‘Academic bomb in our community’: Black leaders decry Florida’s African American history standards

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Black elected officials, religious leaders, educators and community members railed against Florida’s controversial new standards for teaching African American history Thursday evening at a town hall in Miami that was supposed to feature the DeSantis administration’s top education official.

Instead, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. chose not to attend the event after initially agreeing to appear, an absence that became a focal point for critics of Florida’s standards that drew national attention over requiring educators to instruct students that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The panel, including state Sens. Shevrin “Shev” Jones (D-Miami Gardens) and Rosalind Osgood (D-Tamarac), spent more than two hours addressing Florida’s Black history standards and other education issues among 200 or so people, with particularly harsh words for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and his education department.

“Ron DeSantis knew that this was going on, Manny Diaz knew that this was going on,” Fedrick Ingram, secretary-treasurer with the American Federation of Teachers and a former state union leader, said at the event, going as far to call Diaz a “coward” for avoiding the meeting.

“They know how important this is to the Black community, they know that they have thrown an academic bomb in our community — and they knew that they should have been here to face you.”

Florida’s Black history standards, approved by the state Board of Education last month, drew wide condemnation and fed into the county’s politically polarized fight over how and what to teach children.

State education officials tout the standards for teaching the “good, the bad and the ugly” about American history and slavery, yet the standards were met with fierce criticism from Florida’s largest teachers union and other groups, attention that quickly gained momentum nationally, spreading to some Black conservatives who also opposed.

It also sparked a fight between Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, and the DeSantis administration, which attacked the Black GOP congressman for disagreeing that African Americans benefitted from slavery and asserting the standards needed to be adjusted.

The town hall Thursday at the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Miami Gardens would have been an opportunity for the DeSantis administration to defend the standards, but Diaz declined to attend.

The Florida Department of Education posted on social media that Diaz stopped by the opening of Osceola County schools in central Florida on Thursday, a day after the commissioner attempted to push back on claims that he abruptly canceled on the event.

“There was nothing sudden about my inability to attend Senator Jones’s town hall,” Diaz wrote on social media Wednesday. “As I told the senator last week, I will be visiting schools throughout the state to welcome back students, parents and teachers for the first day of school.”

One particular standard requiring middle school students to learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” has received the most attention amid Florida’s education controversy. But opponents have also objected to standards that classify acts of violence perpetrated “against and by” African Americans, like the Ocoee Massacre of 1920, when a white crowd burned Black homes and churches to the ground and killed Black residents in a small Florida town enraged by a Black man attempting to vote. The wording in that section of the standards has caused outrage for suggesting that violence may have been perpetrated “by” African Americans.

“It’s not just African American children that need to know their history,” Osgood, a former school board member in Broward County, said at the event. “It’s other people that need to know African American history, and then they won’t say dumb stuff like Black people benefited from slavery. If they’re going to say it, they have to say that this whole nation benefitted from slavery.”

Lawmakers and leaders at the town hall pitched suggestions to compete with Florida's extensive conservative majority, like starting an education coalition to compete with local groups such as Moms for Liberty. They urged educators to join unions and for the public to attend school board meetings to address the standards and other education issues.

“There is some good content in those standards,” Steve Gallon III, a school board member in Miami Dade County, said at the event. “There are some elements that are inaccurate, there are some elements are offensive.”