The night before Juneteenth, I asked my daughter to write a report on Juneteenth the next day and to draw a picture of the Juneteenth flag for us. She’s a teenager, so do you think she even woke up at the time we had told her to wake up? No!!! She also has been struggling with disrespect towards us and disregard for us. We told her we’re not being mean or out of touch; we’re just trying to prepare her for the real world as a woman of color. The evening of Juneteenth, we asked if she had done her research, report, and drawing. Of course, the answer was, “No.” We asked if she could even tell us anything about Juneteenth, to which she replied:
“They didn’t teach us about Juneteenth in school.”
It’s not the school’s job to teach her about her heritage and to take pride in her ancestry. That’s our job, and that’s exactly why we had asked her to take time out of the day to learn more and find that pride through her research. She did do the report, and she did learn a lot.
We decided to carry on this type of research for her whole summer. I came up with prompts and a list of people of color from different cultures and all across history to modern day. She was able to choose three names to add to the list herself. Each day this summer, we have her pick anywhere from 1-3 names to check off the list and do her reports on.
List of Famous People of Color Over History to Research this Summer:
Write a 1-2-page report on each –
- When were they born?
- When did they die (if not still alive)?
- Where did they grow up?
- Did they live anywhere else?
- Look up three cool facts about where they lived or grew up.
- What were their biggest accomplishments? Why do people remember them?
- What was something they struggled with or that was really hard about their life?
- What’s one thing you could do in your life that you learned from theirs?
- Draw a picture that goes along with something you learned.
List of people to choose from (any order you want) –
- Venus and Serena Williams
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Mariah Carey
- Beyonce
- Tiger Woods
- Frederick Douglass
- E. B. Du Bois
- Shirley Chisolm
- Booker T. Washington
- Bessie Coleman
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Harriet Tubman
- Sojourner Truth
- Rosa Parks
- Phillis Wheatley
- Ida B. Wells
- Langston Hughes
- John Lewis
- Toni Morrison
- Zora Neale Hurston
- Muhammad Ali
- Madam C. J. Walker
- Jesse Owens
- Thurgood Marshall
- Maya Angelou
- Malcolm X
- George Washington Carver
- Ella Baker
- Jackie Robinson
- Gwendolyn Brooks
- Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander
- Oprah Winfrey
- Barack Obama
- Claudette Colvin
- Robert Sengstacke Abbott
- Johnson H. Johnson
- Dorothy Height
- Don Cornelius
- Alice Coachman
- Maria P. Williams
- Ethel Waters
- Bayard Rustin
- Ruby Bridges
- Gordon Parks
- Miles Davis
- Bob Marley
- Annie Turnbo Malone
- Alvin Ailey
- Mae Jemison
- Sister Rosetta Tharpe
- Michael Jordan
- Patricia Bath
- Ethel L. Payne
- Fritz Pollard
- Henrietta Lacks
- Wally Amos
- Rebecca Lee Crumpler
- Marsha P. Johnson
- Diego Rivera
- C. Gorman
- Utamaro
- Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Robert S. Duncanson
- Abanindranath Tagore
- Amrita Sher-Gil
- Tarsila do Amaral
- Wen Zhengming
- Kamal ud-Din Behzad
- Stevie Wonder
- NLE Choppa
- Drake
- Jhene’ Akio
What names would you (or your kid/teen) add to this list?
