Black History Is for Everyone

A longtime educator explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race, nation, and the stories we tell about who we are.

Black history is under attack from powerful forces that seek to excise it from classrooms, libraries, and the popular imagination. Yet its opponents fail to understand a simple truth: the best education challenges our assumptions, helps us see larger forces at work, and gives us glimpses of alternate futures.

In Black History Is for Everyone, Brian Jones offers a meditation on the power of Black history, using his own experiences as a lifelong learner and classroom teacher to question everything—from the radicalism of the American Revolution to the meaning of “race” and “nation.”

With warmth and immersive storytelling, Jones encourages us to delve deeper into our collective history, explores how curiosity about our world is essential—and reminds us that with stakes so high, the effort is worth it.

Brian Jones is an educator, scholar, and activist. He served as the director of the Center for Educators and Schools at the New York Public Library and as the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He holds a PhD in Urban Education from CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History. Jones is a longtime member of the board of directors of Voices of a People's History of the United States. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Jacobin, and Chalkbeat.