(Trice Edney Wire) – As I have noted before, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis’ fear about the teaching of Black History in his state’s public schools probably resulted from his having read or heard about a February 1982 Ebony Magazine article “Why Black History Is Important To You.”
Written by the great journalist/historian/author/master teacher, Lerone Bennett, Jr., the article includes the following: “People are always telling me that they are too busy making the future to bother with the past. But people who say this give up both the future and the past. The past is not back there; it is happening now. It is the bet your fathers (and your mothers) placed which you must now cover….History is everything; it is everywhere….History is to us what water is to fish. We are immersed in it up to our necks, and we cannot get out of it, no matter what we say or do. And what that means on the level of specifics is that history is knowledge, identity and power.”
