The American Minervan

Tag: Black History Month

  • The Contributions of Black American Classicists against Racism

    The Contributions of Black American Classicists against Racism

    Beyond the well-known figures like Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass mentioned in the Introduction to Five Early Figures, a generation of Black American classicists emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often born into slavery or its immediate aftermath. These scholars mastered Greek and Latin to refute racial inferiority claims and assert our…

  • The Fourteen Black Classicists from Michele Valerie Ronnick’s Exhibition

    The Fourteen Black Classicists from Michele Valerie Ronnick’s Exhibition

    Michele Valerie Ronnick’s traveling photographic exhibition originally focused on twelve BLACK CLASSICISTS debuted in 2003 and was later expanded to fourteen Black Classicists. Ronnick’s exhibition has undergone 50 iterations in 15 years and her project began in the 1990s. This mosaic history displays pioneering Black scholars of Greek and Latin from the late nineteenth and…

  • Preparing Black Youth in the 1960s: Education and Class Issues

    Preparing Black Youth in the 1960s: Education and Class Issues

    This documentary from 1968 in Brooklyn highlights the controversial Ocean Hill-Brownsville conflict that focused on community control of schools. It also reveals past problems in the education system decades ago, and the struggles of parenting our Black youth, and inculcating in them the desire and love for learning. In the backdrop, we get young Black…