‘1776’ Is Helping Turn Civics Education Around
Realcleareducation.com
By Mike Sabo
August 26, 2020
Entrepreneur and civil rights movement veteran Robert L. Woodson, Sr. believes that American civics can help save our country—and that’s the mission of “1776,” a major initiative launched earlier this year by the Woodson Center, which Woodson founded to give local leaders the training they need to improve their communities.
Featuring essays by notable scholars and writers such as Clarence Page, John McWhorter, and Carol M. Swain, and eventually a curriculum and multimedia resources, “1776” offers “perspectives that celebrate the progress America has made on delivering its promise of equality and opportunity and highlighting the resilience of its people.”
A recipient of the Bradley Price and the Presidential Citizens Medal, Woodson began “1776” to counter the New York Times’s 1619 Project, a series of essays launched a year ago this month with a very different focus: it teaches that America is defined, now and forever, by slavery. As Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in the 1619 Project’s lead essay: “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”
In Woodson’s view, the 1619 Project teaches the “diabolical, self-destructive” idea that “all white Americans are oppressors and all black Americans are victims.”
“Though slavery and discrimination undeniably are a tragic part of our nation’s history,” Woodson notes, “we have made strides along its long and tortuous journey to realize its promise and abide by its founding principles.”
Woodson continues: “People are motivated to achieve and overcome the challenges that confront them when they learn about inspiring victories that are possible and are not barraged by constant reminders of injuries they have suffered.”
He points to the surprising number “of men and women who were born slaves” but “died as millionaires,” the existence of famous black business districts in cities such as Durham, North Carolina and Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of oppression and segregation, and heroes like baseball Hall of Fame slugger Hank Aaron as powerful examples for black uplift.
And it’s a lesson that Woodson knows firsthand.
Born in a low-income Philadelphia neighborhood, he rose up beyond his circumstances through hard work, the support of his family, and a good peer group. He entered the U.S. military, where he flew aircrafts for the space program; attended the University of Pennsylvania; and worked for the American Enterprise Institute, before starting the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in 1981. (It was rebranded as the Woodson Center in 2016.)
The Woodson Center’s mission is to seek out “individuals and organizations” already present in communities and help them “build their capacities,” in part by helping them “in linking to the resources they need.” The Center has helped more than 22,000 adults reach financial literacy and trained over 2,600 grassroots leaders in 39 states, helping them “attain more than 10 times the funding expended by the Center.”
Though the Center works on the “whole range” of issues associated with the “problems of poverty,” Woodson notes a “particular emphasis on those dealing with youth violence,” since “the restoration of civil order is a necessary foundation for civic health.”
In The Triumphs of Joseph: How Today’s Community Healers Are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods, Woodson writes that low-income black communities are “dying from self-inflicted wounds.” He calls it a “moral free-fall,” one that “penetrates beyond all boundaries of race, ethnicity, and income level.”
In light of violent protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Woodson has been active in print and on television, arguing that though Floyd’s killing was unconscionable, the violent protests that have ensued are “devastating the people in whose name they demand justice.”
Another way the Woodson Center combats civic breakdown is through its Violence Free Zone initiative, which aims to reduce youth violence by providing mentors to young students to “encourage their personal, academic, and career success.”
The Center reports that this initiative has led to a 50% reduction in crime, a 23% reduction in truancy, and a nearly 10% improvement in both student GPA and graduation rates.
Woodson views the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter as major contributors to the growing belief that the foundations of America itself must be torn down. Against what he sees as defeatism and a denial of moral agency, Woodson preaches an ethic of self-reliance and personal resilience. As Woodson sees it, “Nothing is more lethal than a good excuse for failure.”
Now I found another great article about the 1776 Project written by MAIREAD MCARDLE, in the National Review.
She states, Two black leaders are launching “1776 Unites,” a new high school curriculum that aims to combat victimhood culture in American society by telling the stories of black Americans who have prospered by embracing America’s founding ideals.
The curriculum’s goal is to “let millions of young people know about these incredible stories, African-Americans past and present, innovative, inventive, who faced adversity, did not view themselves as victims, and chose pathways to be agents of their own uplift,” .
The curriculum says it will present “life lessons from largely unknown, heroic African-American figures from the past and present who triumphed over adverse conditions” and aims to help young people of all races “be architects of their own future by embracing the principles of education, family, free enterprise, faith, hard work and personal responsibility.”
Founders of the 1776 Project said that the values the curriculum seeks to promote are currently being “threatened” by the New York Times’s 1619 Project, the controversial Pulitzer Prize-winning historical project that says it “aims to reframe the country’s history” by stating that 1619 — the year the first slave was brought to North America — represents the country’s true founding.
The apparent message of the 1619 Project, Robert L. Woodson Sr. said, is “that America should be defined as a racist society where all whites are culpable and guilty of having privilege and therefore should be punished and all blacks are victims that should be compensated,” a conclusion that he called “a very corrosive and dangerous challenge to these traditional values.”
However, Woodson emphasized that “1776 Unites” is not meant to be a “debate” with the 1619 Project, but an “inspirational alternative.”
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The first installment of the 1776 Unites curriculum includes lessons for high school students, and K-8 modules are slated to be released soon. New lesson content will be released for free each month as parents and teachers provide feedback on the lessons, which are designed to supplement history and English courses.
Every day, the curriculum’s builders say they hear about new inspirational African-American figures that they think should be included in the lesson plans.
I would like to give you two.
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois
Let’s start with Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was born into slavery and rose to become a leading African American intellectual of the 19 century, founding Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Now Tuskegee University) in 1881 and the National Negro Business League two decades later.
