Portraits of Phillis Wheatley, W.S. Scarborough, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Anna Julia Cooper

Examples of 

Intersections of Classics and African American Studies

  ~~ A Shared Resource for Teachers ~~

Project Goals

Project Goals

Project Goals: The National Committee for Latin and Greek offers these additional web pages which focus on a key issue of equity and social justice facing our field: the need to restore a complete, unbiased history of Classical scholarship in America (and beyond), a history that includes important Classicists of Color, who both contributed knowledge and worked to create educational equity for People of Color.  This first stage focuses on the contributions of African Americans trained in classical education who became professional classicists or whose lives were influenced by their study of classical works and Mediterranean culture. 

It is important that every Classicist look for ways to spotlight the true diversity within our profession, as well as connect their students to the current work in order to erase historical bias, bring to light suppressed scholarship and achievements, and create a respectful place for all scholars and students of color.


Brief Background: More 'African American Studies' history courses are being added in high schools and colleges. One national high school curriculum will be released in Fall 2024, and there are a growing number of courses in universities, including those on 'Black Classicism,' in addition to an increased call for curriculum-wide lessons on people of color at all grade levels.  This situation both presents a timely opportunity and provides an impetus for planning interdisciplinary lessons and projects spotlighting intersections of history and culture with classically trained African Americans. Some became classicists, also active in social, religious, and political movements. Others became significant artists, writers, educators, and scientists, influenced by classical education.


Our 2022 National Committee for Latin and Greek panel Facing the Erasure of Black Classicists in America; Highlighting Their Role in Classics & Educational Equity, held in Charleston, revealed eight examples of historically significant classically educated African Americans from South Carolina alone. The lives and significant contributions of these eight were described in Dr. Michele Valerie Ronnick’s accompanying essay, printed in booklet form by the NCLG and The College of Charleston. We owe much to Dr. Ronnick, a former Chair of NCLG, whose research into numerous Black classicists has inspired many colleagues to continue to uncover the myriad contributions and intersections of Classica Africa. 


To expand access to available resources, the NCLG decided to develop a larger shared resource document with information for teachers to use to spotlight persons of color across the nation. This project was initiated at the ACL Institute 2023 with a planning workshop and has continued under the direction of the NCLG Vice Chair, Katie Robinson.


Making a user-friendly resource with highly accessible materials is essential to any actual implementation of new lessons and ancillary materials in the language and history classroom.  We need to lift up to the next generation many historically significant African Americans who’ve been underrepresented if not excluded from Classics and History curricula. We have started this collaborative project to create a shared resource where teachers can both find recommended relevant and age-appropriate resources and materials and where they can share their own self-created slides/lessons. 

Project Scope; Search Tips

Suggestions for searching this document, and beyond


Project Scope:

These pages hold references and links to many types of accessible resources that reflect or illuminate the Intersections of Classics and African American Studies. Entries spread over many centuries and cover a number of areas of American life, education, politics and the humanities. Therefore, we offer a few tips to begin to use the contents.


Search Tips:

*Pages are divided by topic or time period for broad headings. The Google page search bar will take you to the website page of the entry, not the specific entry location.


* To search in more detail within each page, please use the key strokes Command F (Mac) or Control F (PC) or use your browser search tool.  These should open a small search bar at the top of the page and after you enter your keywords, it will bring up all the results on that page, clearly highlighted. 


*Search for classroom ready materials on any page by entering into the search box (Command F):

C-RM (classroom ready materials, like study/discussion guides, printable short bios on persons, lesson plans)

C-RVP (Classroom ready (appropriate) videos and podcasts)

Grades7-12 (some entries give a specific reference to grade levels, like GradesK-6, Grades7-12, Grades9-12, Grades9-16, Grades13-16)



For classroom use and further searching, we recommend:


*Here is an NCLG slideshow of calendar dates to start celebrating important days, like birth dates, death dates, events, etc. It's one way to use our Intersections to introduce important persons to your students. (also in PDF, 8/24)

*Checking the Database of Classical Scholars for scholars of all time periods.

*Checking on BlackPast.org for a clickable map of the US, where students can click their state and investigate to see if there are more Black classicists or classically influenced local persons of note to learn about. It also offers ways to search by category, like 'abolitionist' or 'educator' or '101 Firsts for African Americans' to potentially find more intersections with classical studies. 


*When you find additional persons or sources especially in your own state, please share them with us so we can add them to this resource!


Suggestions for students to share widely what they have learned


Suggestions for student project templates: These teachers have shared templates and rubrics designed for Grades 7-12 but could be adapted to any age. These allow groups of students to be collectively introduced to a wide array of influential African Americans intersecting with the field of Classics in a simple format. Displays of project (physically or online) can also introduce these figures to a wider audience outside of class, an added benefit. See: Shared Project templates for Black Classicists (Heather Paff, G7-8) Black Classicists Padlet Project (Elizabeth Heintzelman, G7-12). Here is a project on a similar template used by students on a collegiate level (Dr. Michele Ronnick, Uni-13-16)


Table of Contents

Acknowledgements, Submissions, Contacts

PLEASE NOTE:  

Personal Acknowledgements can be found HERE. We thank all of our current contributors for their shared materials, strong support, and suggestions!


We seek your suggestions, as well.  A New Materials Submission Form is HERE.  Or simply contact us at  nclgcommittee@gmail.com.

This resource is not meant to be an exhaustive bibliography, though we plan to further expand on our core list of important historical figures and topics. We ask for your help in the future. We have a form to use for your submissions and encourage all to send any materials you have found or have yourself created for students that you feel could potentially be included here.  We will be using standard citations for works and cite all contributors and collaborators in our Acknowledgements page (link above). 


The resource itself will be publicly housed by the NCLG on its DEI website by August 2024 and listed as well through the American Classical League. We hope that regional classics organizations will provide a link on their Resources page and that teacher training and credentialing programs and MAT programs will also post links to this resource, to provide better access to information for their instructors and credentialing candidates. 


Header image citations are HERE.