events in context. Black History Month itself is only fifty years old, and Black history remains omitted or marginalized in many American classrooms. Today, amid book bans, curricular restrictions, and political pressure on educators, we are again confronting efforts to narrow what we teach and whose truth we acknowledge.
So, the questions before us as educators are these: What do students need to understand about what they are witnessing right now? How do we prepare them to recognize when history is repeating itself—and to avoid the harm that follows when those patterns go unexamined? How do we help them become resilient and empowered when their rights and values are under threat?
The answer is both simple and profound---we must teach America’s complete history. We must tell the truth about how we got here and how far we still must go to perfect the practice of democracy. And that requires teaching Black history. When students are shielded from this history, they are left unprepared for civic life. When they are taught it, they gain the tools to understand power, recognize injustice, and exercise their responsibilities as citizens.
Across U.S. history, education has been both a tool of liberation and a battleground for control. From enslavement-era prohibitions against teaching Black people to read, to Jim Crow segregation, to today’s book bans and efforts to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion, Black history reveals a consistent truth: access to knowledge has always been contested.
When those in power fear change, they often begin by narrowing what can be taught. The Black experience in America, including the long struggle for personhood, citizenship, safety, and opportunity, offers a roadmap for progress. It equips all citizens to defend civil rights and protect the fragile democracy in which we are living. Teaching Black history is not about division; it is about civic literacy.
This convergence of violence, law, and schooling is not new. Black history is filled with moments when state power collided with Black life and when education became the place where those tensions were most deeply felt. Brown v. Board of Education made the political nature of education unmistakable when the Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional and affirmed education as a civil right. Yet Brown also exposed a deeper truth: law alone does not produce justice. Massive resistance followed, schools were closed, funds diverted, and private academies created to preserve inequality. Progress on paper triggered backlash in practice.
But Black history also teaches us what is possible under the most limiting conditions. When we teach about Mary McLeod Bethune, a woman born to parents who had been enslaved, who founded a school for Black girls with little more than conviction, we offer this generation a lesson in possibility. Under Jim Crow, Bethune built institutions, advised presidents, and organized Black women for political and educational power. She understood that education is not merely a pathway to opportunity; it is an act of resistance in times of constraint.
Similarly, when we teach about the Harlem Renaissance, we show how periods of political unrest and economic constraint can give rise to extraordinary cultural and intellectual flourishing. Against the backdrop of racial terror, economic exclusion, and segregation, Black writers, artists, and scholars transformed pain into brilliance, reshaping American culture and redefining what it meant to be fully human. What creative brilliance is waiting to be unleashed in classrooms today?
Critics who argue that Black history is unnecessary often claim they are protecting neutrality or shielding children from discomfort. But there is nothing neutral or safe about omission. Excluding Black history distorts the nation’s story and denies students the intellectual tools they need to understand how democracy works. Black history explains why inequities persist, how law and power operate, and how ordinary people have expanded the meaning of freedom.
This Black History Month, let us commit to teaching Black history not as a symbolic gesture, but as essential instruction for preparing all citizens to participate fully and responsibly in democracy.
For those of us who lead institutions of higher education and prepare the next generation of teachers, counselors, and school leaders, this moment demands action. Will we protect academic freedom and stand firm against attempts to censor truthful history? Will we ensure that every educator we prepare understands how to teach the full breadth of American history? Will we speak out when book bans and curricular gag orders threaten the integrity of education? Will we model the courage it takes to defend truth when it is under attack?
Our students are watching. And history is watching.
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Dr. Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy is President and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). She is the author of multiple books on equity and school counseling, including the forthcoming Beyond the Doll Tests: Affirming and Uplifting Black Students’ Wellbeing (Harvard Education Press, February 2026).
