OP-ED: ‘Small Axe Fall Big Trees’: How We Fight Back As American Education Falls Under Siege – Essence

President Trump signed an executive order in March to begin dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.Shortly thereafter his administration turned its attention to the American public library system. He moved to defund the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the federal agency responsible for supporting libraries across the country. Our national libraries are not even safe. Devastatingly, the National Museum of African American History and Culture—known lovingly by many as the Blacksonian as well as the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum have also come under scrutiny.

The administration even directed the National Park Service to scrub references to Harriet Tubman and slavery from the Underground Railroad site in Maryland, a move that was quickly reversed after much public backlash

For some Americans, this kind of government assault on education is not new. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of Native American children were ripped from their homes and communities and forced into government-sponsored boarding schools designed specifically to erase their culture from the collective memory of a generation of Native kids.

Their languages were beaten out of them. Their hair was cut. Their clothes were replaced. Their cosmology and ways of knowing were labeled savage. Children were physically abused, and some were killed. These were not fringe operations—they were run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an arm of the U.S. Department of Interior. 

For Black Americans, the history of repression of education runs even deeper. During slavery, it was illegal for enslaved Black people to read or write. If caught in the act of learning, the punishment could be jail, fines, or even death. Why? Because the white southern slavocracy understood then what we must remember now: knowledge is power. And that truism is precisely why the battle for the Black mind has been ongoing.

Not long after Emancipation, white southern lawmakers demanded that the federal government return to “states’ rights.” Once it did, every Southern state ushered in Jim Crow—a separate and unequal legal regime that sedimented a racial caste system in America for nearly a century. Black schools were defunded across the South by all-white school boards.

And yet, by hook or by crook, Black Americans took their education into their own hands. It was largely Black teachers who ensured that Black minds continued to be nourished, even during a time when the public school system abandoned them. Today, we have a lot to learn from them.

One of many powerful examples we have comes from a mighty woman named Lucy Craft Laney. Born in Georgia just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Miss Lucy graduated from Atlanta University, fluent in Latin and Greek and well-versed in world literature and mathematics. After teaching in various Georgia public schools, she became disillusioned by the promise of the state system and decided to found her own. 

In 1883, with five students in an Augusta church basement, she launched what would become the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. From the very beginning, she insisted on keeping her school private—not because she didn’t believe Black people deserved public support, but because she, like many other Black educators of her generation, knew firsthand that Black children were not safe or cared for in the state’s hands. She raised funds tirelessly and, over time, grew Haines into a full campus that offered both a rigorous liberal arts and vocational curriculum.

Haines’ curricula was vast. In addition to offering courses in literature, world history, sociology, Latin, Greek, geography and algebra, her students were also taught Black history and culture. They were exposed to the unbounded breadth of Black brilliance. Miss Lucy brought in notable figures such as world-renowned opera singer Marian Anderson, scholar-activists W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson and even U.S. President William Howard Taft. 

Throughout the school’s 50-year lifespan, funding was a constant struggle. Without relenting, Miss Lucy poured everything into her school. She died without material wealth but with an abundant legacy that shaped a generation of Black minds. Her school mentored future giants, including Mary McLeod Bethune. But while Haines endured, its public counterpart—Ware High School—did not.

Ware High was Georgia’s first public Black highschool. Like Haines, it also offered a liberal arts education. But in 1897, the all-white county board of education defunded it with little to no explanation. Black parents fought back. The legal battle, Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, made Black Augusta’s appeals made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

However, in 1899, the Court ruled that Black children had no constitutional right to public education. Ware High School closed its doors forever. And from that moment, it was clear: the cavalry was not coming for Black children. Augusta would not have another Black public high school for nearly forty years until 1937.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a similar place now. In my book, The Battle for the Black Mind, I show that there are valuable lessons and wisdoms for us to take away from the forgotten history of Black education—especially from the long line of fearless Black teachers who made sure that Black kids got the education they deserved.

There is an old Jamaican saying that goes “Small axe fall big tree.” While few of us can quit our jobs and open up an entire school like Miss Lucy did, there is so much we can be doing within our own sphere of influence. Examples are springing up all across the country:

A retired Black history professor in Miami, Marvin Dunn, started a pop-up Black history class under a tree on Florida International University’s campus—thirty people showed up. 

In New York City, the Black Education Research Collective (BERC) at Columbia University created a free 520-page K 12 Black Studies curriculum for NYC public schools. Parents and teachers across the country can access it for free online. Black homeschooling is also on the rise—particularly in response to hostile political climates and school systems that fail our kids.Groups of families are coming together to form learning pods, sharing teaching duties and pulling resources to offer culturally affirming and pedagogically rigorous education. The Center for Black Educator Development is also working to rebuild the Black teacher pipeline and train the next generation of culturally responsive educators. 

Across the country, unions, parents, educators and elders are responding to Trump’s attack on American education by saying: “Not on our watch.”So now the question is for you. What will your small axe be?

Will it be checking your child’s school curriculum and identifying ways to supplement what has been erased? Starting a youth reading group at your local coffee shop or neighborhood park? Creating a local banned book drive to sprout a field of “the peoples’ libraries”? Recording family or community oral history projects to ensure those precious stories will not be erased? Guerilla archiving by scraping publicly available historical websites and archives while the records are still available? Or hosting a teach-in on an area of your own expertise in your living room or even on your social media platform?

Small axes like these and more chip away at falling big trees of oppression.

The system may be trying to erase the history of who comprises the rich tapestry of we the American people. But we carry the collective muscle memory for how to respond to times like these. And when we remember who we come from—formidable educational superheroes like Lucy Craft Laney—it is clear that our ancestors left us with everything we need to survive, build and thrive through such a time as this.

Dr. Karida Brown is an NAACP Image Award-winning author and public intellectual. A professor at Emory University, Brown is a leading scholar of systemic racism and the study of Black life. Her work, which spans over a decade of groundbreaking research and analysis, has earned her both national and international acclaim. She is the author of six books, most recently The Battle for the Black Mind by Legacy Lit.