The real story of Rosa Parks -- and why we need to confront myths about Black history
2,355,246 views | David Ikard • TEDxNashville
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.
Read more about TEDx.About the speaker
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
Ava DuVernay | Netflix, 2016 | Watch
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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.