DANVILLE — Liberty Elementary School Principal Eliza Brooks said she didn’t realize how little she knew about black history until she was in college.

Brooks said she was sitting in a black music appreciation class at Illinois State University when the instructor asked students to name some notable black figures in history.

Of course, names such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were offered up, but other names also sprung forth.

“I was surrounded by students from Chicago who knew a lot about black history, and it was embarrassing, but I knew nothing about my own people,” she said.

“I knew about the struggle from the 1960s, but I didn’t know anything before that,” she said. “Sometimes we think black history began with the civil rights movement, but it started way before then.

“I grew up in Danville, but somewhere in our culture we stopped teaching each other.

 “History wasn’t being passed down and stories about how this nation came to be were being lost,” she said. “It was a huge awakening for me.”

From then on, Brooks vowed to incorporate lessons about black history into her classroom teachings.

“When I was a teacher, I did a lot with it,” she said.

The best teachers of history, Brooks believes, are grandparents and other elders in the community.

Brooks remembers listening to family stories — admittedly embellished at times — about how her grandmother met her grandfather for what seemed like a million times when she was a child.

But it wasn’t until she was older that she started asking questions, like why her grandmother in Arkansas insisted on preparing large meals early in the day.

When Brooks finally asked her grandmother why she did that every time they visited her in Arkansas, her grandmother told her it was a custom left over from when slaves ate large breakfasts because they most likely wouldn’t get to eat lunch if they were working in the cotton fields.

“When I heard that story, it gave me a deeper appreciation of where I came from,” she said.

Brooks said these are the stories children need to hear today.

“Kids live in such a ‘now’ world, they don’t sit and listen to stories,” she said.

“But we need to record those histories and write them down,” Brooks said. “It’s a lost art of passing down knowledge.

“We need to start that conversation. We shouldn’t wait for someone else to tell our history.”

Not just February

Tracy Cherry, principal of District 118’s alternative school, said she tries to make sure her teachers are teaching about and reflecting on black history throughout the year, not just during the month of February.

Cherry said there are many ways to incorporate black history lessons in the classroom.

Recently, she visited an alternative classroom in which students were researching black inventors on the computer.

Cherry’s own son, Dennis, was interested in the civil rights movement when he was younger, so she nurtured that fascination with an age-appropriate, educational cartoon about Martin Luther King Jr. titled “Our Friend, Martin.”

One of Cherry’s favorite ways for students to experience black history is with a trip to Memphis.

Before becoming a principal, Cherry was a physical education and health teacher and an assistant principal at North Ridge Middle School. Alice Payne, who was the North Ridge principal at the time, started an annual trip to Memphis for eighth-graders.

The trip offered eighth-graders an opportunity to learn about black history firsthand at notable Memphis landmarks such as the Alex Haley House Museum and Interpretive Center and the National Civil Rights Museum.

“We did it because we wanted the kids to understand the history of the South,” Cherry said.

“The kids were well behaved,” she recalled. “It was an educational trip, but it also taught them values like how they should act and how they should treat each other.

“Those trips also were important because it showed how people live in Memphis, Alabama and Mississippi,” Cherry added. “A lot of kids go away to college and they should be able to acclimate to different cultures.

“Once we get our school, I would like to offer that trip again,” she said, referring to the alternative school occupying the former Holy Family School later this year.

Part of nation’s story

Jeremie Smith, who teaches U.S. history, geography and U.S. government at Danville High School, said he will take time this month to teach his students about the great migration and the Harlem Renaissance.

The great migration, Smith said, took place “after World War I when African-Americans left the agricultural lands of the South by the millions to the industrialized north.”

Smith also teaches about the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement of black music and literature that spanned the 1920s and 1930s.

He said he likes to link today’s popular culture to history so students can better relate to it.

“Hip-hop comes out of jazz and R&B and has links to Langston Hughes,” Smith explained.

“To understand the American experience, you have to include Langston Hughes and others,” he said. “Plus, listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Armstrong is fun.”

Smith, however, said he doesn’t teach black history as a specific, separate subject. To him, it is part of the American experience.

“Black history has been marginalized,” he said. “But good high school U.S. history teachers teach the experience of all Americans.

“I teach black history year-round as a theme in American history, but Black History Month serves as a good reminder for some that this is a part of our history, too,” he said.

Smith said he believes “Black History Month is not as important anymore because it’s served its purpose and because black history has been integrated with the rest of American history.

“There is no one history with a capital H,” he said. “History is about the human experience.

“African-Americans play and have played an important role in America, and I reinforce that with my students on a daily basis,” Smith added.

Brooks, too, said she would like to see a time when there doesn’t have to be a designated black history month to make sure historical figures and role models — of all races and ethnicities — are being taught in classrooms.

“As we evolve as a country, that should be a part of history automatically, so we don’t have to have a black history month or a Latin history month,” she said.

“It should just be a part of our history and the people who built this country,” she added.

In the meantime, Brooks believes more should be taught during Black History Month.

“When you ask a student to name some black role models, they can only name Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks,” she said.

“We need to go beyond that,” Brooks said. “We have many role models in history that they should be aware of.”