A keynote presentation by Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries of The Ohio State University, with a panel conversation.
Friday, June 14, 2024 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: Hannaford Hall, University of Southern Maine
Across the United States, communities are fighting over whether and how to teach Black and Indigenous studies in public schools. This week, leading civil rights historian Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries is coming to Maine to present Lessons in Hard History, a keynote talk addressing America’s preference for nostalgia over truth and the impact on our youth of the nation’s woefully inadequate commitment to teaching about slavery and its legacies. A panel discussion following the keynote will feature leading voices in the struggle to integrate Wabanaki and African American studies into the K-12 curriculum in Maine.
Here in Maine, Wabanaki studies have been required curriculum for 23 years, but a 2022 report found that “despite some successes, school districts have failed to consistently and appropriately include” it in their curriculum. The same is true of African American studies, which became a required part of the learning standards in 2021. This legislative session, a bill to give teachers and schools the resources they need to effectively integrate these areas of study failed to make it to the Governor’s desk. The results of this November’s elections—from local school board races to federal elections—could further hinder the development of Wabanaki and African American Studies in this state.
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, cohost of the Teaching Hard History podcast, will join Maine leaders, including Speaker of the House Rachel Talbot Ross, to inspire us to rise to this moment and organize in our communities to move our school districts forward in teaching these histories, not allow them to be further buried.
KEYNOTE
America is a product of its past, the sum of four centuries of triumphs and tragedies. But Americans find it difficult, impossible even, to talk openly and honestly about historical events that revolve around race, such as slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration. In this keynote address, Dr. Jeffries will explore America’s distaste for Hard History and preference for nostalgia. He will also highlight critical lessons about racism and democracy that can be learned from confronting Hard History directly.
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries is the College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University, where he teaches courses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement.
Dr. Jeffries has chronicled this history in the ten-episode Audible Originals series “Great Figures of the Civil Rights Movement,” and has told the remarkable story of the original Black Panther Party in Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, praised as “the book historians of the Black freedom movement have been waiting for.” Dr. Jeffries has collaborated on several major public history projects, including serving as the lead scholar and primary scriptwriter for the $27 million redesign of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. His commitment to teaching what he calls “Hard History” led Dr. Jeffries to edit Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement, a collection of essays by leading civil rights scholars and teachers that explores how to teach civil rights history accurately and effectively, and to host the podcast “Teaching Hard History,” a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice division. He also helps school districts develop anti-racism programming and culturally responsive curricular content centered on social studies by conducting professional development workshops for teachers and administrators.
PANEL Discussion
A panel event following the keynote will feature Speaker of the House Rachel Talbot Ross, Policy Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine Meagan Sway, Portland Public School's Wabanaki and Africana Studies Lead Fiona Hopper, and Department of Education Wabanaki Studies Specialist Brianne Lolar. It will be moderated by Libby Bischof.
Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross
Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross is a ninth-generation Mainer who has dedicated her career to public service and social justice. She is the first black woman to serve as Speaker of the Maine House.
In addition to serving as the City of Portland’s Director of Equal Opportunity and Multicultural Affairs for more than two decades, she led the NAACP in Maine and founded several nonprofit organizations, including Maine Black Community Development, Maine Freedom Trails and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellows. She chaired the Maine State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as well as the African American Collection of Maine, housed at the University of Southern Maine.
Speaker Talbot Ross is currently serving her fourth term in the Maine House, representing the Portland neighborhoods of Parkside, Bayside, East Bayside, Oakdale and the University of Southern Maine campus. As a lawmaker, Speaker Talbot Ross has worked extensively on justice reform and has shaped critical conversations about equity for all Mainers. She sponsored successful legislation to create Maine’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous and Tribal Populations (which she now co-chairs), and also secured passage of landmark bills to include racial impact analysis in the legislative process and expand tribal legal authority over domestic violence against Native Americans. She has successfully sponsored legislation to forward the teaching of African American Studies in Maine schools.
Brianne Lolar
Brianne Lolar is a Panawahpskek citizen and Wabanaki Studies Specialist with the Maine Department of Education. Brianne joined the MOOSE project in 2022 as a Team Leader for the Wabanaki Studies team. She previously worked at Old Town Elementary school in a number of different roles. She graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor's in Social Work, Master of Arts in Teaching in Elementary Education, and Master's in Literacy. Brianne is the Wabanaki Studies Specialist supporting the collaborative efforts between the Wabanaki nations, Indigenous and non- Indigenous educators, districts, and other organizations supporting educators in their work to integrate Wabanaki studies into existing PK-12 curricula.
Meagan Sway
Meagan Sway is the Policy Director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. She leads the ACLU of Maine’s legislative efforts in Augusta, working closely with elected officials, coalition partners, and community leaders. Meagan has successfully lobbied against efforts to censor books and curricula and for laws that require Maine schools to teach hard history. She was also heavily involved in the 2022 report Wabanaki Studies Law: 21 Years After Implementation, a joint effort between the Abbe Museum, ACLU of Maine, Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission and Wabanaki Alliance examining how the landmark 2001 law has not been effectively implemented. Meagan is a lawyer by training, and represented vulnerable people vindicating their rights for a decade before joining the ACLU of Maine in 2016.
Fiona Hopper
Fiona Hopper is the Social Studies Teacher Leader and Wabanaki and Africana Studies Coordinator for Portland Public Schools. She has served in public education since 2005. Her work unpacking systemic racism and its impact on education helped lead to the development of the Wabanaki Studies curriculum, pursued in collaboration with advisors from Indigenous communities in the place now called Maine. Fiona is committed to ensuring that social studies at PPS is connected to and informed by district goals around Equity outlined in the Portland Promise.
Libby Bischof
Libby Bischof is Executive Director, Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education and a Professor of History at the University of Southern Maine. She explores American society through the lens of history — and the lens of a camera. A nineteenth-century American cultural historian, Professor Bischof specializes in the history of photography, particularly in Maine. She is the co-author of the 2015 book Maine Photography: A History, 1840-2015. Her other research interests include Maine history, modernism, how friendship informs cultural production and nineteenth-century New England women writers. In addition to her teaching and research interests, Professor Bischof enjoys working with local K-12 teachers and students.
A WHERE2024 event, presented by Atlantic Black Box in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine, Maine Black Community Development, The Third Place, and Portland Public Schools.