HARLINGEN — African-Americans often express frustration and even anger that public schools don’t teach black history.
The subject usually gets a couple of paragraphs and that’s it.
However, Linda Gaston did manage to teach black history during her long career as a speech pathologist in public schools both in Texas and overseas with Department of Defense Dependent Schools.
Each February, she would try to teach her students about black history by posting images of notable black figures on the bulletin board.
The words “Because We Have Lived” would appear on the board, along with images of four people important to African-American history, such as Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall and Harriet Tubman. They would remain on the bulletin board for one week, and then she would remove them and place four more.
“We would talk a little bit about what has happened and the advances that have been made in America, ‘because we have lived,’” she said.
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