When I was growing up, African American history was literally one paragraph. There were Africans [who] came and they were enslaved. There was Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and then a jump to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. We learned about four people in African American history.

Now, where I sit, and I know that four million people received their freedom, or took their freedom, or were granted their freedom, stole their freedom, in 1865, and even before that moment—there are so many stories that we can understand about survival, about resilience, about pride, and about the African American experience in the United States that goes beyond those four great figures. ...

In my work, I try to honor the voices and the experience of people who were enslaved because, for so long, in the historical literature, nobody asked them about how they experienced slavery. They talked about enslaved people by making them objects. But these were human beings. And for me, I think it’s important to try to read and think about historical moments from their perspectives.

Kids can absolutely handle hard truths. Some of the best conversations that I’ve had about history and about the history of slavery have been with five-year-olds, seven-year-olds, nine-year-olds. It is so important that we know our history, that we teach all aspects of history, even the tough parts, the subjects that make us uncomfortable, the subjects that make us feel ashamed about our nation—that’s when we are in a place where we can move forward and grow and live in a realistic space. And students don’t feel betrayed by...[their] education.

—Daina Ramey Berry, Ph.D., historian, Chair of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin, on the PBS Newshour, February 5, 2021