ABSTRACT
B lack americans make progress,” the headline of the Weekly Reader announced in large, bold letters. I smiled to myself as I picked up the parcel of newspapers reserved for my class in the main office. I had been teaching at Z. C. Morton Elementary School-a “Negro” school in
rural Virginia-for more than a month, and I had been searching for instructional materials on African-American culture with little luck. Even though most of the major battles of the Civil Rights Movement had already been fought by the time I joined the Morton staff in the winter of 1970, the school was still segregated, its curriculum determined by a white Superintendent and an all-white school board, its rooms decorated with portraits of famous white men and images of blond, blue-eyed children. Except for a couple of paragraphs on Booker T. Washington in a Virginia state history book that celebrated the Confederate cause, none of the textbooks I was required to use taught my students anything about their own history. Now, I couldn’t wait to distribute the newspapers and present my fourthgrade students with this report on the lives of black Americans like them.
