Background
My students are wonderful kids who have endured challenges many citizens in our own city could not begin to imagine. Statistically, students at Central are almost 80% African American or of mixed ancestry (many Native Americans are also African American), and only 6% are Hispanic and 13% Caucasian, with the last one percent being self-identified as only Native American.6 It is the least diverse school in TPS. Our students are usually years behind their grade level, especially in math and reading, the areas in which we are most evaluated. A lot of our students have home challenges including non-family living situations, poverty, drug abuse, and even involvement with the criminal justice system.
When they come to school tired from working a full time job or without having eaten, it is very difficult to get them to care about a history class. The students tell me that they don’t “do” history, and thus have no desire to try. Therefore, when those students were excited to learn about our Central’s history, I knew I had to find a way to help them discover it.
The idea of using public history, the stories and events of our time and location, to put meaning may be a relatively new field of history, but it is a very important one to help my students connect in a very real way. For example, I can show a picture of the Lincoln Memorial and tell the history of it being conceived and installed in Washington, D.C. But, when I add pictures and video from 1939 showing Marian Anderson singing “My Country Tis of Thee” in front of the memorial because she wasn’t welcome to Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, we get a new perspective which shows a different meaning to the Lincoln Memorial.7 If I can add a student’s voice, perhaps from a family trip, then I have even more narrative layers and more connections.
I teach on-level US History (1877 - Present), AP US History (APUSH) and African American History. I plan to use this unit in some form in all three. It can be adapted to fit the student's needs, classroom time restrictions, and class aims or focus. For example, the history of Central is a perfect way to explore the theme of identity from the AP themes. The theme of identity helps students discuss how groups are defined and how the relations between those groups can change or stay the same over time. It encourages historiographical skills of putting isolated events into context by showing that continuity and change. We understand better current race relations when we see those relations develop throughout US History. I think the true connection to history for my students will only come when we see how Old Central is a great showcase of the changing definition of what a Central student looks like and how that in turn changed race relations in North and West Tulsa. The changes and continuities from 1954 – 1976 include, but are not limited to: desegregation, the civil rights movement, federal mandates to schools in the Nixon era, white-flight and the subsequent resegregation of the inner-city.
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