Abstract
The ability of a teacher to stimulate reflection on issues of significance to young blacks is clearly dependent upon his or her skill in identifying universal concerns among members of the Afro-American community. One instructional resource that can help a history instructor accomplish this goal is popular music. Traditionally, the lyrics of black singers have rarely been introduced in classrooms. Why is this true? I contend that the standard scholarly process of assembling historical evidence on the Negro past has created a variety of unforeseen difficulties for classroom teachers. The tendency of academicians, particularly historians, to rely solely upon written sources—newspaper articles and editorials, official records from state legislatures and both Houses of Congress, books and essays by abolitionists, slaves, politicians, and ministers, as well as other standard literary resources—has rendered black history “speechless.” In only a few instances has the rich oral tradition of the black man even been considered, let alone thoroughly investigated, by American historians.4
The following pages will illustrate some alternative instructional approaches which should be employed more accurately to portray the
concerns of Afro-Americans and to translate contemporary black history into a more dynamic teaching/learning process.