It's Black History Month: Educator talks about teaching America's history, all 'the good, the bad, and the ugly'

DeWitt-King Barn in Vernon County, Wisconsin
(Painting by Patsy Alderson)

Would you like teach U.S. history to high school students? Many people would say "No." But veteran teacher Kevin Alderson and his wife Patsy, both rural Wisconsin natives, found a way: "Together, they are lifelong educators, and Kevin’s 30-year tenure teaching middle- and high-school history add to their credentials as stewards for their region’s history," reports Sara June Jo-Sæbo for The Daily Yonder. "Committed to uncovering and safeguarding the racial and ethnic diversity of rural Wisconsin, the Aldersons offer educational community programs to ensure that our inheritance with diverse American experiences isn’t lost."

Jo-Sæbo writes, "I wanted to talk to Kevin about ways he engaged high-school students in the classroom and to get his opinion about how teaching history has changed over the last 40 years. I also wanted to hear about how country schools and school consolidation affected rural students and racial diversity." Here are her questions and his answers:

As a history teacher, what did you observe in the classroom when students learned local history?
While my approach to teaching family and local history didn’t reach every student, for many of them, being able to connect national and world events with their families and local events – and seeing that they (the students) were part of the story – was the best method. It was about making a personal connection to that history.

Much of American history involves colonizing this continent through the use of impoverished Europeans and enslaved Africans. Our history also involves the persecution of Indigenous people. Does teaching about these traumatic experiences harm students? I accept the argument that we may not be responsible for what was done in the past because we weren’t alive then, but we are responsible for learning the truth about what happened. We fail when we don’t admit that this history happened and we fail when we don’t know the truth about what happened.  . . . If you’re truly trying to teach history – difficult history – you have to teach the greatness, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, the systemic tendency is to teach the great and the good and whitewash, or erase and ignore, the bad and the ugly. And there are a lot of people who have paid a heavy price for being overlooked.

Most people don’t know that Wisconsin has a substantial history of successful Black farmers who were also our earliest American pioneers. Tell me how you were exposed to Wisconsin’s African American history in your own childhood. I was not exposed to Wisconsin’s rural African-American history as a child. . . . Most of the rural Black history I’ve learned has been since I retired from teaching.

Vernon County, Wisconsin (Wikipedia map)

As an adult, what motivated you to help to preserve Wisconsin’s African-American and Indigenous history? This awareness of rural Black history in Wisconsin came to us through our interest in round barns. My wife, Patsy, is an artist who paints structures and landscapes. Of course, here in Vernon County we have the most round barns, as far as I know, in the nation. She began to make paintings of all the round barns that remained. I began researching the barns and, built upon what the Vernon County Historical Society had compiled, discovered the history of Wisconsin’s Black settlements.

Getting into the 1900s, what made it difficult for Wisconsin’s rural Black communities to remain in Southwest Wisconsin? Interestingly enough, a lot of the settlement faded away with the elimination of country schools. Instead of having your own little school and settlement – which were integrated Black, White and Native American – as soon as they were closing those schools as early as the 40’s and 50’s, they bussed those students to towns and any time new folks are brought into an environment – even from the country to the town – it often created an “us and them” situation.

How can educators teach this complicated story of American history? Intentionally or unintentionally, racism is systemic. There’s a conflict right now between recognizing the truth [of our American history with racism] and suppressing the truth. And how does an individual, or society, or nation move forward into something better if you don’t recognize the mistakes that have been made? Especially if you continue to perpetuate those mistakes. . . .We don’t have to attack our ancestors because it was a different day and a different age…. There are certain things in our history that were evil. Period. But there’s [also] a force of survival: looking for land and looking out for their families.

As a descendant of European settlers, why is it important to you to preserve the history of Black Americans who settled your home state of Wisconsin? Because the complete truth matters. I want to know the complete truth of all facets of American history. And, in fact, it goes beyond preservation. Most people are probably unaware of Black American settlement in Wisconsin during pioneer days. . . . History cannot be preserved if people don’t know it in the first place.