South is celebrating February’s Black History Month through various activities across clubs and classrooms. Today, Black History Month at South is mostly recognized through student-led organizations like the Black Student Union (BSU)..
The origins of Black History Month date back to 1926 when the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, founded by Carter G. Woodson and Jesse Moorland, created a week. This singular week later evolved into an entire month, dedicated to celebrating the history and culture of African Americans
Morgan Duff ´26, the president of the BSU, says that the club’s main focus is making African American students feel welcome at South. Duff added that the club is a safe space for the students to come together. According to Niche, South is nearly 90% white.
“With South being a PWI [predominantly white institution], it’s nice for all the African American kids to get together, and especially to talk about stuff that’s not talked about much here,” Duff said.
BSU also provides students with opportunities to share their experiences and thoughts with administrators and staff.
“We have a big luncheon with the Grosse Pointe Black Alumni Association, and they have us go into Clemenson Hall and provide us with pizza and everything,” Duff said. “A lot of teachers and administration come to the luncheon, and we inform them about stuff that’s going on with the black students at South.”
According to Duff, some African American students feel like their problems go unnoticed by teachers and staff at South, so this luncheon is a crucial event for African American students to share their thoughts and experiences with their teachers.
“There are a couple kids in the club who don’t feel welcome at all here, and the BSU is something that helps them,” Duff said. “But there were a couple teachers who were like “yeah we don’t really notice this stuff, but we’ll do more to help.”
In terms of Souths celebration and recognition of Black History Month, Duff says that there is room for improvement.
“I think the school could do more to facilitate events and stuff to bring awareness. We could talk about it more as a school, like put it on the announcements,” Duff said. “My teachers don’t really talk about it now, it’s just kind of like “let’s do our work.”
Peter Loch, current SAT prep class teacher, who primarily teaches history, shared his opinions on South’s celebration of Black History Month.
“It’s like “hey we shouldn’t just be doing this in February,” Lock said. We should be doing this every month and every unit that we teach, we should be shining a light on black history.”
Parravano expressed that South is pushing the celebration of Black History Month into the classrooms, rather than whole school celebrations.
“We’re really pushing it more into the classrooms in terms of celebration,” Parravano said. “Teachers should be doing something once a week that embeds it into their lessons, so that’s kinda the extent of that.”
Although embedding Black History Month into the curriculum is encouraged, it is still optional, and Parravano recognizes that not all teachers are able to incorporate it in their lessons.
“They don’t have to, but we say to try to get that into the curriculum,” Parravano said. “Now in some departments it’s harder than others based on the content, it’s probably a little bit tougher in math, but they certainly can look at some things that have happened in math.”
Despite the difficulty some departments might face when it comes to incorporating Black History in their lessons, Parravano says that she has still noticed most classrooms incorporating it in the past, but hasn´t been able to confirm that classrooms are following through with that this month.
“I would hope that they are following through with that,” Parravano said. “If we’re seeing that it’s not happening, then that’s probably a better job that I would have to do in directing that.”
Loch claims that incorporating black history into the curriculum is especially important here at South.
“I think it’s important that everyone’s story gets told, especially in history, and here at South we want to be making sure that every single member of our community is represented and that their history is taught the same way as everyone else’s,” Loch said.
