Learn, Baby, Learn: MLK Defended Self-Determination in Black Education

Jan 16, 2025 7:17:45 PM

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Learn, Baby, Learn: MLK Defended Self-Determination in Black Education
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Every Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we must navigate competing realities: the enduring salience of his words and the ways they are all too often misused, the ways they are stripped of context, distorted, and wielded to undermine those efforts he would champion. 

This time of year, we will again be subjected to the twisting and whitewashing of his words and legacy. His "I Have a Dream" speech will again be deployed as a validator of duplicitous efforts to advance the so-called colorblind social project and eviscerate anti-racist movements. 

But history should leave no doubt about this. Dr. King's legacy and aspirations were no sanitized dreams; they were and are a powerful call to action that demands our ongoing, intentional, and visible commitment to justice and liberation, especially in education.

In 1967, Dr. King delivered a message of self-determination, pride, and purpose to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia. He told them: "Build, baby, build…Organize, baby, organize … Learn, baby, learn." As was the case with so much of what he said, these weren't just slogans or turns of phrase; they were a guide for how Black youth could navigate and transform a world steeped in inequity.

Pointedly, Dr. King urged those students to reject the lies that told them they were inferior. He rejected the idea that Black children should aspire to anything less than their absolute best, urging them to embrace their racial identity and internalize the beauty of who they were. 

He called on them to embrace their Blackness unapologetically. He challenged them to strive for excellence in everything they did and to see education as the foundation for organizing and building their futures.

Yet, every year, his legacy is too often misrepresented. Those who know Dr. King the least misquote him the most, cherry-picking his words to push narratives that uphold white supremacy and ignore the systemic racism he sought to dismantle. 

His daughter, Bernice King, reminds us that her father's fight was not about passive reconciliation but active justice. He called for diversity, equity, and opportunity—particularly for the most marginalized—and urged a sustained effort to play our role in continuously bending the long arc of the moral universe toward justice.

Dr. King understood that mindsets matter, especially in education. In a lesser-known but deeply revealing statement, he said:

"I am for equality. However, I think integration in our public schools is different. In that setting, you are dealing with one of the most important assets of an individual -- the mind. White people view black people as inferior. A large percentage of them have a very low opinion of our race. People with such a low view of the black race cannot be given free rein and put in charge of the intellectual care and development of our boys and girls."

Those words feel painfully relevant today as we face an onslaught of attacks on equity and inclusion in schools. At the Center for Black Educator Development, we believe helping Black students develop a positive racial identity doesn't undermine other children. It creates a sense of belongingness and purpose and is the foundation for accelerated achievement, all while not negatively affecting other learners. 

Anti-DEI forces, pitting Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" words against campaigns for equity, anti-poverty, and anti-racist movements, aim to strip education of the very frameworks that empower marginalized students. But Dr. King knew better. He saw education as a tool of liberation and understood that those who see Black children as "less than" cannot be trusted to nurture their brilliance.

What Does Dr. King's Blueprint Demand of Us Today? 

As educators and advocates, our work is not to hand today's students a pre-drawn map from the past but to help them design their own blueprints. Dr. King believed in the transformative power of young people. Our job is to equip them with the tools, knowledge, accurate history, and confidence to lead.

His legacy demands that we prioritize the needs of the most marginalized students, embrace and uplift Black identity, and ensure that every child has the tools to build, organize, and learn. His legacy calls us to reject the false promises of those who loudly claim to serve justice while dismantling it in practice.

Dr. King's message to the students of Barratt Junior High was clear: Education is not just a path to individual success but a collective act of resistance and liberation. The most powerful way to honor Dr. King is to live his legacy. We do that by rejecting the distortion of his vision and committing ourselves to empowering the youth he believed in so fiercely. 

Their futures depend on it, and so does ours.

Sharif El-Mekki

Sharif El-Mekki is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development. The Center exists to ensure there will be equity in the recruiting, training, hiring, and retention of quality educators that reflect the cultural backgrounds and share common socio-political interests of the students they serve. The Center is developing a nationally relevant model to measurably increase teacher diversity and support Black educators through four pillars: Professional learning, Pipeline, Policies and Pedagogy. So far, the Center has developed ongoing and direct professional learning and coaching opportunities for Black teachers and other educators serving students of color. The Center also carries forth the freedom or liberation school legacy by hosting a Freedom School that incorporates research-based curricula and exposes high school and college students to the teaching profession to help fuel a pipeline of Black educators. Prior to founding the Center, El-Mekki served as a nationally recognized principal and U.S. Department of Education Principal Ambassador Fellow. El-Mekki’s school, Mastery Charter Shoemaker, was recognized by President Obama and Oprah Winfrey, and was awarded the prestigious EPIC award for three consecutive years as being amongst the top three schools in the country for accelerating students’ achievement levels. The Shoemaker Campus was also recognized as one of the top ten middle school and top ten high schools in the state of Pennsylvania for accelerating the achievement levels of African-American students. Over the years, El-Mekki has served as a part of the U.S. delegation to multiple international conferences on education. He is also the founder of the Fellowship: Black Male Educators for Social Justice, an organization dedicated to recruiting, retaining, and developing Black male teachers. El-Mekki blogs on Philly's 7th Ward, is a member of the 8 Black Hands podcast, and serves on several boards and committees focused on educational and racial justice.

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