During MLK Week, Florida Blocks Black History Curriculum

Get the Point!

Color me not surprised that one week after the 100th anniversary of the Rosewood Massacre was commemorated in Gainesville, Florida, that the Florida Department of Education (DOE), under the executive branch leadership of Republican Gov. Ron Desantis, has blocked the College Board from testing a pilot Advanced Placement African American Studies (APAAS) curriculum per the so-called “Stop WOKE” Act that the governor and his right wing cronies pushed through during last year's legislative session. 

Famed Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump was the keynote speaker at the University of Florida Levin College of Law's Rosewood Remembrance event last Friday. When I was a student at UF Law in the late 90's, Crump and his former partner, Daryl Parks, would occasionally crash at my apartment while crossing the state to establish their law practice…

While the First Amendment constitutionality of "Stop Woke" will be decided by federal courts in the future, in the meantime, Desantis and his ilk have used their non-stop attacks on real American history as a way to fan the flames of indignation among their mostly white, largely uneducated, and easily duped base of supporters. 

In pushing back against the College Board's pilot program, the Florida DOE Office of Articulation wrote this week that the curriculum "is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” 

To paraphrase Rev. Jeremiah Wright, those are god damned lies; Gov. Desantis KNOWS better, but as he places himself in position to run against his mentor, former President Donald Trump, to become the Republican nominee in 2024, truth will continue to be stranger than fiction in a presidential race in which race will be used to titilate primary voters who "say" that they aren't racist—but act racist by the policies and candidates that they gleefully support. 

The funny thing about Desantis is that I truly believe that having majored in history at Yale University, that he knows the truth about America's racist past—but is willing to subvert it to further his own political ambitions. 

For those unaware, to be fair, I know that Desantis has appointed Black judges to the bench across Florida—and that he appointed one of my really good friends and Kappa Alpha Psi Frat Brothers, John Davis, as Secretary of the Florida Lottery. 

Florida's Secretary of the Lottery, John Davis, with me on Kappa Alpha Psi's Founder’s Day on January 5th…

I also know that in 2019, Desantis pardoned the "Groveland Four”—Samuel Shepherd, Walter Irvin, Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas—the four young Black men who were falsely accused of rape in 1949 and were either killed by notoriously racist Sheriff Willis McCall or sentenced to life imprisonment (despite zealous representation by eventual U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall).

Sheriff Willlis McCall (far left) with three of the Groveland Four…

By so pardoning those men, Desantis did what none of his Republican or Democratic gubernatorial predecessors had done and remarked: "Make no mistake, these men were victims...(these) four men have had their history wrongly written for crimes they did not commit."

Hmmm…🤔

Such is why Desantis is not only a hypocrite, but a dangerous policy maker because based on his own more recent stances that subvert history, even the story of the Groveland Four that he pardoned could run afoul of his very own STOP WOKE Act just to appease his know nothing, "hear no evil, see no evil" base. 

Two years ago, when Desantis set the stage to eliminate the ugly moments in U.S. history from Florida classrooms, he said, "Let me be clear, there’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”

The problem with such censorship is that it prevents good teachers from presenting real facts and letting students decide on what's good, bad, or evil. What's worse is that censorship, at its core, makes an already ignorant public even less enlightened. 

Like Desantis, I was a history major at Morehouse College (BA) and at Florida A&M University (MA), and I enjoyed several critical race theory seminars at the University of Florida Levin College of Law (JD). Thus, I can state with full certainty that my learning the truth about how systemic racism and white supremacy fueled an American economy built on the backs of enslaved Blacks—on land stolen from Native tribes—lands further worked and developed by Asians, Latinos, and non-Christians who also experienced forms of white supremacy, didn't make me "hate" America—it inspired me to want to do my part to create a nation that actualizes the promises of liberty, justice, and equality as contained in its Declaration of Independence and its Constitution!

Whether it was massacres like Rosewood and Tulsa (above), or lynching picnics like the one depicted, these hidden historical facts MUST be passed on to younger generations in schools and in our homes…

Such is why I will continue to do my part to not only expose my fellow historian, Gov. Desantis, for the rank hypocrite that he has shown himself to be—but I will continue to use my public platforms to remind all who take the time to read my posts or listen to me speak that it's FAR easier to point at 'them' (Nazis in Germany, Communists in the Soviet Union/Russia and modern China) and discuss their evil acts, than it is to point to Paw Paw, Me Maw, Uncle Bubba, and Aunt Polly and the like who attended public lynchings of Black people while posing next to the charred, mutilated remains—or beat, hosed, and spat upon Blacks who simply were peacefully pushing for their rights during the Civil Rights Movement. 

Lest we forget!