The first problem I see here is that there is "this man," William Barclay Allen, who is exerting an undue influence on Black history standards in Florida, impacting the education that youth receive throughout the state.
I'm with the critics. After all, the inferences drawn from curriculum standards are caught up with the current political context that includes DeSantis' attack on AP African American Studies, threats to academic freedom, and tenure. Language matters. How offensive for there to be standards that represent slavery as providing "beneficial skills to the enslaved."
This is incredibly patronizing, especially when considering that enslaved West Africans weren't tabula rasa, but rather had their own cuisine, cultivation practices, agricultural knowledge systems, and other trades that positively impacted our nation's development (Sousa & Raizada, 2020; also read: African Impact on Colonial Agriculture). I ponder just how beneficial it would be to know more in our school curricula about the origins of specific crops' domestication and how these contributed to enslaved people's nutritional well-being, resilience, and survival—as well as our own in this country.
There is evidence of a “working group” developing the standards in Florida, but Floridians really need Black history scholars, well-versed on U.S. history, Black history, in particular, with the kind of expertise to contribute constructively on the specific standards the state is laying out.
There needs to be greater trust in the process instead of what is a clear pushing of a narrow, conservative view that has made this a hurtful, contentious battle.
-Angela Valenzuela
African Impact on Colonial Agriculture. Retrieved: https://www.ouramericanrevolution.org/index.cfm/page/view/m0135
Sousa, E. C., & Raizada, M. N. (2020). Contributions of African crops to American culture and beyond: The slave trade and other journeys of resilient peoples and crops. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 4, 586340. Retrieved: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.586340/full
The man behind Florida’s new Black history standards
By Lori Rozsa | Washington Post | Updated August 13, 2023 at 6:44 p.m. EDT|Published August 11, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
At a virtual training seminar by the Florida Department of Education — a session for teachers sponsored by the agency’s African American History Task Force — none of the group’s long-standing members spoke. All have objected to the changes and say they were never consulted. One resigned in protest, calling himself “disgusted” with the new curriculum.
In their place at the seminar were recent appointees from DeSantis’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz, and members of a separate “working group” that created the standards. The featured speaker was William Barclay Allen, a conservative scholar who has become the public face of the state’s efforts to rewrite how Black history is taught.
Here are key details about Allen and the controversy.
What is Allen’s professional background?
The 79-year-old retired professor of government and political science has a résumé notable for appointments to high-profile positions by conservative Republicans. In 1984, Ronald Reagan named Allen to the National Council of the Humanities, followed three years later by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In appointing him to the commission, Reagan said Allen would prevent the commission from becoming “an arm of the advocacy groups in the civil rights movement.”
In 1998, Virginia officials chose him as the executive director of the State Council on Higher Education.
A Florida native who helped integrate his Fernandina Beach high school in the 1960s, he has taught at public and private colleges in D.C., California, Colorado and Michigan and authored or co-authored more than half a dozen books.
William Allen discusses the narratives behind the stories at historic presidential homes like Mount Vernon and Monticello during a 2022 Heritage Foundation event. (Photo by C-SPAN)
Why has Allen drawn public attention in the past?
Allen has repeatedly spoken out against affirmative action, and during his leadership of the Virginia higher education council, he also questioned the role of historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. During his chairmanship of the federal civil rights body, he was castigated by fellow commissioners for the title of a 1989 speech, “Blacks? Animals? Homosexuals? What is a Minority?”
That same year, Allen was caught up in a kidnapping case involving a high school student on tribal lands in Arizona. The incident became the subject of a U.S. Senate investigation. Allen refused calls to resign and suggested instead that the entire commission resign.
In 1986, he ran for the U.S. Senate in California. (His campaign chairman was attorney John Eastman, who 34 years later would try to help Donald Trump overturn the outcome of the presidential election.) Allen, one of 13 candidates in the Republican primary, placed 10th and received less than 1 percent of the total votes cast.
How has Allen characterized the new Black history standards?
Allen declined an interview request by The Washington Post but explained in an email exchange that the 13-member working group “operated with a collaborative, consensual process, and the result is a product with no single author.” He noted that there was “no dissent.”
His comments to others have been more elaborative. He posted a 12-minute video on YouTube and discussed his views during appearances on South Florida news station WPLG and the “Megyn Kelly Show” online. He told Kelly that his great-grandfather was enslaved but “had the pluck to seek out opportunity” and “made the commitment to build his family’s life in this country.”
He also criticized Vice President Harris — who blasted the new standards during visits to Florida this summer — as “following a script in the name of an ideological agenda.”
During Monday’s virtual training, he told teachers that they should teach “the whole picture.” As an example, he mentioned the nine students who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. Though they were first blocked from entering the school by members of the Arkansas National Guard, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the unit, some of those same soldiers were “protecting and escorting those children into school,” he recounted.
“If we can convey no other message to our teachers, that’s the message we must convey: that the story is never just one way,” Allen said.
Yet the full history of the Little Rock Nine, as they came to be known, also includes the months of harassment and threats those students endured and their fear of the National Guard forces. Florida educators say it’s unclear how much they can teach about such events, given the Stop Woke law that DeSantis signed last year; the statute prohibits classroom discussion about race that might make students feel uncomfortable.
What’s next for Florida’s curriculum?
The state Education Department is embroiled in multiple controversies, including the decision — also backed by DeSantis — to reject a new Advanced Placement African American studies course. This week, officials first blocked, then announced they would allow, the AP Psychology course; at issue was the material it uses on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The department says the Black history standards will be “implemented” over the coming months, but it’s unclear what that means. The commissioner was scheduled to discuss the curriculum changes on Thursday at a town hall in Miami Gardens, a majority-Black city, but canceled.
About 200 people attended the gathering at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, with parents and community members expressing concern and anger over the revisions and questioning how the changes were made.
Steve Gallon III, a member of the Miami-Dade School Board, said the working group that Diaz put together was problematic because of the “shared ideology” and “shared agenda” of Allen and the other members.
“The foundation of their thinking needs to be called into question, to marginalize slavery, to misinform the facts about our history,” Gallon said.
He urged the audience to attend school board meetings and vote in every election to change the laws that led to the new curriculum. And parents, he added, need to ensure their children understand that slavery represented “the most horrific, brutal, divisive, destructive, evil experiences that this world has ever known.”
The teaching begins at home, Gallon said. “We can ill afford to totally rely on the school system to educate our children.”
A previous version of this article incorrectly said that William Barclay Allen's great-great-grandfather was enslaved. It was his great-grandfather. This version has been corrected.
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