Teaching Truth Under a Tree: Dr. Marvin Dunn and a Grassroots Stand for Black History in Florida

Friends:

This is inspiring! What Florida’s public universities won’t teach, Marvin Dunn is bringing to life—one lesson at a time, under a tree. At Florida International University, students gather beneath what’s now called the Black History Learning Tree to hear the real story of the Rosewood Massacre—just one of many erased or distorted chapters in Florida’s past. 

As state leaders censor curricula and dismantle DEI programs, the beloved Dr. Dunn, a retired professor and historian, is reclaiming public space to teach truths too uncomfortable for today’s politics. “DEI is not dead,” he declared. “We will be here again and again.” In a state where history is under siege, one tree has become a classroom of resistance.

I am so in awe of you, Dr. Dunn! Keep up the great work!

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

‘Telling our history correctly’: Activist hosts Black history class under a tree at FIU 

By Raisa Habersham Updated April 2, 2025 | Miami Herald

Former Florida International University professor and historian Marvin Dunn speaks to attendees about the Rosewood Massacre during a “Black History Learning Tree” event at FIU on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Miami, Fla. D.A. Varela dvarela@miamiherald.com

The Rosewood Massacre was just a short paragraph in one of Stephanie Borden’s textbooks when she was in grade school. “I did not get taught a lot of Black history from school,” the marine biology student at Florida International University, 27, told the Miami Herald. Slavery, Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves, Martin Luther King Jr. and his assassination, and Barack Obama’s presidency were the highlights of the Black history she learned in school.

“My learning of Black history came from my family,” she said.

Artist and student Leah Gayle, 34, hangs a sign that reads “WE LOVE D.E.I.” before a “Black History Learning Tree” event at Florida International University on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Miami, Fla. D.A. Varela dvarela@miamiherald.com

But on Tuesday, as she sat by the newly christened Black History Learning Tree on Florida International University’s campus, the little morsel of history she learned of the Rosewood Massacre morphed into a full fledged lesson from historian and former professor Marvin Dunn. On a March 17 Instagram post, Dunn announced he was going to host a free class to anyone who wanted to learn Black history under a tree by the Steven and Dorothea Green Library. And he did it without the permission of FIU officials, he said.

“It’s important now to stand up. It’s important now to resist this attack on our democracy,” Dunn said. “Most of my colleagues, if not all of them at FIU, are vulnerable. I don’t expect any of them to sit under that tree with me, and I don’t blame them. I’m sure there’ll be photographs taken of who is there and reports given to the new president about who is under that tree.” In February, former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez was appointed interim president of FIU. Her appointment was the latest in a wave of conservative, well-connected politicians taking over presidencies at state universities under Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

RELATED: FIU’s new president in her own words: A Q&A with former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez

Dunn’s Black history lesson comes at a time when the state has limited how Black history is taught in school, a trend seen nationally as the Trump administration has signed executive orders to eliminate what they consider diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and threatening to withhold funding from schools that they find ideologically out of line. At the same time, FIU and the rest of the state’s universities have had to weed out general education courses that include “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.”

Former Florida International University professor and historian Marvin Dunn speaks to attendees about the Rosewood Massacre during a “Black History Learning Tree” event at FIU on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Miami, Fla. D.A. Varela dvarela@miamiherald.com 

Dunn, who spent his academic career at FIU, chose the tree as a way of institutionalizing Black history on the campus and designating a place where Black history will be taught, he said. Dunn said Black people have often used trees as a gathering spot, when in Africa elders gathered to make decisions and pass on oral history. “I don’t know of a single Black community that does not have a tree where usually Black men gather to socialize, tell stories, play the dozen, get drunk sometimes, but mainly to pass on our history,” he said. “That’s the tradition from which I come and I’m hoping that other universities will establish Black History Learning Trees as well as a model of protecting our history on those campuses.”

Dunn’s voice fought against the din in the open plaza as he noted the importance of telling such history before the assembled class of about 30 people: “There’s a temptation to sometimes not recognize the depths of the problems of Black people. We have to make sure we’re telling our history correctly.” Today’s lesson dove into the story of the Rosewood Massacre, describing the burning of a predominantly Black Florida town after a white woman, Fannie Taylor, lied about a Black man beating her, which incited a violent white mob. Dunn owns five acres of land in Rosewood. One of his neighbors in the small gulf coast town launched a racially-motivated attack against Dunn and was convicted of hate crimes. Dunn famously forgave his attacker, asking for lenience at his federal trial. “I was raised in the church and my parents taught me to forgive, at least once,” he responded to a question asking why he forgave his neighbor. “That was the motivation for that, but I did catch some heat for it.” Dunn also recounted the lynching of Willie James Howard, a 15-year-old boy in Live Oak, Florida, who sent Christmas cards to all his co-workers, including a white girl named Cynthia Golf. Howard later sent her a letter, which her father found. Golf’s father and two other white men took the boy from his home, tied him up, drove him to the Suwannee River, gave him the choice between being shot or drowned. He would jump into the river as his father watched.

