When studying and celebrating Black history, we often focus on learning about individual people. Yet, in most cases, when history is made, the critical work is done by groups who are organized. — To illustrate this point, let’s take a close look at the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 for Oliver L. Brown, et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS), et al. case, which ended legal racial segregation in public schools. …

This weekend we celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. (Thank goodness because, even though the year just started, I’m already ready for a holiday.) Of course I am deeply grateful for Dr. King’s contributions as a visionary, narrator, and leader of social change in this country. …

Artifacts and symbols of our democracy may reside in D.C., but the struggle for America to live up to its ideals is found in the Heart of Dixie. Each year, thousands of American eighth grade students from across the nation take a class trip to Washington, D.C. The impact of those trips can be life changing, especially as young people bond with classmates and prepare to chart different paths toward high school and adulthood.

From slave patrols, to Selma, to Ferguson, to Minneapolis, policing has always been a tool to uphold white supremacy and exercise social control over poor and non-White people. It is time to invest in social infrastructure including public schools, libraries, trauma care, mental health service, and clinics while we #DefundPolice. I worked with Jessica Bratt to pull together this Policing Doesn’t Protect Us Padlet of resources for different learning styles to help explain why.

I am doing a lot of things this week as I process the murders of black people at the hands of police and the range of societal reactions to it. I am grieving. I am praying for continued strength for the families and communities of those murdered. And by strength…