The Struggle Is Intergenerational

In school, children may meet Marcus Garvey in one chapter and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in another.

Garvey belongs to the 1920s. King belongs to the Civil Rights Movement.

Two men. Two periods.

Two stories. But history did not happen in chapters.

In October 1967, King stood before students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia and asked: “What is in your life’s blueprint?” He told them to know their worth. To have confidence in themselves.

Not to be ashamed of their color or their biological features. To commit themselves to beauty, love, and justice.

Listen to King beside Garvey, and another history becomes audible. Decades before King spoke to those children, Garvey had insisted upon Black dignity, confidence, Black beauty, justice, and the development of the mind.

Their politics were not identical. Their methods were not identical.

Their visions of Black freedom were not identical. They should not be made identical.

But neither should they be separated so completely that children cannot recognize the struggle passing from one generation to another. That is one of the principles behind The Garvey Classroom.

The struggle for dignity, justice, freedom, and self-determination did not begin with Garvey. It did not end with King.

Each generation inherited questions that the previous generation could not finish answering. Our children will inherit them too.

That changes what teaching history is for. The task is not simply to make sure children can identify Garvey or King on a test.

It is to help them recognize the longer struggle they have inherited, understand what earlier generations learned, examine where those generations disagreed, and develop the knowledge and judgment they will need for the questions waiting for them. King asked those Philadelphia schoolchildren what was in their life’s blueprint.

The question now belongs to us. What are we putting in the blueprint of our children?

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