Doing Justice to History: Transforming Black History in Secondary Schools

by Abdul Mohamud, Robin Whitburn

The History curriculum in schools adopts a grand narrative approach that pushes the history of the non-dominant to the margins and even to obscurity. To secure an authentic approach to Black history, the authors have developed an enquiry-based approach that gives teachers the knowledge and confidence to teach the History curriculum inclusively.

The book presents five discrete enquiries. Of three on African-American history, the first deals with the Civil Rights movement, asking why Robert E. Williams has been forgotten. A chapter takes teachers up to Obama’s time, and a third, written by Jenice Lewis, describes how the US program, Teaching for Change, has pioneered work that imbues history teaching with justice.

The two chapters on British Black history tackle the issue of invisibility, asking why Somali people decided to unpack their bags in Britain; and why Claudia Jones, founder of the first Black journal in England, and founder of the world-famous Notting Hill Carnival has no memorial plaque outside her house in England nor in her homeland. One chapter on African history looks at African Empires and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and one looks – sideways – at apartheid in South Africa.

190 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2015