Christianity Today August 8, 2026 6 min signal 2026-08-08

Teaching Black history in the Trump age

Archived text mirror, captured for personal reading when the Signal ran. Formatting is approximate — read the original at the source.

Christianity Today

August 7, 2026

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Photo by Bob Thomas / Courtesy of Loving Our Cities

Since assuming power, the Trump administration has aimed to guard the myth of America’s history as uniformly inclusive, above critique, and unifying, and it has protected the sensibilities of its predominantly white political base along the way. As a result, we’ve seen commemorations of African American history revised to soften the moral failings of the US and its founders, or removed and then restored after public backlash or a court order. Some items have been excised altogether from historical sites, including a well-known photo of an enslaved man with scars and a booklet about slavery at the former home of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

In response, educators, advocates, and churches have sought out solutions to protect Black history and provide an accurate, un-whitewashed depiction of what truly happened. One alternative I’ve seen gain momentum is Freedom Schools: afterschool and summer programs that are academically immersive, are culturally affirming, and foster a desire in children for civic engagement, literacy, and social justice.

My predominately Black multiethnic church set up a Freedom School three years ago, before the recent drama and amid other troubling news about how Black history was being taught. We did it through our community development nonprofit, mainly to address educational inequities. But in light of the political climate this year, we have been more methodical in our approach. We partnered with the Children’s Defense Fund, which offers curricula for different grade levels and age groups as well as training materials for instructors.

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Our Freedom School serves 30 third-to-eighth-grade students who live in Gloucester and Camden Counties in New Jersey. During the six-week program, which began in July and concludes this month, we affirm our students as children of God. We then highlight the valuable contributions their ancestors have made to the US and the world so they know what is possible for them. Other churches and faith-based organizations have offered similar programs in New Jersey, and legislators have introduced a bill to fund more in the state.

Freedom Schools date back to the summer of 1964, when civil rights activists and college students went to Mississippi to register Black voters who faced voter suppression. Participants in what was known as Freedom Summer further established programs that taught more than 3,000 students reading, math, civics, science, French, and Black and African history.

The initiative challenged educational inequality and empowered Black youth, who, in addition to attending inferior public schools, were not being taught their history in full. At the time, many Black public schools were being closely monitored by state officials who wanted to suppress aspects of African American history, the Civil Rights Movement, and organizations like the NAACP. The Freedom Summer project was successful and drew support from Martin Luther King Jr.

Freedom Schools served Black people the way schools should have—and would have, if it weren’t for anti-Black racism. Considering the current ideological war to water down Black history, they can serve a similar purpose today. They offer churches a chance to place formal history telling in the hands of trusted communicators and help students in underserved schools. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, nearly all students enrolled in a Freedom School program last summer improved (52.7%) or maintained (31.3%) their reading skills, preventing the typical summer learning loss. Another study by researchers at Baylor University also showed learning improvements.

But the best way to know impact is to feel it, and as an assistant site coordinator at our Freedom School, I feel it every day. Our kids spent the summer reading books like The Story of Fannie Lou Hamer, The Escape of Robert Smalls, Warriors on the Mound, and The Skin I’m In. Elementary-grade students have put together skits to display what they learned, while our middle schoolers produced a podcast about Black history. Those activities are supplemented by field trips, occasional ice cream runs, and an always-fun inflatable waterslide.

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Black Christians continue to be stalwart soldiers in the fight against racism and white supremacy in America. It’s not news to us that our children should know their history, both to understand their roots and to provide a contextual defense of the faith. It’s also not news that many young Black people are ditching the Christian faith today because some have wrongly used Christianity to promote racism and nationalism.

Programs like Freedom Schools provide us the space to teach our children to separate the wheat from the chaff and—following the lead of apologetics organizations like the Jude 3 Project—help them see how the true Christian faith has always been an integral part of Black history.

In teaching history, we can be informed in many ways by the Scriptures, which show how God has acted in the past so we can trust him with our future. Biblical figures often recounted historical information for the kingdom purpose of correcting, instructing, or redeeming. We can use that same framework today to correct inaccuracies used to harm people: We can instruct society in how to understand the present in light of the past, aim for a better tomorrow, and redeem the memory of those who were unjustly treated.

If you’re leading a church interested in providing young people with an accurate telling of history, no matter the community you serve, consider Freedom Schools. Using history to bolster literacy skills and an awareness of justice work is a worthwhile endeavor. Some may think it’s polarizing, but so is the work of the gospel (Matt. 10:34–35, 39). Oftentimes, the search for truth forces us to draw a line in the sand. Freedom Schools are on the right side of that line.

Rann Miller is an educator and freelance writer based in southern New Jersey. His writings on race, education, and politics have been featured in The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Salon. Miller currently serves as a youth ministry teacher at The Perfecting Church in Sewell, New Jersey, and as an assistant site coordinator for the Loving Our Cities Freedom School held there.

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