Dozens of Black teamsters gathered in Miami-Dade Wednesday, as they marched to the school board to protest Florida's new academic standards for teaching Black history.
The march began at 11 a.m. at Booker T. Washington Senior High School located at 1200 Northwest 6th Avenue and headed to the Miami-Dade School Board.
The march comes after the Florida Board of Education approved new African American history standards that were blasted by a state teachers' union as a “step backward.”
According to state documents and officials, a 13-member group was formed from a pool of 40 applicants to set the new standards. The search for these members started in August 2022.
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As part of the new standards, Florida’s public schools will teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills.
The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education.
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Other language that has drawn the ire of some educators and education advocates includes teaching about how Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres.
That language says, “Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.”
On his presidential campaign trail, Gov. Ron DeSantis has touted Florida's new public school curriculum on Black history.
"I think it's very clear that these guys did a good job with those standards," DeSantis said. "It wasn't anything that was politically motivated. These are serious scholars."
DeSantis has repeatedly defended the new language while insisting that his critics are intentionally misinterpreting one line of the sweeping curriculum.
Some opponents to the changes said this language “waters down” a dark period in our country’s history.
During a trip to Jacksonville, in an effort to assail Republican efforts to overhaul educational standards, Vice President Kamala Harris said extremists want to “replace history with lies."
“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris asked.
While she did not mention DeSantis by name, she instead referred to the state's “so-called leaders.”
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is also running for president in 2024, has also spoken out against DeSantis for supporting the new standards.
“What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating,” Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate, told reporters on Thursday after a town hall in Ankeny. “So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that.”
