Sixteen Nineteen

I am watching the response to the New York Times 1619 Project carefully.  This project is centered around a supplement magazine being widely distributed around the country right now.  In some circles, it is regarded as a keepsake, a valuable possession, an heirloom.
As this country grapples with the issue of reparations for African Americans,  it has become abundantly clear that many of us know very little about our own history.  There is some vague sense that slavery was wrong and that it had consequences being felt today, but in the area of specifics, as a nation, we are deficient.

I knew I wanted to be a history early on.  It was secure employment, something not always counted on in the house in which I grew up.  My father was a casualty of the Great Depression, having to drop out of college and support his new wife in the early 1930s.  I loved many of my teachers, especially my history teachers, so it was natural for me to pursue the goal of teaching.
What I couldn't see coming was an incredible era of Afro-centrist culture coming in the late 60s.  That era featured the advent of ethnic studies classes in many colleges and universities.
At UCLA, they were called "Negro History" and taught by Ron Takaki, a Japanese American professor that was Harvard educated.  Takaki's classes were extremely popular and I was extremely fortunate to be in these first ethnic studies courses.
It wasn't long before I learned how deficient my own high school history textbooks had been.  The reason for that is another topic altogether, but these courses and some others on Racial Attitudes and Black Literature were watershed experiences.
In my first 10 years of teaching, I inherited an ethnic studies program from my "Master teacher" and had the singular experience of teaching history courses that were predominately African American.  I was able to convince my students that my qualifications were earned by my college background.  Letting them know that NBA great Kareem Abdul Jabbar was also on my classes didn't hurt either.
A beautiful atmosphere of mutual respect followed.  Of course, there were tough days but mostly my students know that this was something special and there was much to learn.
Those classes ran their course and eventually, the need for ethnic studies classes was deemed no longer important.  Perhaps that is why we find ourselves where we are.  Ignorant, for the most part, of our own history.