Throughout all the essays we have read in class there is one thing that almost always comes to my mind and that is how our education system teaches the Civil Rights Movement versus what really happened in the movement. In my experiences, the Civil Rights movement was something that was always brought up at least once a year in a history class throughout middle school and high school. Despite the movement being discussed many times, the way it is discussed is very different than what we have learned in this class and from the essays we have read. Many people have the perception that the movement was solely about racism and that the movement ended quickly. I believe they have this idea because of the way the movement is taught in schools. These topics obviously have been discussed frequently throughout class so we know these things are not true but in my opinion, the civil rights movement is something that everyone should have an in-depth knowledge of and is something that needs to be focused on more at the middle and high school levels.
In my experience, discussing the movement at the high school level was just simply going over the major names involved with the movement like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Up until this class I had very little knowledge about the movement at a local level because we only focused on the major names. I also didn’t realize how much more the movement was about then just racism. After just being in this class for a few weeks it became apparent to me that the education system had kind of “failed me” in a way. I didn’t know this information because it was never taught. In order for people to have a better understanding of the movement and a better appreciation for it, we need to change the way the movement is taught in our schools. Instead of talking about the big names, schools should focus on the local movement and what all the movement was actually fighting for.
I can’t help but wonder, especially after today’s discussion about if reading more essays like The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past would have affected the election, how differently recent events would have unfolded if our students were taught the Civil Rights movement in a more in-depth way.