- Black history is American history.

But we keep getting left out of it.

- I would say that it's cherry pick, a few here a few there a few, a few this a few that.

My understanding of it when I was younger was black history was my ancestors got brought on a ship.

Boom, this is where you start at in America.

Is that's my existence?

That's it like... - It should be a seamless study with American history that should be taught throughout this nation.

But it's not.

Oh you may say a few words about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King.

But the true history of the African-American principal as far as the contributions, is only on a scale on the periphery.

- That's been kinda emphasized in a month.

- Yeah.

- Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

- I think it really does more harm than good.

It makes people think that, oh, okay here's that black month.

All good.

Now that's over with, we can focus on the rest of what's important.

And it does a disservice to a Robert Smalls, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B Wells.

You know, you have to be able to actually know how, you know, each of those people were part of more than just one movement.

You know, sure, it was the abolitionist movement, but they're also part of women's suffrage.

You know, there were other civil rights movements throughout our time in which African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women, LGBTQ, were all involved and they all contributed to.

So, to really limit that to one month, I think it really, it limits people's exposure to what the truth and American history is.

- From kindergarten until my senior year of high school we were always taught that we were slaves.

I was always reminded of my oppression.

And never taught that I could be more.

And when we did, we got the same people, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and maybe Harriet Tubman and thank God for those people.

But to see, when I see somebody that looks like me in a position of power and authority or in a high position, it gives me hope.

Before Barack Obama, if somebody told me you could be president.

I would say, yeah right.

You never see a black person president of United States of America.

But after I see him in that position, I say maybe it can happen.

Maybe not for me, but maybe it can happen for generations to come.

Maybe it can happen.

So, when we see these systems of oppression and holding people back.

And not allowing people to have certain positions, it does create a mindset for people of hopelessness.

- I feel like to some, it conditions you to feel like you are only as good as the bad parts of your history.

To me, I grew up in a household where I was taught a lot of these things that most kids weren't.

So, I grew up knowing more about the positive and being able to embrace the positive parts of my culture not just hearing about the negative stereotypes and statistics.

But when you do grow up, only hearing about those, I feel like a lot of the times you end up becoming them.

We see that a lot in our black community.

Our sons are told from a very young age, you know you're not gonna be a good father.

You know, you're probably gonna end up on the streets.

You're gonna be selling drugs.

You're gonna end up in prison.

If that's all he grows up hearing, that's all he's going to grow up knowing.

And if we don't transition out of that, we're just going to continue the same cycle.

- Our side of it... (indistinct) And a lot of that reason why is, it will shine a negative light onto the majority of white America.

You won't be the good guy in this scenario.

You won't be the good guy.

And we all know, we all wanna be the good guy.

And so that's why we don't deal with these issues.

That's why we don't educate kids or teachers in school.

Because it doesn't make one particular race look good.

But that's the reality of it.

- I think it goes back to construction of the material.

Many times the authors that construct material are Caucasian.

So that is the perspective that the books are written from.

And other minorities may not be included in the construction of materials.

So that's where it starts.

The people that are constructing materials in their varied perspectives and backgrounds that they do bring to the text.

And so when it, that's beginning to change.

And there are more authors out there that are producing quality material that schools can use now.

So it's, explicit now.

It's, you know, people are being very strategic and looking for materials to address the needs of their students.

And not just to address African-American students.

To put it out there for the student body as a whole.

To provide a more realistic perspective of what America really is.

- So you have to be able to, you know, pull from myriad of resources.

Whether it's law regulated education or reading like a historian.

Or even your own personal stories and testimonies in order to get that student to understand how much of what happened in the past permeates even today and how that affects our future.

- But where does the culture really start?

You know, you go back to the roots of saying that we're from Africa, but then also once you get the roots of that, the self worth and who they were as individuals before they became slaves.

Then the transition of telling the story from slavery, how we got introduced to America.

And then with a value in who we were as slaves.

What our culture, you know what they picked up on, what they learn and then transitioning into history today.

And tell us just a long story, a long history line that hasn't been told, and hasn't been spoken of.

- I feel like there's been so much stripped from us that we might not ever really know.

I don't know what part of Africa my ancestors are from.

I can't trace my last name back to find out where it came from.

I trace, my last name back to a general that owned slaves.

That's as far and deep as my ancestry goes.

- I think you have to really begin with the middle passage.

What the transoceanic slave trade.

To understand how people were treated as property.

You have to really understand that, you know families were torn apart.

And the black mothers would have to be the caretakers of not only their children, but the children of the men and women that were oppressing them, holding them in servitude, enslavement.

I think you have to really get people to understand that you know, the anger, the sadness comes from the fact that, you know churches were burned to the ground, they were bombed.

That people were trying to exercise their right of suffrage were lynched.

That if you looked at someone and they perceived it as being aggressive or if you didn't look up and say, yes sir, yes, ma'am, you could be lynched.

Like you have to understand there were many wrongs that were done and a completely has an effect on us to this day.

- So we went to Alabama and the amount of history that we were able to see and be a part of.

It was very moving, but it really let me see what people had overcome to get to a certain place and knowing where you come from and what you've overcome helps you be able to know where you have the power to go.

Like the sky is the limit.

And I don't think because we don't have an in-depth understanding of black history, a lot of our kids don't see that.

I think the pinnacle of the trip was going to the Lynching Memorial.

It was very emotional.

It was a lot to be there.

They were all across the United States.

So the pillars that were hanging were divided by county.

So you could see how many people had died in that county.

And I was filled with anger, because I see where we are now and where we came from and I don't understand how that breakdown has happened.

How we got to this point where the value of the black life is so, so minimal.

It just made it real.

It made the struggles that we're going up against right now.

It made them real.

- I just think you can't fully grasp why the black community feels the way they do without knowing the history and how the white community has treated the black community throughout the years.

- For me, I think there needs to be a very, intentional acknowledgement on how slavery impacted America and how it made into a first world country.

And how that free labor made it possible for everyone to live in a very democratic and free world.

And that allowed us to gain the capital, to expand our land, to expand our power all around this nation and in this world.

- That I think other things that we need to know about are the witness of moment in time in Oklahoma called Black Wall Street.

Where you had very successful group of blacks.

And there were other communities, but this one is known as Black Wall Street.

In a 12 year time span after emancipation, blacks had their own banks, elaborate churches, airport.

I think we need to know about that 'cause that's something that's never taught about in school.

- When you see big blow ups like Ferguson.

When you see Baltimore,.

When you see Minneapolis in what then rippled across our country, it's frustration.

I've had this debate and argument with several people about rioting and looting and that sort of thing.

And Martin Luther King said a riot is the voice of the unheard.

This country was started by a riot, by looting, by destruction of somebody else's property.

And the irony of that is, the first man killed in that battle for independence in the Boston Massacre, laid that first bloodshed for the revolutionary war was a black man.

It's from where you stand the perspective of who's the hero and who's a revolutionary and who's the thug.

It's understanding both sides and seeing both sides.

You want me to learn your history?

You want me to learn about George Washington?

You want me to learn about Lincoln?

You want me to learn... Then you need to learn about Frederick Douglass.