Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian facilitated a conversation with Carole Boston Weatherford, award-winning author of books on African American history for children and young adults, on why it matters for teachers, authors, and librarians to bring people’s history to young people — and why the work the Teaching for Black Lives study groups have done all year is so appreciated.
The conversation was followed by a panel of coordinators sharing highlights of their study group experience. Watch recording below.
Weatherford’s remarks:
My children led me to write for young people. When I began taking my toddlers to library story times, they were introduced to a new crop of what were then called multicultural — they’re now called diverse — books, and I was really happy that there were more diverse books for them when they were growing up in the early 1990s than there had been for me when I was growing up, because there were very few for me growing up in the 1960s. So, that’s the first part.
The librarian shared a book called Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold and my children loved that book. And the book made a light bulb go off in my mind. At that point I was writing poetry for adults, and it dawned on me that perhaps I could write for children. So from that story time on, while my kids were in story time, I was in the non-fiction section looking for reference books about how to write for children and looking for mentor texts in the juvenile section that I could study and perhaps build a career as a children’s book author. And it kind of worked out.
Now, once I embarked, I was already writing. I was writing for adults. I was already writing about historical subject matter. I suppose I wrote about that because, for one, there was always a grandmother in the house when I was growing up, so there was that sense of living history. My family had a farm that had been in our family on the Eastern Shore [of Maryland] since Reconstruction, and I became aware of some of that history when I was growing up. My parents exposed me to art museums and historical museums and other cultural institutions, and I just had a thirst for history. I considered myself an amateur historian, I guess.
So once I started writing for children, it soon became my mission to mine the past for family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles that center African American resistance, resilience, rejoicing, remarkability, and remembrance. I wanted to fill in some of the gaps in my own knowledge, and in so doing pass that knowledge on to children.
I have an annotated bibliography of my work that I was asked by a friend to compile, and that friend was first a librarian, and is now the director of the Dallas African American Museum. He said, “Carole, you need to put together an annotated bibliography that is set up like a timeline rather than in alphabetical order.” So I did. And what I found is that I had covered quite a sweep of African American history. So the themes, I’m not limited to any one historical period, but they’re the themes, again, of resistance and resilience, transcending oppression, fighting oppression, enduring oppression, and achieving against the odds. My work tries to lift the ceiling off of young people’s dreams to show them that if Leontyne Price and Lena Horne and Paul Robeson and Henry “Box” Brown could achieve — in spite of the odds against them, which are far greater than the odds that we face, even though we’re in a regressive time right now — that today’s children, too, can set their sights high and achieve their goals.
I believe that young people not only deserve the truth, but demand the truth. I believe that children are not too tender for tough topics. Thus, the topics that I tackle in my books. And I believe that children will know injustice when they see it, and they will know how to interrogate injustice. So, I think it’s very important that we give them the opportunity to do that. An essential part of the education process is critical literacy. It’s very important, and I applaud the teachers for doing the work.
What I tell teachers in these tough times is that even if the books are banned from the schools, we must educate ourselves so that we can be the book. We’ve got to be the book. That’s what these times call for. We might not be able to take the book in the classroom, but we can take the knowledge that we have into the classroom and teach with confidence. One thing I have found over the years is that even though I’m writing for children, who are my intended audience — I discovered this when my Fannie Lou Hamer biography, Voice of Freedom, came out — many adults don’t know about these topics. I found that my books are really doing double duty, teaching not only the intended audience of children, but teaching the educators at the same time. And when you teach a parent or an educator, you teach generations. The impact is exponential.
I think it’s very important that we educate ourselves, particularly in these times. Because knowing your history is generational wealth, and that is something that we need to give to our children — a knowledge of a more inclusive history that includes people of color rather than excludes them, or trivializes or diminishes our contributions. One thing I’ve been saying recently is that at a time when our history is being erased in some sectors, that our heroes are too legendary to hide, our pain is too deep to dismiss or diminish, and our history is too epic to erase. So it’s very important that we empower our children with that history.
Teachers can’t teach what they don’t know. Parents can’t pass on what they don’t know. So, it’s really important that more educators like you do the work. It’s important work. Children are the most important audience, the most important readers. That’s why I feel so wonderful about being able to write for children, even though that was not my intent when I set my sights on becoming an author.
I began school before school desegregation. I didn’t grow up in the South; I grew up in, well, not the deep South, I grew up in Baltimore. The Mason Dixon line, as you know, runs through Maryland. But my teachers were extremely resourceful. I think all teachers are resourceful. Teachers buy their own supplies. I mean, what other professionals have to buy their own supplies and bring them to the workplace? Nobody. Nobody is expected to do that. But teachers do that year after year after year, and amidst all kinds of changes and pressures to teach to the test. And now they’ve got to be careful what they say and censor certain subjects. But you are brave, you are resilient, you know how to resist, you are remarkable, and you bring me joy. You bring me joy.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Teachers, I just love all of you.
Participants said:
- Everything that was shared brought me so much joy. I need all of her quotes on a shirt: “young people deserve and will demand the truth,” “children will know injustice when they see it,” “knowing our history is generational wealth,” and so many more quotes. Teaching in today’s world is so challenging, especially with so much legislation.
- Encouragement from Carole Boston Weatherford. She is a legendary author!
- I was inspired by Carole Weatherford’s words. I think her journey from adult poetry to children/youth literature was a beautiful path. I feel inspired. Also, her comments about banned books — if they ban them, we as teachers need to memorize and know them so we can still teach them.
- “Knowing your history is generational wealth” — that statement has really been sitting with me. We talk a lot about the denial and barriers to economic generational wealth but the power and the irrevocability of education and knowledge as the familial foundation — one that is bequeathed from generation to generation is something that I want to wrestle with and offer up for my students to think about, as well.
- I love how Carole Boston Weatherford dropped her gems in our presence and then uplifted us for the hard work and sacrifices we do as educators!