ABSTRACT
Each semester I’m always alarmed to learn how many students in my critical theory course-including senior English majors of all races-are unacquainted or minimally acquainted with such milestones of African American history as the Middle Passage, the Underground Railroad, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, and the Black Arts Movement. Despite the increased focus on multicultural education in America’s high schools and the increased provision of college courses in African American experience, history, and literature, educational efforts in these areas remain inadequate to the needs of students in a multicultural society such as ours, especially in light of their future role as world citizens of a rapidly shrinking globe.
