Students, educators, and content creators fight to keep Black history alive amid DEI attacks
From high schoolers in Florida to professors on TikTok many have been getting creative to keep learning Black History.
As Black History Month comes to a close, amid the Trump Administration putting a stop to the Federal Government recognizing “identity months” and major corporations and retailers rolling back their DEI efforts, there are many striving to keep Black History alive.
School districts in Arkansas, Florida, and South Carolina have restricted AP African American studies. Meanwhile, according to Education Week, since 2021 roughly 40 other states have introduced bills or taken steps to restrict critical race theory and the discussion of sexism in their curriculums.
However, students, educators, historians, and content creators alike have been getting creative in recent months to keep learning both online and off.
After parents grew concerned in Florida that the curriculum wasn’t adequately teaching Florida’s Black History, they started gathering high school students on Saturdays at a cultural center and teaching them supplemental lessons. Other groups in the state have been hosting similar lessons in recent years.
“People who are interested in advancing African diaspora history can’t rely on schools to do that,” Tameka Bradley Hobbs, manager of Broward County’s African-American Research Library and Cultural Center, told AP News. “I think it’s even more clear now that there needs to be a level of self-reliance and self-determination when it comes to passing on the history and heritage of our ancestors.”
This movement hasn’t been powered by just high schoolers looking to balance out and supplement their studies, either. Plenty of adults have also been getting into the game.
In late January, HillmanTok University sprang up online. The virtual university was started by accident when a professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University posted a welcome message to her real-life Intro to African American Studies on TikTok. The video, which laid out the curriculum for her actual course, received nearly 4 million views. A few days later, after thousands of curious comments poured in, she followed up with a reading list, and from there, the virtual school was born.
“I was just looking for a way to engage, but this launched something that is much bigger than me,” Leah Barlow, the professor, told NBC News.
Not too long after Barlow’s initial videos, other content creators began adding their own spin and uploading their own lessons using the HillmanTok University tag. Many topics have been covered, from history to herbalism to women’s health to makeup and beyond. The videos have become so prominent that some confusion has arisen over whether or not HillmanTok University is real.
HillmanTok gets its name from the celebrated Black classic sitcom “A Different World,” which followed a group of college coeds attending the fictional HBCU Hillman University.
Giving her thoughts on why she thinks HillmanTok took off the way it has, Barlow told ABC News the trend has given people “agency, autonomy, and ownership.
“I think in many ways, sometimes, we think that in order to do something, we need permission — and I think that this is not it,” she said. “We don’t, right? We can teach. We can educate. We can activate in ways that move beyond policy.”
