Full Text of the Excerpt

ELIZABETH GRITTER:

Right. Did you, when you went to school growing up, did you get African American history in your classes?

TAWANA BELINDA WILSON-ALLEN:

You mean at the segregated schools.

ELIZABETH GRITTER:

Yeah, I'm sure not in the white place.

TAWANA BELINDA WILSON-ALLEN:

To some degree, not in the white schools, but to some degree. To some degree. I mean I really feel that our teachers, well, they had to--. It was sort of makeshift kind of resources that they had to put together to teach the classes because we didn't have the best of textbooks. They were handed down, and then of course they didn't have the whole story in them. Either the American Indian side or from the African American contributions or the Hispanic contributions that helped, how we all had roles in building this country. So but yeah, I wouldn't have taken anything for my teachers because they did try to fill in the gaps to a degree, and that's what I missed when I went to the integrated schools.

ELIZABETH GRITTER:

Part of our project too is looking at school desegregation issues. So--

TAWANA BELINDA WILSON-ALLEN:

So in a sense even though we didn't have everything, I felt like I was getting a fuller education when I was at the black school.

ELIZABETH GRITTER:

Because in part because you were able to get this perspective on history. So yeah.

TAWANA BELINDA WILSON-ALLEN:

So teachers went beyond their call too. They didn't just teach the subject matter required for that year, I mean, what the guidelines required for that year. They didn't just teach that. They went outside of that to bring in relevant topics [that?] we went through [as a?] people.