Henrico H.S. students among select group statewide enrolled in new Black history course

On a recent day during the sixth-period course he teaches, Derick Vance and his 14 Henrico High School students discussed the news of the charge against one officer related to Breonna Taylor’s death in Louisville, Kentucky, the role race played in the situation, what they thought should happen, whether the events were a continuation of injustice against people of color, and the importance of staying educated on current events.

During another class session, the group discussed ancestral Africa — civilizations like the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, the Kingdom of Kush and the Nubian civilization — in more depth than he says other courses provide.

The new course he is teaching – "African American History Full Year Course" – emerged from an August 2019 directive that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam gave to the Virginia Department of Education, asking it to create the course in collaboration with Virtual Virginia, WHRO Public Media and committees of historians, teachers and professors, according to a press release from the governor’s office. Members of the governor’s Commission on African-American History Education in the Commonwealth — a group that includes Civil War-era historian Edward Ayers, a professor at (and former president of) the University of Richmond; Anne Marie Evans, the director of education and outreach – new American history at the University of Richmond; and Andrew P. Daire, the dean of the VCU School of Education — reviewed the course content.

Vance and teachers in the other 15 school divisions introducing the course this year are grouped in cohorts of five with assigned mentors. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Norfolk State University, mentors Vance’s cohort.

The VDOE has split the course into five modules, Vance said, composed of warm-ups, videos, short assessments and tests at units’ ends. The first is “ancestral Africa and the Atlantic world,” which covers history up to the Revolutionary War. The second is titled the “continuous quest for freedom” and includes material through the Civil War. The third is “fighting to change the pace of liberty,” which covers material into the twentieth century, and the fourth and fifth modules are still being devised, Vance said.

The course modules are on the Canvas platform, but since the school division uses Schoology, the first week of the course was a bit of a learning curve for students and teacher alike, Vance said.

The modules contain a lot of information but leave room for projects or additional assignments, he said. He thinks he might have his students read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness or Du Bois and complete writing assignments related to the reading.

Teachers will be discussing guidelines for student end-of-the-year capstone projects with their mentors before the second semester begins.

‘This is history that’s every day’
Vance, who is also Henrico High’s assistant football coach and works with the basketball team, had been waiting to apply to teach the course in Henrico. As the vice president of the Richmond branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, he had heard about the new course because of his role and had spoken about it to Monica Manns, the school division’s chief equity, diversity and opportunity officer.

Vance already had introduced one African-American history course to Henrico High. In 2015, he began teaching a field trip-based, semester-long course that took students to sites in Richmond like the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Maggie L. Walker Historic Home and The Virginia Museum of History and Culture. Since not all field trips are feasible at the moment, he is looking into having scholars speak to the class instead.

Vance has a master’s degree in sociology from Boston College, and his focus in graduate school was African American history, he said.

One of Vance’s students in the new course told him that she appreciated having the class at the end of the day and that she felt she could be herself in the class, he said.

His goal for the course is for students to develop a better understanding of history and how African Americans and other people of color have impacted the development of the U.S.

“This is history that’s every day. . . the country would not be where it is without African Americans and their contributions,” Vance said.

He wants his students to move beyond the idea that African American history is contained in a month each February and know that it is a part of world history, he said.

Vance also appreciates the course’s focus on citizenship. He wants his students to be civically engaged and use what they learn from the course in their lives, he said.

He has heard interest from the community, and he’s hopeful that the course one day will be offered to adults and seniors, not just high school students.

* * *

Our journalism is free to read, but it's not free for us to produce. It requires time, research and analysis to provide fair, comprehensive, meaningful coverage of issues that matter to Henrico County. If you value education reporting like this, please consider a tax-deductible contribution to our Education Fund, made possible through a partnership with Facebook and the Local Media Foundation.