Journal of a Black Teacher

This is Black History Month. It seems to me the point of studying Black History is to provide insight into how injustices of the past relate to what is going on in the present and to put an end to these injustices. One example is the case of Rodney Reed , an innocent black worker who is the victim of a racist frame-up orchestrated by the police, prosecutors, state and local politicians working in cahoots to execute Rodney Reed for a murder carried out by a racist white cop who was assisted in his bestial murder by other racist white cops here in Texas. History is very important in this case because the Texas criminal justice system was devised by slave-owners who refused to acknowledge Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the fact that the North had won the Civil War and for two years used this time to put on place institutions that would maintain racist injustices in every facet of life… including the criminal justice system. This is all explained in the book, the “1619 Project,” a

Video Blog by Don Allen, M. A. Ed./MAT  What do you tell students about the death of 22-year old Amir Locke in downtown Minneapolis by  the  MPD? It's like peeling an onion - so many layers, so many people, missed opportunities, along with policies and procedures that date back to the 1970s. Many local politicians are complicit in this death, maybe this death brings about the change like they said about George Floyd, Dante Wright, Winston "Boogie" Smith, and the future dead Black Men in the Twin Cities - game over.