Washington advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. His infamous conflicts with black leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois over segregation caused a stir, but today, he is remembered as the most influential African American speaker of his time.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on April 5, 1856 in a slave hut in Franklin County, Virginia. His mother was a cook for the plantation’s owner. His father, a white man, was unknown to Washington.
At the close of the Civil War, all the slaves owned by James and Elizabeth Burroughs—including 9-year-old Booker, his siblings, and his mother—were freed. Jane moved her family to Malden, West Virginia. Soon after, she married Washington Ferguson, a free black man.
In Malden, Washington was only allowed to go to school after working from 4-9 AM each morning in a local salt works before class.
It was at a second job in a local coalmine where he first heard two fellow workers discuss the Hampton Institute, a school for former slaves in southeastern Virginia founded in 1868 by Brigadier General Samuel Chapman.
Chapman had been a leader of black troops for the Union during the Civil War and was dedicated to improving educational opportunities for African Americans.
In 1872, Washington walked the 500 miles to Hampton, where he was an excellent student and received high grades. He went on to study at Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., but had so impressed Chapman that he was invited to return to Hampton as a teacher in 1879.
It was Chapman who would refer Washington for a role as principal of a new school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama: The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, today’s Tuskegee University. Washington assumed the role in 1881 at age 25 and would work at The Tuskegee Institute until his death in 1915.
It was Washington who hired George Washington Carver to teach agriculture at Tuskegee in 1896.
Carver would go on to be a celebrated figure in black history in his own right, making huge advances in botany and farming technology.
Life in the post-Reconstruction era South was challenging for blacks. Discrimination was rife in the age of Jim Crow Laws. Exercising the right to vote under the 15 Amendment was dangerous, and access to jobs and education was severely limited.
With the dawn of the Ku Klux Klan, the threat of retaliatory violence for advocating for civil rights was real. In perhaps his most famous speech, given on September 18, 1895, Washington told a majority white audience in Atlanta, Georgia, that the way forward for African Americans was self-improvement through an attempt to “dignify and glorify common labor.”
He stated “Rather than agitate, black people should accumulate property. Rather than intrude where not wanted, black people should look toward their own communities.”
Washington felt that if blacks could prove themselves by living up to white, middle class standards, their constitutional rights would then be recognized.
The white community supported his idea and backed him financially in building the Tuskegee Institute.
When traveling from Tuskegee, Washington frequented places where he could advise and receive aid from men with power and money, spending many summers among the wealthy in Bar Harbor, Maine and Saratoga Springs, New York.
He counted famous people among his friends and acquaintances, from Mark Twain to William Howard Taft to Queen Victoria, and successfully solicited personal contributions from tycoons like J.P. Morgan, Collis P. Huntington (railroads) and John D. Rockefeller.
In 1911 he met Julius Rosenwald, the philanthropy-minded president of Sears, Roebuck & Company. The two shared a passion for the education of poor blacks in the rural South, and put together a scheme to offer matching funds for the construction of rural schools.
Washington died of hypertension in 1915 at age 59, but Rosenwald continued the program, eventually contributing $4 million towards the construction of more than 5,000 schools, shops and teacher’s homes throughout the South.
Now Booker T. Washington’s approach to solving the race problem in America was sharply criticized by another famous black leader of that time.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.
Du Bois repudiated what he called “The Atlanta Comprise” in a chapter of his famous 1903 book, “The Souls of Black Folk.”
Dubois attacked Washington’s views and accused him of abandoning the fight for black political rights and accepting segregation in exchange for economic gains to support his schools.
His opposition to Washington’s views on race inspired the Niagara Movement (1905-1909).
The Niagara Movement was a civil-rights group founded in 1905 near Niagara Falls where Du Bois gathered with supporters on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to form an organization dedicated to social and political change for African Americans.
Its list of demands included an end to segregation and discrimination in unions, the courts, and public accommodations, as well as equality of economic and educational opportunity.
Although the Niagara Movement had little impact on legislative action, its ideals led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Dubois became editor for its newsletter titled “The Crisis”.
It is interesting to note that unlike Booker T. Washington, Dubois was born a free man.
He was of French, Dutch, and African heritage.
He was extremely well educated. He graduated from Fisk University and Harvard and did graduate studies in Europe.
As such, he felt blacks should be given a full education, not just trade school, which is what Tuskegee was providing.
He went on to say that full blown protest was the only way blacks would ever gain respect in America.
Dubois’ approach was a major step on the road to black militancy.
Despite their differences, both Dubois and Washington agreed that blacks should cultivate middle class virtues of thrift, sobriety, orderliness, cleanliness, and morality.
The big difference between the two men was, Dubois advocated agitation, Booker T. Washington pushed for accommodation.
So folks, I hope you can see that the issues we are facing today are not new. The purpose of my show today was twofold.
First, I wanted to show you that there are two sides to every story. That is why I oppose the 1619 project. History is not all one sided. Which brings me to my second point.
Today I introduced you to the history of two famous black men from our past with two entirely different viewpoints on how to deal with the very issues we are struggling with today.
Where did I come up with the idea? You guessed it, from my old, yellowed, notes that I prepared and used in my American History classes.
I did not present just the views of Booker T. Washington, nor did I ignore the thoughts of W.E.B. Dubois.
I provided an in-depth account of who both men were and what they stood for and opened up the classroom for discussion. I did not choose a side. I just provided the facts and let the students come to their own conclusions.
That, my friends is what should be happening in our education system today.
The 1619 project totally ignores that teaching methodology, a system that has worked for over 2000 years.