Ph.D. in International Relations Rob Piper, 53, reads a copy of ‘The 1619 Project’ by Nikole Hannah-Jones while waiting for speaker Marvin Dunn to speak to attendees about the Rosewood Massacre during a “Black History Learning Tree” event at FIU on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Miami, Fla. D.A. Varela dvarela@miamiherald.com

Onlookers passed by and listened in while Dunn continued a few more stories of Florida’s Black history, teaching about what constitutes a lynching and the history of Kingsley plantation. Students also received free copies of “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” by Nikole Hannah-Jones.

This is the kind of history FIU student Abigail Costello, 19, said she’s afraid will be erased. She said she had noticed how certain terms were now being used incorrectly. For instance, she said that teachers in high school had started using the term “indentured servitude” instead of “slavery” when referring to American slavery. Indentured servitude involves a labor contract in which a person agrees to work for a set number of years with the promise of freedom. “There’s a lot that I didn’t learn from school that I’m excited to learn outside of school in this space,” she said. “It was just a lot of information to take in, and now I know I got to bring a notepad next time.”

Borden echoed those sentiments, saying that she feels that there has been a push to remove professors who teach certain subjects and efforts to inaccurately teach history. “Black history is American history,” Borden said. “It all goes together. I’m sorry if you feel bad, because your history might be a little tainted,” she said, “ but that is where we are as a nation.” Dunn said he plans to continue the Black history lessons weekly and has already lined up two guest speakers including Shanreka Perry, whose leg was amputated when she was 12 during the Miami riots in the 1980s. Dunn encouraged people to follow his social media for when the next lesson will take place.

“It was important to me to make a presence, to make a beginning statement on this campus that DEI is not dead, and we will be here again and again and again,” he said. “That’s not a one off.” Dunn plans to tell more stories in other parts of Miami-Dade as well. On Wednesday afternoon, he posted on Instagram about the Overtown Black History Learning Tree, located in the Teach the Truth Garden at 901 NW Third Avenue. A date was not announced. As for Borden, she will make it as often as she can. “I’ve learned so much and it [was] only an hour and a half,” Borden said. “Whatever I have to do, come hell or high water, I’m going to be back.” 

This story was originally published April 2, 2025 at 3:28 PM.

It’s time for parents and students to protect the public education opportunities they want, by Mica Pollock and Hirokazu Yoshikawa

Friends,

Drs. Mica Pollock and Hirokazu Yoshikawa’s incisive study lays bare the chilling effects of Florida’s sweeping K–12 restrictions—policies that have become a national model for dismantling public education under the guise of “parents’ rights.” Sounds like Texas where rhetoric of "parental rights" are being invoked selectively—not to genuinely expand educational opportunity, but to rationalize top-down control, ideological censorship, and the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

A crucial point is that "the majority of U.S. parents want their children to learn to think critically and feel included in school as core aspects of gaining skills."

Their research reveals a sobering picture of fear, erasure, and systemic harm. Teachers are silenced, books pulled, AP courses and identity-affirming texts denied, and professional development slashed. To avoid vague punishments, educators abandon best practices and inclusive teaching, stripping vital supports from students. Rather than protecting families, these policies divert resources toward censorship, undermining the core purpose of public education.

Pollock and Yoshikawa urge parents, students, and communities to reclaim their educational rights and defend inclusive, opportunity-rich schools. Research shows students thrive when affirmed and challenged—requiring more diverse books, honest history, and support, not less. 

The anti-DEI backlash endangers not just marginalized groups but public education itself. 

Pollock and Yoshikawa call for bold, collective resistance: backing educators, speaking out, and exposing the harm of policies disguised as protection. They call for bold, collective resistance: backing educators, speaking out, and exposing the harm of policies disguised as protection. 

I'm generally not the "doom and gloom" person in the room, but truly, if we stay silent, we may soon find there’s little left of public education to defend.    

-Angela Valenzuela


It’s time for parents and students to protect the public education opportunities they want

By Mica Pollock and Hirokazu Yoshikawa

Access paper here.

May 13, 2025 | PEN America

The Trump administration has furiously targeted and cut student support efforts it feels are related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Trump’s Department of Education even threatened to withdraw baseline federal funding from children if K-12 educators support kids with “DEI programs” or “DEI practices” or instruction that the administration has suddenly and vaguely –and unlawfully, according to the courts — deemed “illegal.”

While various states resisted, some states agreed to review and reduce all K-12 DEI programming themselves to align with the Trump team’s anti-“DEI” demands. Judges blocked enforcement of some of these federal demands, finding they were making educators afraid to teach and support students.

So now the nation needs to ask: what else happens to education opportunity throughout K-12 systems when policymakers ramp up such threats and attacks?

The nation has an example to learn from. Our new study in Florida, The Limitation Effect, shows how policymakers pressuring restriction and “bans” on K-12 efforts to support students can end up hurting everyone.

