How Representation Changes Perspectives

In 2019, Tamara Fyke wrote about how studying Black authors and stories shaped Fyke’s own thinking, and offered three ways to mark Black History Month with students. The section below adds how the observance began, free primary-source collections for the classroom, and ways to extend the activities.

I grew up attending a diverse church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Our congregation was full of black, white, and bi-racial families. When I first started college, I attended a small Catholic university downtown. One of my favorite classes was Multiculturalism. The professor introduced me to a new way of thinking: She encouraged the class to question what we saw on television, read in magazines, and heard on the news. Some of the most important questions to ask are, “From whose perspective is this story being told?” and “Are all the players equally represented?”

I transferred to Belmont University in Nashville, where I still live now, to complete my degree in English. One of my favorite classes at Belmont was African-American Literature. We studied poetry, stories, and plays written by African-American authors such as Alice Walker, Phillis Wheatley, Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, August Wilson, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. To read the words―the secret thoughts―of characters and authors I never knew existed before changed me. I realized how vital it is for each person to find her own voice – and how necessary it is for us to listen.

The celebration of Black History Month started in 1926 and became widely accepted in 1976. You may wonder why we honor this observance. Well, I know at least one of the reasons for this unique celebration. It’s because we need to be intentional about listening to the stories of our African-American brothers and sisters, past and present. Their stories are our stories…truly American stories. By taking the time to learn these stories our perspective about our big world changes. We see African-Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Caucasian Americans – all Americans – all people, even ourselves, differently yet more the same.

And we might be surprised as we read the words of those who were once silenced, to find our own voice.

Here are some ideas for how you can celebrate with your students:

1.) Read stories about Wilma Rudolph’s perseverance to become an athlete after battling polio, about George Washington Carver’s creativity with the peanut or about Ruby Bridges’ courage as she faced injustice. What do these stories speak to you? Ask your students to reflect and consider how these stories relate to their own lives, and also what new perspectives they encounter.

2.) Discover music and history by listening to Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Donny Hathaway. What are the major themes of their music? How did their songs represent the times in which they lived? What current artists are impacted by their sound?

3.) Watch and compare the representation of black families in television shows, such as Good Times from the 70s, Family Matters and Fresh Prince of Bel Air from the 90s, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne from the 2000s, and Blackish from today. (Episodes of each can be found on YouTube.) How is the family represented in each? How does this remind students of their own families? What new ideas do they see portrayed on screen?

Black History Month activities for the classroom: where they came from and how to make them last

Black History Month activities work best when students understand why the observance exists and have real sources to study. As Tamara Fyke explains above, reading African-American authors in college and learning to ask whose perspective a story is told from led to Fyke’s suggestions for reading, listening and watching. This section adds the history of the observance, points to free collections of primary sources that teachers can use in February and afterward, and suggests how to extend Fyke’s three ideas for different grade levels.

Where Black History Month comes from

According to a JSTOR Daily account by Erin Blakemore, the historian Carter G. Woodson, who founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1915, led the first Negro History Week in February 1926. The week brought together historians, teachers and community leaders, and Woodson worked with state departments of education, with public school teachers taking part from the start. After Woodson died in 1950, the observance grew, and in 1976 it expanded to a month. Each year the President now issues a proclamation designating February as National African American History Month. Fyke’s text gives the same two dates, 1926 and 1976.

Free primary sources for February and after

Fyke’s activities rely on stories, music and television. A teacher can add original documents from the Library of Congress. In a February 2026 post on its Teaching with the Library blog, the Library highlights five primary source sets: Civil War images showing African Americans in the war effort, the Civil Rights Movement, the Great Migration, Reconstruction, and Rosa Parks. The sets include photographs, manuscripts, oral histories, maps, newspapers and newsreels. The government’s Black History Month site also has a section for teachers with lesson plans and student activities.

Ways to extend Fyke’s three activities

• Reading about individuals. Fyke suggests stories about Wilma Rudolph, George Washington Carver and Ruby Bridges, with reflection questions. Older students can compare a biography with a primary source from the same period, such as a photograph or oral history from the Library’s Civil Rights Movement set, and discuss who made it and what choices went into it. The Library suggests a similar question for its Civil War images: students consider the range of experiences shown and the choices photographers and publishers made.
• Music and history. Ask students to pair each artist’s themes with events of the artist’s time, and to find a current artist who cites the earlier one.
• Television and representation. Fyke’s comparison of shows across decades invites students to ask who is telling the story. Teachers should preview episodes for age-appropriateness, check what is available on school-approved platforms, and consider adding current shows or films that families suggest.

Questions that work with any activity

Fyke recalls two questions from a college professor: from whose perspective is this story being told, and are all the players equally represented? A teacher can post these in the room and return to them after each reading, song or episode. Follow-up questions can include what is missing, who made this and why, and how the story would change if someone else told it. For younger students the questions can be shortened to who is telling the story and who is not in the picture. Students can answer in a sentence, a drawing or a short discussion, and a class journal that collects the answers across the month gives the teacher a simple record of how thinking changes.

Making it last beyond February

One reasonable concern is that stories of single people, however inspiring, can leave students with a thin picture of the period. Pairing a biography with a collective source, such as the Great Migration or Reconstruction sets, helps students see both the person and the larger events. Planning two or three connected lessons in the same unit, instead of a single activity, also gives time for discussion. Families can also add sources of their own, such as photographs or recorded memories from relatives shared with permission, which connects the month to local history and to the students themselves. Parents and teachers can find more titles in edCircuit’s Black History Month reading list.

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