When I say, ‘because’, you say: ‘Black people invented it,’” Renee Scott Best told a class of predominantly Black students one Monday last month. The call and response from the kids grew louder as they read a fictional story about a dystopian world without African Americans and their inventions. A folding bed, tricycle, clock, toilet, heating furnace, thermostat and air conditioner were among the innovations that no longer existed because, “Black people invented it,” the students shouted.
“Because we were brought here as slaves, they try to make us think we’re not very smart,” Best said toward the end of the lesson. She stood beside a poster that displayed the cover of her poetry book about 50 Black inventors, Black Inventors Poetry in Motion, which inspired the day’s lesson plan. She said: “We know that’s not true, because without all of the Black inventions in and around your home, you’d be in a cabin!”
The class Best teaches is part of an educational initiative launched in 2023 by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), a Black heritage academic club founded in 1915 by historian Carter G Woodson. Known as a “freedom school”, the class was formed in response to what critics call an assault on Black history in Florida public schools launched by Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor’s Stop Woke Act prohibits schools from teaching about structural racism or using educational material from The 1619 Project, and he’s also banned advanced-placement African American history courses.
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