The Black History Lesson

Further Info

This story was created at a workshop for young people from St Pauls and Easton who are researching their African heritage. The project is called “Adisa”, a word meaning “Each one to teach one” or “One who makes meanings clear”.

The workshop took place over 3 days at the Full Circle Family Learning Centre in St Pauls and was led by Dani Landau with support from Folake Shoga, Alan Cabey, Michaela Alfred-Kamara, Sylvia Vincent, Aikaterini Gegisian and Paddy Uglow, and Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives.

Transcript

One day I was in a history lesson. I was learning about African enslavement in the 16th century, which they called “Black History”.

As I was in the classroom, I could hear students asking the teacher questions about it. He was answering with ease and so I thought to myself “Isn’t black history much more than slavery?”

And so I sat there – I thought “I’m gonna ask, I should ask him a question, so I raised my hand, asked him a question and I looked at him and he said “To be honest with you, I don’t know.”

So I thought to myself “If a qualified teacher who went to university can’t tell me about a part of history that’s relevant to me, then who will?” And so I researched it and found out what I was looking for, but more questions arose and, just by luck, I met someone who was running a group about African culture and community work and they were planning work with museum.

I thought it was just going to be work like they’ll tell us just a bit more than what the school tells us. Instead, it turned out they’re telling us a whole heap of information

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