What 'Black Cool' Looks Like in the Classroom
In 1926, Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week to ensure the contributions of black people would be taught and remembered. Woodson believed that eventually the week—which in 1976 become Black History Month—would eventually become unnecessary because everyone would learn black history.
Seven years later, in his book The Mis-Education of the Negro, Woodson argued that America’s school system indoctrinated black people instead of educating them. Generations later, his rugged independence and intellectual dexterity remain an undeniable example of cool. That same spirit flows through Rebecca Walker'sBlack Cool: A Thousands Streams of Blackness, a just-published collection of essays about the many dimensions of "black cool."
As each writer takes on a different dimension of cool, the reader reaches the same realization Henry Louis Gates Jr. lays out in the foreword: "We are not a monolith, but we are a community. And the members of a