Educators Anita Lewis and Gwendolyn Ebron didn’t just set out to make history. They came to reclaim it. Lewis and Ebron recently completed a 33-hour teaching marathon on Black history, a feat that could surpass the current Guinness World Record for the longest history lesson. But for Lewis and Ebron, the real goal extended far beyond the clock.
“This is more than a record attempt — it is a reclamation,” Ebron said in a press release, the Chestnut Hill Local reported. “We are teaching the history that shaped the world, honoring the brilliance, resilience, and global impact of African people across millennia.”
“In light of the things that have been going on at the state, local, and national levels regarding the marginalization and all but erasure of African and African American history, it dawned on me that my protest has always been through education. While they’re looking to remove our history from the walls, from the museums, from the websites, and things like that, they can’t remove it from our minds,” Lewis added.
Organized through their shared community with Urban Intellectuals, the lesson unfolded both in person at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia and online via livestream, allowing viewers across the country to tap in, learn, and reflect in real time. The idea began with Lewis, a Texas-based educator, fresh off earning her doctorate and seeking her next challenge. That search led her to Ebron, a Philadelphia teacher deeply rooted in community-based Black history education. Together, they committed to breaking the existing record of 26 hours and 34 minutes, set in 2018 at the University of North Texas. When building on the lesson plan spanning 5,000 years of African and African-American history, the duo was intentional about the space they built.
“Every lesson that we teach, we’ll have an engagement activity designed for students to get into the lesson and to apply it because you hear and you forget. You see, and you remember, but you do, and you understand,” Lewis, a teacher at the University of Houston Clear Lake and a retired K12 educator, explained to ABC Philadelphia.
To meet Guinness’s criteria, the educators meticulously structured every detail, including coordinating certified timekeeping, securing multiple witnesses, planning seamless topic transitions, and adhering to strict break rules. And while Guinness World Records is still reviewing their submission, the women are clear: the certificate is secondary.
“We’re trying to educate, empower, and elevate. So, as part of our lessons, at the end of each lesson we do an affirmation. I want them to see the brilliance that’s in their DNA so that they can understand that ‘yes, this might be hard, but it’s in my DNA to try a little bit harder. I can do this,’” Lewis said of their attempt.
