On March 9th, surrounded by thousands of marchers, my children and I walked hand-in-hand over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as the crowd sang “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round,” voices ringing over the site where civil rights leaders were brutally beaten for advocating for voting rights on what is now known as “Bloody Sunday.” The next day, my daughter, Ida Luna, stood hand-in-hand with movement Elder Paulette Porter Roby in Birmingham, AL. Ms. Roby told Ida about how she had marched at age 13 — only two years older than Ida is now — as the Birmingham police attacked them with water cannons and dogs, and told us about losing friends in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. She urged Ida Luna and my 8-year-old, Rio, to keep learning, to do their part so that this legacy and what was achieved after these deaths is not lost.
In times like now, where truth-telling is imperiled, when the history of movements for justice is actively suppressed, and when white supremacist movements are on the rise, I believe it’s vital our children learn these histories and feel responsibility to them, and that they can push back against the lies these racist movements rely on. I want to offer some perspective, as an Alaskan parent, on why and how we can do this.
Raising my children in Alaska, I’m deeply grateful they can learn close-up from Alaska Native people, absorb Indigenous worldviews, and be a part of decolonization efforts. I involve them in Central and South American cultural practices in Anchorage, as well as in Latin America, so they have some rooting in their identities as Latine children. I expose them to all of Anchorage’s diverse communities, and to diverse literature. But what living in Alaska makes it harder for my children to understand is the role that slavery played in shaping the country they live in, as well as the vital and creative ways that Black people — while enduring 246 years of chattel slavery and 160 years of ongoing structural racism — have played in shaping US American language, arts, culture, architecture, science, etc. I have done my best to teach them, but knew they needed to understand it more deeply — particularly at this point in history, and while museums are still able to teach this history.
The impact of slavery cannot be overstated. As journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote:
“At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined.”
And as Mississippi writer Kiese Laymon articulated:
“We Black Southerners, through life, love, and labor, are the generators and architects of American music, narrative, language, capital, and morality. That belongs to us. Take away all those stolen West African girls and boys forced to find an oral culture to express, resist, and signify in the South, and we have no rich American idiom…Expunge the sorrow songs, gospel, and blues of the Deep South, and we have no rock and roll, rhythm and blues, funk, or hip-hop.”
In wanting my children to absorb the importance of these histories and legacies, and be able to push back against the pervasive anti-Blackness in culture, we spent 8 months ahead of the trip preparing with books, videos, and music, and then nearly three weeks of March on a trip through the Deep South.
My friend Joe Francisco, who for 18 years has been hyping up and teaching me about New Orleans, was a great ambassador to the city and the traditions of Mardi Gras. While my kids experienced Mardi Gras largely as a fun parade in which they caught footballs, beads, and tambourines thrown from floats, they also appreciated the tradition of Black Southern marching bands and of finding joy in the face of — often in defiance of — oppression. We later visited Congo Square where enslaved Africans had gathered in the early 1800’s on market days to make music and dance, and later where Black bands fused multiple music forms into jazz. We walked through the Whitney Plantation and heard our tour guide point to a name on the memorial wall, telling us “This was my grandfather’s grandfather.” There, my children learned the history of how Indigenous people had sheltered and formed families with Black people who escaped slavery, forming the rich cultures of Southern Louisiana that our friend Joe is descended from, and that Mardi Gras arose from.
Later in the trip, as we drove through the countryside, they also saw the ongoing celebration of that enslavement: confederate flags and farms still proudly labeled with their original plantation names.
We talked through the ugly things we saw along the way and that we learned from the Civil Rights Memorial and Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL. We talked about the hard things they learned from a walking tour of Birmingham, AL; from the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, and in Jackson, MS at the home where Medgar Evers was assassinated in front of his family. At the Vicksburg Civil War Battlefield, we talked through what the confederacy stood for (and what those who fly its flags now hope for).
These are heavy topics, but not unreachable for my 8 and 11-year-old children, especially not when interspersed with trips to parks and pools, exploration of children’s museums and art, fantastic meals of Creole and soul food, and so many hours in the car playing make-believe with their Mardi Gras throws. Children know how to achieve balance through play, and this requirement of regular play helped me to integrate the heavy learning for myself as well.
Additionally, everything they learned about the ugliness of racism was accompanied by stories of what brave, ordinary people did to resist it: rebellions, escapes to freedom, and what it meant for Union soldiers to “die to make men free” and end the brutal practice of slavery. They learned more about my daughter’s namesake, Ida B. Wells, and her crusading journalism to expose the racial terror of lynching. They learned about the Civil Rights movement, my friend Dr. Nakeitra Burse taking us to the chapel on the Tougaloo College campus in Jackson where the Freedom Rides and Mississippi Freedom Summer were organized, our children playing together in the sacred space of that wood-paneled sanctuary. My children typed their names into a moving wall of people committing to advancing justice at the Montgomery Civil Rights Memorial. And we marched in John Lewis’ footsteps alongside thousands of others, recharging ourselves for the hard work ahead to maintain the civil rights gained by the courage of previous generations. My hope was that my children would see themselves in these movements for freedom, and would take seriously John Lewis’ words at the Memorial Museum:
“Freedom is not a state: it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we must all take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”
I am sharing these stories because I want to offer something tangible that parents and educators can use. I’ve seen that many feel lost about how to teach their children histories and cultures outside of their own, and don’t know how to address these heavy topics in developmentally-appropriate ways. Non-Black parents — particularly in places like Alaska — may feel uncomfortable trying to teach their children Black Southern history, or may simply dismiss the South as irrelevant.
But Southern Black history *is* US American history, and the origin of our “rich American idiom,” so it’s important that all US American children learn Southern Black history in order to understand the country they live in, the language they use and art they love, the civil rights they enjoy. The opportunity to learn about these things in school is limited already and is now increasingly under threat. Therefore, we as family and community members are going to have to play an even larger role in educating our children on these topics.
Laura Norton-Cruz, LMSW, CLC, is an independent documentary producer and writer, social worker, public health practitioner, and mother from Anchorage, Alaska. All photos included were taken by Laura.
