In yet another brazen attack on Black people and Black history, the current administration removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of fee-free holidays at the 116 national parks, while adding Trump’s June 14 birthday. This symbolic erasure is not accidental and is part of a broader goal to undermine Black dignity, rewrite national memory, and re-center whiteness. It is yet another reminder that in the U.S., laws and policies are still too often crafted to preserve White comfort rather than promote racial justice.
Growing up in the South, “Colored” and “White” signs were plastered everywhere–restrooms, drinking fountains, waiting rooms, bus and train stations and cars, restaurants, and theaters. Black people were expected to move aside on sidewalks to let White people pass. We sat in seats at the back of the bus so that White people could enjoy the front. And White folks were content. Black people, not so much. Indeed, we were outraged! These indignities were codified into laws and the very architecture of daily life, a constant reminder that White comfort mattered, and Black discomfort did not.
Six decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed such segregation, too many White people seem nostalgic for those days–the good old days for them and the bad old days for us. In 2025, another iteration of that same demeaning dynamic is unfolding. Across the nation, laws and policies now make it effectively illegal for White children to feel “uncomfortable” or “guilty” while learning history. The administration has weakened the Department of Education, gutted civil rights enforcement, and decimated decades of progress. All but six states have introduced legislation designed to protect White children’s comfort. As Wekesa Modzimoyo observed, Black children are again being told to step aside so White children can feel safe.
And where are our White liberal “friends” through all of this? The so-called allies are silent because their children are protected. So, to hell with other people’s children–nod to Lisa Delpit’s, Other People’s Children. Nearly a century ago, Dr. Carter G. Woodson warned: “It is strange that the friends of truth and the promoters of freedom have not risen up against the present propaganda in the schools and crushed it. This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.”
Whether from apathy or convenience–both equally harmful–White liberals hide behind the claim that they must “follow the law.” Yet when the Supreme Court mandated desegregation in Brown v. Board (1954), many White communities refused, some taking until 1970 to comply. Clearly, White people follow laws only when they want to. Black people, however, have always understood that many laws are marinated in anti-Blackness. Slavery was legal. So was banning the teaching of reading and writing to African descendant people who were enslaved. And we have always known that consequences for breaking laws are never equal.
When curricula erase or sanitize Black history, a devastating message is sent– that Black children’s truths–and their very lives–matter less than White children’s comfort. When policies protect White children’s feelings instead of confronting systemic injustice, Black educators and communities will not quietly move aside.
Alice Walker once emphasized, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” We do have power. Black people have resisted anti-Black racism in small and large ways since first contact with Europeans—through enslavement, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. We will continue to resist. No law will keep us from teaching and learning our history–just as our ancestors refused to remain enslaved or illiterate. Banning Black history and books is an attempt to erase our legacy of resistance, agency, and joy.
Dr. Woodson reminded us that a people’s history must begin with themselves. To lawmakers who prioritize White discomfort over Black dignity, we demand laws that affirm Black children’s humanity through truthful education. Educators, parents, and community members must show up in the offices of superintendents, lawmakers, and school boards and insist that anti-Black bills, laws, and provisos be dismantled.
The harm to Black children is happening now in real time. Therefore, Black communities must teach our own children through freedom schools, after-school programs, and intergenerational learning spaces. We must mobilize Black places of worship, Divine Nine chapters, HBCUs, and social and political organizations to act collectively. Silence and inaction are not options.
We will not let Black children be forced to defer to White children’s feelings. We will not move to the back of the bus, step aside on the sidewalk, or have our history distorted or omitted in classrooms. We shall not be moved.