WELCOME
It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the 5th annual Teaching Black History Conference. We are always excited about our conference, but this one has special significance. It is our 5th anniversary, and the first hosted at our new home, the Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education housed at the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo in New York! The Teaching Black History Conference seeks to be a safe and radical space where teachers convene and dialogue about Black history curriculum and instruction. This multi-day conference aims to bring together educators who pursue transformative and engaging ways to teach PK-12 Black history, not only through history classes but also through other humanities courses. Workshop presentations are informative and interactive, providing participants with culturally relevant and sustaining strategies and resources to incorporate Black history throughout the school year and across curriculum disciplines. Our 2022 theme is Mother Africa. The foundation of World history is African history. Africa is humanity’s birthplace and knowing herstory is essential for understanding global society. For too long, our school curriculum has ignored the vastness of African history, typically only highlighting her wildlife, colonization, oppression, and despair. African history is so more dynamic. Knowing African history is to know that Africa has been home to some of the world’s oldest and most advanced civilizations. Africans have created entire mathematical systems, advanced agricultural schemes, cutting edge architecture including pyramids, castles, mansions, and religious structures, developed world-class cities and empires, and governments. Africans charted the sun and created calendars, were explorers who sailed to South America and Asia long before Europeans, and advanced tools and techniques that rivaled Roman technology. Africa has massive libraries, world-class universities, and some of the greatest thinkers in history. Of course, African history is not all glory and positivity. African history includes war and conquest, ethnic subjugation, corruption, poor leadership, and racism. The point here is to move from an eurocentric understanding of Africa into what many scholars and educators note as Africanizing knowledge. To borrow from Nwando Achebe, we ask that our workshops present “Another Africa,” sessions that move us away from the usual state standards and history textbooks that do not show Africa in her fullness. We ask for workshops to explore African history from the ancient to the contemporary, including all geographical regions and the vast ethnic groups who inhabit the continent. I am excited as we host our 1st hybrid conference. The Covid-19 pandemic prevented us from meeting face to face the last two years but also allowed access to the conference to hundreds of people from around the world. We had record attendance those two years, topping out at 1,007 people in 2020. This year is the best of both worlds. With over 350 educators joining us for this year’s conference and another 6,000 that we have served through professional development throughout our last five years, we are beyond excited to welcome our new friends as well as all our returning friends from previous years. Your dedication to learning and growing is encouraging and we welcome you to our family of educators. We hope you leave here inspired with an abundance of resources and ideas and a bevy of new contacts and friends. We appreciate your continued support! In conclusion, while excited, we are also somber. We recognize our conference is happening within a historic time in our nation’s history. We are still living in a pandemic, civil rights and voting laws are being rolled back, antiBlack history legislation are being passed, and locally, we are only two months removed from the tragedy in East Buffalo, one of the city’s most prized Black communities. Many people were injured, and ten innocent people lost their lives at the Tops grocery store through an act of White supremacist terrorism. Our hearts go out to everyone impacted. We dedicate this conference to those families, the community, and the city of Buffalo.
LaGarrett King, PhD
Founding Director of the Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education 5
