PEN America talked to several leading educators about the state of teaching about Black History, including Dr. Karlos Hill and Dr. Quiennise Miller. Some of what they had to say is challenging.
“Being a teacher in 2025 is probably one of the hardest things that anyone can do,” said Dr. Quiennise Miller, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Houston at Clear Lake. She said teachers today not only have to meet moving targets set by states and the federal government, but also must constantly raise their skills to meet the new generation of kids, who have grown up with disruptors like COVID-19 and social media.
Adding to this is the federal government’s intentions to dismantle the Department of Education—which regulates pedagogical frameworks, along with managing grants and initiatives that make school systems more accessible and equitable—and threats of withholding federal funding from schools that don’t comply with orders that direct what can and cannot be taught.
Florida was the first to ban an AP course in African-American history from the state in 2023. But that was neither the beginning nor the end of the trend.
“Since 2021, at least 21 states—including Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi and even New Hampshire—have passed bills and policies to limit discussions of race in public school classrooms,” said Amy Reid, senior manager for PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program. “Though a couple have been met with successful legal challenges, K-12 public school educators across the country face serious limitations when teaching issues central to the understanding of U.S. history and our present moment.”
But they also show some reason for hope.
“We seem to be stuck in terms of our state’s leadership in trying to limit history, the discussion of certain histories, to limit curricula,” said Dr. Hill. “Anything that is seemingly Critical Race Theory, anything that references diversity, equity, and inclusion, by virtue of our state, has been banned.”
Dr. Hill has seen first-hand the positive outcome of changing narratives around historical topics through education and programming. He has also seen how quickly it can be undone.
Founding the Tulsa Race Massacre Oklahoma Teacher’s Institute, Dr. Hill has spent decades researching, teaching, and designing curriculum around the Tulsa Race Massacre—a 1921 incident where mobs of white residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, ransacked houses and looted businesses of Black residents in the Greenwood district of the city over two days, with 39 identified deaths. To empower people to confront the difficult and divisive history around the massacre—which had long been branded a race riot—his approach centers the conversation around reconciliation, supported by oral histories and narratives of survivors and their descendants.
“Our goal was to try to figure out how to teach the race massacre in ways that could create healing and repair and reconciliation versus division, as we have been accused of doing,” he said. “I’m trying to transition from thinking about history as something that we think about, talk about, or reflect about, to something that we utilize to help us lead better lives.”