‘A dream come true’: African American studies course gets final approval to be offered across Texas - The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN -- The State Board of Education has given final approval to an elective African American studies course, opening the door for high schools across the state to begin offering it as soon as next fall.

In a unanimous vote via teleconference, the board approved the course standards on Friday, making it Texas’ second statewide ethnic studies course. The first, focusing on Mexican American studies, gained statewide approval in 2018 after four years of controversy over its creation, textbook material and naming.

But the African American studies course has garnered widespread support from the board and the public since it was proposed last fall.

“April 17th is going to be a historic day,” board member Ruben Cortez of Brownsville said before the final vote. “We as a board have come a long way.”

The course is modeled after a course taught in Dallas ISD for the first time this academic year. Aicha Davis, a freshman board member representing Dallas, asked the board to make the course a statewide option last September.

“This has just been an amazing journey,” Davis said Friday, tearing up. “This course exceeded anything I ever thought it would. It’s something I wish I could have taken when I was young.”

For Jamila Thomas, who worked with Davis on developing the course as the former director of Dallas ISD’s Racial Equity Office, the Friday vote was “a dream come true.”

She remembers writing a speech on how she would impact black history as a senior at Dallas’ Lincoln Magnet High School in 1997.

“Surprisingly, despite the major accomplishments, you rarely hear about the small achievements,” Thomas wrote in the speech. “We know of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey, but when do we stop and listen to what our ancestors are telling us.”

The course accomplishes Thomas’ goal of broadening black history by requiring students to learn about the contributions of African civilizations and African Americans throughout history to varied fields such as math, science, politics and the arts.

“To look back on that, and see how I’ve been instrumental, along with some of our other peers, to make this happen, it's just, it's really unbelievable,” she said.

The course also digs deeper into national policies. For example, on Thursday, Davis brought forward an amendment to have students discuss education beyond the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Brown vs. Board of Education, which determined school segregation was unconstitutional.

“So now students get to learn the United States was the only country in the world that specifically made laws that banned teaching slaves,” Davis said. “But enslaved people found systems to be able to learn how to read, and so right from there, they founded colleges for black students.”

Thomas said this in-depth look at African American studies will help students of all races think critically and better understand issues in our society today, including why the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a disproportionate number of deaths among black Americans.

“These things can be traced far back to help you get an understanding of why COVID-19 has really exposed, if you will, the inequity that exists in so many different communities,” she said.

Davis said she hopes Texas’ standards will help other states adopt similar courses, and she is already working with Grand Prairie ISD to develop a Native American studies course that could eventually be offered across the state.

“I think the possibilities are limitless because of the success of the process and the rich curriculum that was created,” she said. “I’m very optimistic about what this can do to help our students.”

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