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Learning Black American History In The 6th Grade Was Overwhelming

Gerald Washington
4 min readJan 15, 2022
Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

So today is Dr.Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday. He would be 93 now if he was allowed to live to become an older man. While he only had 39 years of life on this earth from 1929 to 1968, the impact he had on the world remains alive in 2022 & will stay that way for many years to come.

Before 6th grade, I only had a little knowledge of Dr. King & black American history in general from movies that I had seen based on black American life in the past and social studies books.

There was a good movie I remember seeing in elementary that was about Dr. King’s early life; before he became the icon that he is now.

The final scene of that movie was him giving a moving speech with his family watching him. After he finishes his speech, he gets this great applause from the audience, especially from his parents. The look of proudness & pride on their faces towards their son was very moving to me as a kid.

When 6th grade came around, little did I know of the hurricane that would hit me when I really started to learn about black American history and American history overall?

In the social studies class that I was in, we had a do a research project on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At first, I saw the assignment as something I needed to do to keep having a…

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Gerald Washington
Gerald Washington

Written by Gerald Washington

Just a curious writer/blogger trying to navigate a complex world. Sharing my words helps a lot with that.

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