Ideas worth spreading

The real story of Rosa Parks -- and why we need to confront myths about Black history

2,365,462 views |

David Ikard |

TEDxNashville

• March 2018

Black history taught in US schools is often watered-down, riddled with inaccuracies and stripped of its context and rich, full-bodied historical figures. Equipped with the real story of Rosa Parks, professor David Ikard highlights how making the realities of race more benign and digestible harms us all -- and emphasizes the power and importance of historical accuracy.

Black history taught in US schools is often watered-down, riddled with inaccuracies and stripped of its context and rich, full-bodied historical figures. Equipped with the real story of Rosa Parks, professor David Ikard highlights how making the realities of race more benign and digestible harms us all -- and emphasizes the power and importance of historical accuracy.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxNashville, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

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About the speaker

David Ikard

Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies

See speaker profile

David Ikard explains why the whitewashing of black history should be a major concern for us all, even self-identified white liberals.

Rosa Parks and Jim Haskins | Puffin Books, 1999 | Book

Rosa Parks: My Story

This sets the record straight about Rosa Parks’s heroic act of refusing to give up her seat to a white patron in Montgomery Alabama in 1955. What we learn, among many other things, is that Parks was anything but old, tired and spontaneous in her history-changing act.

James Baldwin | Vintage, 1992 | Book

The Fire Next Time

Though published in 1962, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is essential reading if you want to understand why the whitewashing of history and culture is so prevalent in our country.

Douglas A. Blackmon | Anchor, 2009 | Book

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Douglas A. Blackmon documents a little-known history about the debt-peonage system that essentially became another form of enslavement for a significant swarth of black folks in the South and beyond, following Reconstruction.

W.E.B. Du Bois | Dover Publications, 2016 | Book

The Souls of Black Folk

Part-history book, part-memoir, and part-manifesto, The Souls of Black Folk helps put the plight of black Americans in the early 20th century into perspective.

Michelle Alexander | The New Press, 2012 | Book

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

A must-read book that explores how the criminal justice system disproportionately targets black men for incarceration and then criminalizes their bodies long after they have served their time in prison or “repaid” their debt to society.

David H. Ikard  | Indiana University Press, 2013 | Book

Blinded by the Whites: Why Race Still Matters in 21st-Century America

I explore the various ways that blacks have tried to combat structural inequalities and racial oppression from slavery to the present — and why these attempts have only produced moderate outcomes.

Ta-Nehisi Coates  | Spiegel & Grau, 2015 | Book

Between the World and Me

Timothy B. Tyson | Broadway Books, 2005 | Book

Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story

Sam Pollard | PBS, 2012 | Watch

Slavery By Another Name

Raoul Peck | Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2017 | Watch

I Am Not Your Negro

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxNashville, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.