We learned all the dates and names. We even learned about things like context and perspective. I left high school knowing who Nat Turner, W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes were. I recall experiencing a version of the famed blue-eyed-brown-eyed segregation exercise in elementary school. Though I think we were divided by shoe color or some other arbitrary thing. We memorized Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous speech. I think this is where we all missed the point. By “we” I mean all the White people.
The one thing my class was missing was Black people. In fact, my whole school, city and state lacked them. This happenstance of geography and time is not unique in this respect but common in America. What I’m not sure was common was how we thought we cared about things like equality. We were taught it in school and church. We, again that would be all of us, were Mormon.
