Delegate Requested at the November 17th Youth Caucus Planning Meeting

[Peaceyall]

10/2/07
Peace and Greetings,

My name is Tommy Ingiaye and I am the chairman of the David P. Richardson Education Coalition (DPREC).
The purpose of this new coalition is to inform people of the historic student walkout that occurred on November 17th, 1967 and to once again inspire and ignite a fire within our people to create change throughout the Philadelphia School system for our children, through education, commemoration, protest and legislation.
In the month of November, the DPREC will be coordinating a wonderful week of exciting community and student commemoration activities.
On behalf of the participating organizations I extend our warmest greetings and would like to express how much I look forward to seeing you or a representative of your organization at the upcoming meeting of our Youth Caucus. This meeting will be held on Saturday October 13th 2007 from 12-3pm at the Center in the Park Building in Vernon Park, 5800 Germantown Ave.
Everybody knows that young people are the spark for social change.
It is with this realization that the David P. Richardson Education Coalition hopes to ensure that the voice and presence of young people is fully heard and felt during the 40th year commemoration of the November 1967 High School Walkout of 3500 students demanding the teaching of African American History in Philadelphia public schools.
40 years later students will take a stand for the mandatory teaching of African-American history by qualified instructors, an end to criminalization and Jim Crow laws in the schools, and to address the lack of funding, books, supplies, resources and technology in our schools.
The purpose of the October 13th meeting is to form the November 17th Youth Caucus to ensure Youth support and Youth participation in the upcoming activities surrounding the 40th year anniversary commemoration.
The November 17th Youth Caucus of the DPREC will be a broad representative body of the new generation of leadership who has come to age in the hip-hop era and who embraces a critical, creative and progressive world outlook consistent with the best of our people’s legacy of struggle.
Planned events include, but are not limited to student protest, an essay, dance ( Wu-Tang, D-mac etc) and poetry/rap contest, a Youth Dance Party and a Community Town Hall Meeting attended by educators, community activists and scholars from across the country.

On the 10/13 agenda:

How can we mobilize students, parents and the larger community to make a big statement through the upcoming commemorative activities?

We will be discussing:

-The history and context of the November 17th 1967 Student walkout.

-Developing a statement and platform to be delivered by students to the November 14th Meeting of the School Reform Commission (SRC)

- Speakers and planning for the November 16th “Day of Student Voices�

-Planning for the November 16th Youth Party at the Benjamin Franklin HS Auditorium and dance, poetry contest

- Youth Participation in November 17th 40th Anniversary Commemoration Town Hall Meeting

This can be a wonderful opportunity for your organization as well as a chance to network with other young activists. I hope you can come out and share with us your experience organizing and your ideas as to how we can make the upcoming activities a success.

Sincerely,
Tommy Ingiaye
Chairman
David P. Richardson Education Coalition (DPREC)
November_17th_Coalition@yahoo.com

“Awake youth of the land and accept this noble challenge and salvaging the strong ship of civilization by the anchors of right, justice and love�
Valedictorian Speech, Ella Baker 1927

“You’ve got to get out there in the real world where other people are. When you are trying to impact public education, you should be able to say, “This is how the curriculum should look, look at how it’s working with these kids.�
John Churchville

On November 17, 2007, community organizers, political activists, university scholars and students from around the city of Philadelphia will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1967 protest in which 3500 high school students marched to the School Board. The protest led by the late State Representative, David P. Richardson (a high school student at the time), charged the School District with educational negligence and demanded the district provide a better education for Black students, which included the teaching and learning of Black Studies and the hiring of more Black teachers and administrators (the lost of Black teachers/administrators resulting from the 1954 Brown vs. the Board decision also impacted northern urban centers). While it is important to remember this event, it is equally important to understand its historical context within the overall experience of African people and the impact this protest has made in the last forty years on the educational experience of African children.

African people have always created societies in which they’ve educated and governed themselves. Unlike western societies, education for Africans was not viewed as an individual commodity, but the collective responsibility of a community to reproduce knowledge, continue cultural memory and advanced the principles of humanity (righteousness, justice, and love). Our recent experience in the western hemisphere required that while we liberate ourselves, we must also find creative ways to recreate our societies, remember our ancestors, reeducate ourselves and express our humanity within new existing social structures(slavery, segregation, colonization, state sanctioned public systems, etc.), that were designed to prevent us from existing as African people. The 1967 protest of high school students (and the remembering of this event) was/is not a separate event in the African American narrative but a continuance of how African people remember who they are and what they must do to advance their liberation.

The more notable movements organized by students such as the founding of Congress for Racial Equality, the Black Panther Party, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Freedom Schools are often written in the context of the 20th century Civil and Human Rights struggles. What is often left out of these histories is the social and political impact these movements had on local educational struggles within the various Black communities. For example, members of these organizations would form community-based organizations that provided breakfast programs for children, after school tutoring and organized study groups also known as commmuniversities. In Philadelphia, John Churchville of the Black People’s Unity Movement (a grass roots organization designed to unite Black people across religion and political ideologies) was approached by a young high school student, David P. Richardson and was asked if the BPUM would assist him in organizing high school students in the now famous November 17, 1967 protest. Administrators of the School District of Philadelphia responded to the demands of these young people by passing a resolution that required the creation of African American curriculum guides. The district organized a team of community historians, educators and well respected community activists to begin writing an integrated curriculum guide to infuse African and African American history within existing school curricula. Several years after the protest, the department of African American Studies was founded. Although, the department (now a program) existed for over thirty years, the resolution was short lived and African American history and culture would be taught indiscriminately by Black teachers who had been doing so prior to the protest. By the 1970's, the education and curriculum concerns by African descended communities in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean resulted in the proliferation of independent African schools, curriculum guides and teacher training programs by scholar activists such as Asa Hilliard, Barbara Sizemore, Jwanza Kunjufu, Leonard Jefferies, Adelaide Sanford and Molefi Asante. Although throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s there would be no district wide inclusion of African American Studies in K-12 public educational systems, students in several high schools across the United States would place demands within their respective school buildings for African American History courses.

In 2005, individuals who participated and/or remembered the November 17, 1967 protest demanded the School District of Philadelphia enforce the initial resolution. In February 2005, the School Reform Commission (new governing body) conceded to the demands of the Black community and mandated that all curricula include the history of African people. This mandate also included the creation of a required high school course in African American History in which all students must take in order to graduate. While this small victory is a testament to the David P. Richardson and the students who initiated these demands in 1967, children of African descent continue to be traumatized and criminalized in public education systems across the United States. Therefore the fortieth commemorative events which include but not limited to student protest, town hall meetings and community lectures will be more than a ceremonious act of remembrance of David P. Richardson, but will include an inter generational conversation between those who remember (our elders) and those who will continue the struggle for liberation (our youth). The commemorative events will begin during the week of November 14th and continue until the liberation of African people.