I am a career educator with over 30 years of teaching experience in post-secondary education. The university in which I have spent my tenure is Alabama State University, and at the beginning of my employment I frequented a Black-owned bookstore located near the campus. It was called Roots and Wings.

In this book store was just about every source needed to build a critical analysis of the Black experience, and my library to this day has in it over 300 books, most of which came from this establishment.

Although it was practically located on an HBCU campus, it could not sustain itself because African American literature was simply not a community priority.

While I do not expect others to appreciate African American history, and it is predictable that some would fight it being infused into the learning experience of public school children, for African Americans to disregard or to consider mundane the events and circumstances that have shaped their history is a sin of the highest reprehension.

The sin of historic omission can be displayed in the aimless and directionless efforts of many African Americans today, whose leaders find themselves no closer to solving existential problems than their forefathers one hundred years ago.

I submit the answers to the problems that endure in the Black community are written in the missing pages of world history. This is what makes the history Black, hat it is not a part of the typical conversation except when it is time to magnify and mystify a problem in the Black community.

James Weldon Johnson stated that no great people have not produced great art and literature and we will not appreciate history in general until African American people have embraced the art and literature they have produced. The conservative politicians who are wasting valuable time trying to defeat divisive “Woke” concepts have nothing to worry about because many Black educators consider the teaching of Black history to be as divisive as white educators.

There are some individual educators who promote the idea but they are in the minority. The Montgomery School Board and the Montgomery City Council should adopt a joint resolution to make every student an honorary ambassador of the City which will require them to learn about events like the Confederacy and the Montgomery Bus Boycott so that they can teach and direct visitors to the key locations and events that have shaped Montgomery’s future. Virtual technology exercises can help in this process.

As for the declining reading scores, who will fail a test if the book is about themselves?

Dr. Robert White is a faculty member at Alabama State University and pastor of Montgomery City of Refuge Church in Montgomery, Ala.