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As an English teacher in 2016, I spent a summer in the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society learning about abolition and women’s suffrage efforts. I held original bills of sale of young Black girls from the 1840s in my hands, and I left inspired to teach high school juniors about the legacy of enslavement.
Another summer, I looked at 160-year-old whip indentations on the sides of live oak trees in Savannah, Georgia, as I learned how the Gullah/Geechee people have protected their African linguistic, culinary and spiritual traditions since the time of enslavement, due to their relative isolation in the Sea Islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. NEH summer teacher institutes helped me explore how Black people have fought to carve a future for themselves…