To say that education is under attack in the age of President Trump is both an understatement and redundant. That goes doubly so for Black education, which has never truly seen a break in the assault against it and, in recent years, has only seen those attacks increase.
Whether that is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rejecting the country’s first AP African American Studies course, the federal government’s insistence on removing vital exhibits from the Smithsonian’s African American History museum, or the Department of Defense Education Activity banning books that explore and celebrate Black life and achievements, none of this is surprising because we have been here before.
A Familiar Assault on Black Education
The truth is, since our arrival on these shores, our education has been deemed illegal longer than it has been deemed acceptable, which means in order to secure our humanity and a foothold into the future, we had to create our own avenues to read, write, and count.
Whether we secreted books away from our captors to learn in the dark or found empathetic allies who recognized our humanity and thus our equal need to educate our minds, we always found a way because we learned early that the best way to not only survive but thrive in this country was to get as much education as we could — by any means necessary.
We Have Always Built Our Own Schools
One such method began in 1911, as most Black folks were suffering from the post-Reconstruction backlash that saw the rise of Jim Crow laws, which did their best to put us back in bondage, even if only mentally. That year, Booker T. Washington, already a luminary in Black education as the president of Tuskegee University, asked Julius Rosenwald to join his school’s board of directors.
Rosenwald, a philanthropist and part owner of Sears, Roebuck & Co., was genuinely concerned about the state of Black education—especially in the South, which used legal segregation and starved Black institutions of cash to stunt any gains we made after emancipation.
We funded these schools with our own money.
To that end, the two created a system of over 5,000 public schools — deemed Rosenwald Schools — to serve Black southerners who were being purposefully disenfranchised. Though Washington would die soon after the schools launched, he had also employed George Washington Carver to design landscapes for the schools and Robert Taylor, the first Black licensed architect, to plan the schools.
These schools were not only for us, but we built them — every school, shop, and teacher house. And while the schools received millions from those who recognized our struggle, we funded these schools with our own money to the tune of nearly $5 million.
I highlight that to underline that this was not some charity given to us; our education was OUR priority, and if this country thought that we would not use the same back-breaking industry they exploited for our OWN needs, they were about to find out.
Sadly, the Rosenwald Schools all but faded away as Black folks moved out of rural areas during the Great Migration. But they stand as a hallmark of our tenacity and drive to achieve our greatest potential through education. We knew then that any solution had to be homegrown, for us and by us.
Education Rooted in Community
That spirit lives on now in one of my favorite programs here at the AFT. Our Red Hawks Rising Teaching Academy is considered a Grow Your Own program, a program that recognizes how crucial it is for education to always remain rooted in the communities that need it most. Created to address teacher shortages, Grow Your Own programs incentivize aspiring teachers to return to and lead the communities they hail from.
Developed at East Side High School and University High School by the Newark Board of Education, in partnership with Montclair State University, the Newark Teachers Union and the AFT, this program sees high school students taking classes at MSU in their quest to become the next generation of educators.
Black history is not just a collection of struggles and pain.
When I see those students return to their home schools and communities, I see reflections of Washington, Rosenwald, Carver, and Taylor. These programs, like the Rosenwald Schools, recognize our collective self-worth and use it to create a communal victory, not just propel us individually into the future. It is the acknowledgment that true empowerment is a team effort that requires you holding hands not only with those who have made it, but with those who are trying to make it.
In 2026, let us remember and remind others that Black history is not just a collection of struggles and pain, but a chronicling of our strength and a timeline of victories that we have passed on to each generation like a torch, leading us up into the light.
Fedrick C. Ingram is the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, serving 1.7 million members, including pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; school and college support staff; higher education faculty; federal, state and local government employees; and nurses and other healthcare professionals. Ingram is the immediate past president of the 140,000-member Florida Education Association. He also has served as an elected vice president of the AFT’s executive council.