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heated state, determined to enact his brand of justice.
White rage laced with white resentment for prominent and prosperous free persons of color became even more enflamed and more outrageous during this period and conditions for individuals of African descent went beyond the barometer of intolerable. Green’s relatives, their exodus from New Bern with the majority of them fleeing to Cleveland, Ohio in pursuit of liberty. On June 24, 1957, John Patterson Green, along with his mother and sister boarded a boat bound for Cleveland, Ohio.
Young John followed him to the site of the whipping and hid so he could watch the brutal beating of an enslaved man. The selfproclaimed official beat the accused with the perforated paddle he had fashioned knowing the holes would inflict excruciating pain and split flesh. But before he began the beating, the offender was stripped to the waist, handcuffed behind his back and then strung John Patterson Green, earned a law degree up, swinging from a tree. and passed the Ohio Bar in 1870. He became Cuyahoga County’s first African Patterson recalled in his autobiography, Fact American Justice of the Peace in 1878, was Stranger than Fiction, that after the torturous the second African American to serve in beating which Patterson regretted watching, the Ohio House of Representatives between he noticed that the white sand upon which the 1873-1883, 1890-1891. He became ths first incident took place had turned to crimson. African American elected to the Ohio Senate
(1892-1893). President William McKinley appointed him Government Stamp Agent in 1897, until the position was eliminated. Finally, as a legislator, he championed for civil rights. John Patterson Green whose life and contributions were many, was honored with a portrait that hangs in the Ohio State House. Suzanne Parks is the Director of Asset Development for the Ohio CDC Association, where she oversees state-wide asset building projects serving low to moderate income individuals. In her spare time, she likes to perform in community theatre productions and write. Ms. Parks was conferred a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Ohio Dominican University and a Masters in Leadership Education from the Mid-America Christian University.
BLACK HISTORY IS ABOUT MORE THAN OPPRESSION By LaGarrett J. King We keep teaching about Black history, not through it. I begin by asking a simple question, why can’t we get Black history education right? The desire to write and learn Black history has been a priority by Black communities for over a century. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black educators including Edward A. Johnson, Booker T. Washington, Lelia Amos Pendleton, Carter G. Woodson, and Merl Eppse wrote Black history textbooks, teacher guides, and other resources to correct white authors’ omissions and misrepresentations. Black history education became more mainstream during the 1960s as Black children, parents, teachers, and community members protested for more Black history courses. These acts of agency led to more Black history courses and a handful of states creating legislation mandating Black history in public schools. Despite its storied past, Black history education continues to have severe problems in the way it is conceived and taught. As prominent educator Gloria Ladson-Billings wrote in her 2003 Critical Race Theory: Perspectives on the Social Studies, when schoolchildren learn “Black history,” they learn that Black people “are relatively insignificant to the growth and development of our democracy and our nation, and they represent a drain on the resources and values.”
The first time many schoolchildren learn about Black people is through enslavement and other oppression-centered narratives. Black people are taught as passive people and disconnected from their liberation. The prevailing narrative emphasizes white saviors and the federal government as Black people’s primary liberators. When Black liberation is taught, “liberation” is limited to “nonviolence,” and historical narratives that state otherwise are vilified and compared to white supremacy. The stale K-12 Black history instruction rarely builds on itself; instead, the same context and content are regurgitated throughout students’ educational careers.
teach from how white people imagine Black histories. Teaching through Black history should mean listening, writing, and teaching narratives from the actual historical experiences and voices of Black people.
The s e h is to r ic a l p e r s p e c tiv e s d if f e r significantly. For instance, teaching Brown v. Board of Education through Black voices would acknowledge that many Black communities were not in favor of integrating schools, just equity in school funding. Black schools were culturally confirming, relevant, and sustaining. Integration meant transferring Black students to predominately white schools where instructional practices were culturally insensitive and racist. Black We can’t get Black history education right schools were closed, and many Black teachers because we teach about Black history and administrators lost their jobs. Teaching instead of through Black history. Teaching about Black history has meant that schools Continued on Page 10
The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015
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The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021
