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Why Fred Hampton Needs to Be on Your Kids’ American History Syllabus

6 min readFeb 16, 2021

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Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Inc

Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.

My Blackness came to me while I was a student at Ohio State University.

To be clear, I always knew I was Black. My mother, who grew up silt-poor in the mud hills of Nelsonville, Ohio, made sure all of her sons knew we were Black. Not knowing was akin to signing your name to a suicide note. But I did not know its properties, the alchemy of its historical bonds in reaction to my daily life. I only knew its consequences. I was aware of the American problems that pursued my Blackness but could not see the joy that welled from it for what it was. I did not fully learn to wield my Blackness until I was skipping architecture classes, instead sitting in on showings of Black documentaries and heavy discussions in the newly minted Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center that imbued me with self-awareness.

The early 1990s was a beautiful time to become aware of one’s Blackness. It was the height of the Afrocentric movement, the covers of magazines like Newsweek

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Scott Woods
Scott Woods

Written by Scott Woods

Writer and poet holding down Columbus, Ohio