In my first years as a history teacher, I began pursuing a graduate degree to support English Language Learners. Along the way, I took a course on race and policy history, which was so eye-opening that it pushed me out of the education department and into the history department (those 12 credits in the EL program were still absolutely worth it—last year, for the first time, all of my EL students passed their AP exam! This shows the power of research-based, inclusive teaching practices.). Switching my graduate focus to U.S. history completely transformed the way I teach and ultimately inspired the creation of Empowering Histories.
Once I entered my U.S. history graduate program, I was confronted with a troubling truth: historians and the general public aren’t having the same conversation about the past. For professional historians, the role of slavery, its centrality to the nation’s development, the invention of race to justify it, and the long shadow it casts on American institutions is settled scholarship. Yet in curriculum shaped by state standards and political pressure, these well established facts are minimized or, too often, treated as matters of opinion rather than foundational truths about our society.
If society claimed triangles have four sides, we wouldn’t ask geometry teachers to stay silent. Historians aren’t debating whether racism shaped American institutions, it did. The real question is why we still hesitate to teach what we already know.
This disconnect shaped my thesis project and led me on a mission to close that gap and support the teaching of history, not American mythology. What began as “Antiracist APUSH” soon evolved into Empowering Histories, connecting and supporting educators who shared that same conviction. In 2023, being named the Gilder Lehrman National History Teacher of the Year and piloting AP African American Studies opened doors to new ideas and requests for support beyond what one teacher could manage, making one thing clear: this work has outgrown the limits of a single classroom and a single teacher. That’s why I’m proud to share that Empowering Histories is now a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
The time is right: major institutions are erasing free history content, over 20 states have passed laws restricting history teaching, and a recent nationwide poll showed that more than half of teachers have altered curriculum or classroom discussions due to political pressure.
With this new nonprofit structure, Empowering Histories can sustain and grow its work: reaching more classrooms, collaborating with more educators, and continuing to create free, high-impact lessons that empower students to be informed, engaged citizens ready to build a healthier democracy and a more equitable future. If you are interested in supporting this mission, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Empowering Histories.