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Protests Sparked in Detroit Over the Dumping of Black History Books
Zach Schonfeld 10,890 Views Jul 9, 2013
A Detroit area school district has erupted in protest over
the discarding of a historic book collection that is said to contain
more than 10,000 black history volumes, included films, videos, and
other artifacts. The blame, according to residents of Highland Park, a
small city surrounded on nearly all sides by Detroit, belongs to
Emergency Manager Donald Weatherspoon, who claims the collection was
thrown out by
mistake but that the district cannot afford to preserve it. Yesterday,
angry residents held a public protest,
blocking traffic, wielding megaphones, and displaying picket signs with
slogans like "21st Century Hitler Burning Books" and "Dump The EM, Not
The Books"—referring to the state-appointed emergency manager.
Among the picketers was Deblon Jackson, a Detroit-area musician.
"The
emergency manager had been in the district for over a year and then
they decided to throw away all the black artifacts—books that were no
longer in print or published, all kinds of tapes and catalogues,"
Jackson explained to The Atlantic Wire. "We want to preserve those
artifacts so our
children have something to look back on. We're just mad about it and
we're not going to stand for it, just throwing away our history like
that."
The outcry began when a small portion of
the volumes in question was discovered in a dumpster three weeks ago by
Paul Lee, a local historian who helped assemble the collection.
According to USA Today,
the collection was largely the result of civil rights-era demands to
incorporate African-American studies into school curriculums—especially
in communities like Highland Park, whose population is about 93%
African-American. Jackson hopes to place the books in a community
center, but Weatherspoon has instead expressed interest in
donating those with historical value to a library or museum. (Of
course, the majority of the collection has already been lost to the
dumpster.)
Marcia Cotton, a member of the Highland Park Renaissance Academy Board of Directors and
lifelong resident, said she attended a meeting in which Weatherspoon
took responsibility and claimed the books were discarded by mistake. Her
fellow board member, Vice President Andre Davis, soon resigned over the
controversy. But Cotton isn't so sure the books are the most pressing
issue in the community.
"I
would very much like to get above the fray of the controversy and
rather discuss solutions to the looming debt crisis facing the school
district, the decline in school enrollment and city population, and how
best we can work with our city officials and provide a greater quality
of life for our residents and quality education in a safe environment
for our children," Cotton said in an email. "We can't solve 21st century
problems with 20th century tactics."
Jackson, meanwhile, hopes to continue protesting.
"We
have a protest scheduled every day this week until we get what we
want," she said. "They don't want the children to read, in my opinion.
How do you have a
library with no books? How do you mistakenly throw books out?"
"This is a modern-day Hitler," she added.
Watch video footage of the protest here, via WXYZ-TV Detroit.
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