Since 2021, Florida has been the test case for policy threatening and restricting K-12 education. Policymakers have amplified caricatures of what teachers are doing and created a suite of laws, regulations, and related state guidance to restrict education efforts. Florida policies have gone the furthest in the nation in targeting K-12 discussions of race and student supports around sexual orientation and gender identity. Policies threaten financial consequences for districts and individual educators’ employment; mandate and pressure employees into widespread vetting of materials; and actively invite individuals to try to restrict K-12 materials for everyone, including for containing any “sexual conduct.” Florida has the nation’s most book bans.

American parents should be worried. Policymakers now in and advising the Trump administration previously promoted policy elements present in Florida and are pressuring related and even broader restrictions nationwide.

Our 86 study participants, largely school-level educators and parents from 26 Florida districts, shared examples of how Florida’s restrictions harm education both for targeted subgroups and for all students as people throughout systems focus energy on limiting basic student supports.

As restriction and review pressures cascaded through systems, some teachers avoided books even mentioning “racism,” afraid they might be “unauthorized” – or said they felt afraid even to keep teaching “the African American experience in the U.S.” Librarians felt they couldn’t order books “speaking to” Black and Latino students, or books with LGBTQ characters. Educators and students became afraid to mention LGBTQ people, even their own families. Some educators stopped using youths’ preferred names. Some inclusive clubs were closed.

And study participants described more harms that spread even further across the education system as policies compounded. Despite state language about “parents’ rights,” parents were often unaware of the learning opportunities being taken from everybody’s children:Afraid for their jobs, some teachers boxed up or stopped using entire classroom libraries to avoid punishment.

Some avoided discussing basic aspects of U.S. history in class.
Some stopped using any literature other than textbooks, to be “safe.”
Educators removed safe space signs and reduced efforts to build rapport with students.

To root out “age inappropriate” material per the state, scared educators removed books for advanced readers.

In state-pressured review processes, some educators threw out books that had inspired low-income readers learning English.

Students were denied access to specific AP courses, including, statewide, the College Board’s AP African American Studies pilot.

Some librarians and entire districts removed award-winning classics that included any mention of sexual conduct.

Educators and some systems cut off student access to the public library, or stopped using national digital collections supporting struggling readers/students with disabilities, because K-12 employees could not re-review every text for content possibly prohibited by the state or disliked by an individual.

State reviewers canceled some teacher professional development on supporting all students academically, for including discussions of “equity.”

Professional development on diagnosing disabilities accurately—to avoid misplacing students generally as well as “black and brown children” particularly— was limited to avoid discussing “bias.”

Lengthy state review of materials for compliance with new restrictions held up resources for blind students, and health curriculum for some entire districts.

A district educator was spending paid time seeking lessons that did not mention “Black Lives Matter.”

Some districts spent hundreds of thousands of public dollars re-reviewing and removing books.

Some already-purchased books were thrown away.

The bottom line: the policies pressured K-12 systems to spend time, public funds, and energy on limiting student access to ideas, information, and supports, rather than expanding education opportunity. Such limitations cut into the bone of public school opportunities for everyone, to please the most extreme and restrictive voices.

In our study, many educators and parents described desires to leave Florida’s public education system due to these restrictions on top of existing stressors. As one Florida teacher put it: “I want to leave. I hate almost everything about ‘teaching’ because we are restricted on every level.”

The nation will endanger students’ futures and public schooling itself if we move further in the restriction direction.

Parents and students have a solution as the government threatens schools: more can speak up loudly for the inclusive and opportunity-rich public schools they want. Restriction policies threaten to halt the very areas of improvement that researchers call for and students need.

 Research shows all students benefit from multiple perspectives in books and classrooms, welcoming environments, and open discussions about society as they prepare for careers and college. The majority of U.S. parents want their children to learn to think critically and feel included in school as core aspects of gaining skills. We can debate best paths to these goals, but taking opportunities away from students and public schools is not “parents’ rights.” It’s time for more students, parents, and community members to say so.

In their schools and districts, to the media, at state legislatures and school board meetings, to their elected representatives, and to the feds– at every level where decisions are made— students and parents can blunt ideologically-driven calls to “ban” by focusing on supporting and discussing educators’ efforts to improve public schools for all students and expand opportunity so all children succeed. They can explain and demand more of the teaching, books, support, and programming that help all students develop skills and feel they belong. They can back up specific teachers, schools, districts, and students under attack; they can demand reinstatement of opportunities removed. Organizations to join exist nationwide.

By speaking up for schools’ best efforts to support all students, they can help stop efforts to crush America’s public schools.

That’s reclaiming education “rights.”

Mica Pollock is Professor of Education Studies at UC San Diego, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa is Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education and University Professor at NYU.

The man behind Florida’s new Black history standards, WAPO Aug. 11, 2023

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

Reference

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

Students head back to class Thursday in Tarpon Springs, Fla., as teachers statewide grapple with new, divisive curriculum standards in subjects like Black history. (Dirk Shadd/Tampa Bay Times/AP)

Florida teachers returning to the classroom this week face what many say are confusing new directives from state education officials over the instruction students should receive in certain classes. Among the most contentious: standards championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for teaching Black history, which must include discussion of how slavery could have provided beneficial skills to the enslaved and how mob violence against Black people included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

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?

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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.”

CORRECTION

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.