Teaching Students About the Richness of Black Language Traditions

During Black History Month (BHM), many teachers seek opportunities to explore the history, contributions, and culture of Black Americans and others in the African diaspora. When creating learning experiences this month and beyond, it is essential to remember that Black history is also Black literacy, which is not always aligned with the traditional literacies centered in schools.

Studying Black history can provide space to legitimize and center alternative and historical literacy practices in classrooms, while also continuing to develop students’ academic skills and knowledge. In this article, I first define multiliteracy and its relevance in Black history and culture, then present three strategies for planning and facilitating Black History Month programming.

Multiliteracy

Multiliteracy is a framework that suggests that there are many modalities that allow for representation and documentation of lived experiences. Beyond reading and writing, multiliteracy suggests that the ability to create and analyze visual, sonic, oral, dramatic, and multimedia texts is an equally critical part of being a literate student.

So, while anti-literacy laws and violence historically barred access to traditional literacy, Black America engaged in multiliteracy practices. Celebrating Black people and communities also means celebrating the ways they have written themselves and their history into existence through the creation of music, visual arts, film, oral traditions, and community-building. Exploring these modes of Black expression and the people who work to study, research, and preserve them is a valuable endeavor for educators in classrooms. 

3 Ways to Celebrate Multiliteracy

1. Don’t just acknowledge linguistic diversity—teach the origins and richness of language in the United States. Language is a living thing, morphing with movement, conflict, interaction, and culture. In my English courses, therefore, I give explicit instruction on the basics of language—helping students understand phonetics, morphology, and syntax. Using a dialect that my students in Kentucky are familiar with, Appalachian English, students study the patterns and systems. They are able to see intricacies in a dialect that is often demeaned in schools, the workplace, and popular media. 

In creating this base, I’m then able to support students in studying the oral language of Black Americans. Students understand the value in studying African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Gullah Geechee, recognizing them as unique variations of language, not “broken” or “uneducated” English. They are also more prepared to engage authors who use and integrate AAVE within their work, such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, and Frederick Douglass, drawing connections between the spoken and written word.

2. Engage people and texts that seek to preserve the unique literacy of Black Americans. While many teachers use famous speeches and poems during Black History Month, it is also valuable to look for less common texts. Within my English classroom, I turn to authors and researchers like Zora Neale Hurston, who sought to document the stories and language of Black people through anthropological texts.

In using her short stories and collections of folklore such as Mules and Men, students have access to language, music, and oral traditions of Black people in the South, providing a Black perspective on Black culture. Students also access a model of community-based teaching and learning, centering Hurston’s own town of Eatonville, Florida, and the people who live there, emphasizing the value in documenting daily life.

Similarly, in my Black Music Studies course, I use sampling as a tool to engage ideas of historical preservation. I ask students to consider why their favorite artists, such as Kendrick Lamar, may sample other iconic artists, such as Eazy-E, James Brown, Janet Jackson, Luther Vandross, or the Isley Brothers. Students are able to use a song or artists to look backward, tracing issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, and the intersections therein across time and space. They can see how sampling makes reference to past struggle, joy, history, and movements.

3. Go beyond heroes and dig deeper. As a student and now a teacher, I have experienced firsthand how BHM often overly relies on and emphasizes well-known figures. Many students become very familiar with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman, and often a very particular version of their lives. But teachers should also seek opportunities to help students learn about other pioneers and icons in Black history, especially those in fields and spaces beyond the Civil Rights Movement and enslavement. 

I have worked to help students have a broader, more nuanced understanding of Black history and culture through lessons focused on lesser-taught but influential figures in a variety of fields. Take Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, one of the most successful record companies of all time. Born in Detroit to parents who migrated from Georgia, he built a Black-owned and -operated enterprise in a booming manufacturing city. Gordy’s story offers opportunities to engage the music of Motown, introduce concepts like the Great Migration, and even explore sound recording and technology.

A favorite for my seniors is learning about Augusta Savage, a sculptor and artist whose work reflected the music during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. Studying her work Lift Every Voice and Sing (also known as The Harp), for example, which was featured at the World’s Fair in 1939, can facilitate the study of James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” later set to music and known as “The Black National Anthem.”

There are also critical conversations to be had in both instances on why these folks are not commonly taught. Students can recognize that there is a gap in their knowledge, and, most often, they want to figure out why.

The Takeaway

Studying Black history is an opportunity to represent the myriad ways in which Black Americans have developed literacy traditions. This means acknowledging the barriers they faced, but also centering and celebrating the culture they created in spite of violence, discrimination, and segregation. As we learn during Black History Month and beyond, educators need to consider the representations of knowledge and culture centered in their curriculum and whether they legitimize the experiences of those they seek to teach.