Black History Month Day 4: Education Is a Battleground
Black History Fact:
In many Southern states, it was illegal for enslaved people to learn to read. Punishments included beatings, imprisonment, and death.
Ignorance has always been enforced.
Black history makes clear that education threatens oppression because it reveals alternatives. It teaches people to imagine themselves differently—and systems depend on limiting imagination.
Today’s book bans and curriculum restrictions are not new. They are updated versions of the same fear: that truth, once learned, cannot be unlearned.
When we restrict what children are allowed to know, we are shaping what adults will tolerate.
Black history insists that knowledge is power—and power is always contested.
One of the clearest signs of fear is censorship.
When states ban books, restrict curricula, and punish teachers for telling the truth, they are not protecting children. They are protecting power.
Black history shows us that education has always been a battleground. Enslaved people were punished for learning to read because knowledge threatens control. The pattern has not changed—only the language.
Today, we are told that honest history is “too political.” But erasure is political. Silence is political. Selective memory is political.
If children grow up believing inequality is accidental, they will never question the systems that produce it.
Black history insists on context. On causation. On truth.
That is why it is dangerous—to those who benefit from ignorance.
Julie Bolejack, MBA
