A longtime educator explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race, nation, and the stories we tell about who we are.
Black history is under attack from powerful forces that seek to excise it from classrooms, libraries, and the popular imagination. Yet its opponents fail to understand a simple truth: the best education makes us uncomfortable. It challenges our assumptions, helps us see larger forces at work, and gives us glimpses of alternate futures.
In Black History Is for Everyone, Brian Jones offers a meditation on the power of Black history, using his own experiences as a lifelong learner and classroom teacher to question everything—from the radicalism of the American Revolution to the meaning of “race” and “nation.”
With warmth and immersive storytelling, Jones encourages us to delve deeper into our collective history, explores how curiosity about our world is essential—and reminds us that with stakes so high, the effort is worth it.
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“Black History is for Everyone is a love letter to students, a history lesson, and a critical analysis of the segregated schools—with too few Black teachers and too little Black history—that we have today. At a moment when many are shrinking from and erasing our history, Brian Jones pointedly shows us the many ways that the study of Black history enriches us all. This is the book we need to see the road forward.”
—Jeanne Theoharis, author of King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr's Life of Struggle Outside the South
"As Brian Jones makes clear, organized attempts to erase Black history are hardly confined to the contemporary moment. Through historicizing accounts of his own experiences as a scholar, teacher, and library worker, Jones offers a clear and compelling argument that the struggle to know who we are and where we come from is essential to the fight for our shared future."
—Emily Drabinski, Associate Professor, Queens College, CUNY
“Brian Jones, one of our most insightful pedagogists, reminds us that the Black experience is so central to the American experience that no one’s education is complete without its examination. This book is required reading."
—Tracie D. Hall, former Executive Director, American Library Association
Other books of interest
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Education and Capitalism
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101 Changemakers
Edited by Michele Bollinger and Dao X Tran -
More Than a Score
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Black Lives Matter at School
by Jesse Hagopian and Denisha Jones -
Our History Has Always Been Contraband
Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, et al.