Black History as Living Legacy: Education, Story, and Joy

Posted on February 3, 2026 in Blog Posts

Authors:

Marlee Bunch
Illustrations of prominent figures of Black history against a yellow, red, and green striped background, representing the colors of Black History Month.

Living Legacy

As we celebrate Black History Month this month, and every day, we are invited to do more than just remember. This moment asks us to read, listen, learn, create, and celebrate. It is a time to honor literacy not only as the ability to decode text, but as a living, expansive practice rooted in storytelling, imagination, artistry, and joy. Across generations, Black communities have engaged literacy and education as tools for survival and advancement, but also for building connections, creativity, beauty, and possibility. From Belle Cruthers teaching reading by candlelight when it was forbidden, to Phillis Wheatley writing poetry, to my grandmother teaching pre- and post-desegregation in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, introducing her students to Margaret Walker’s poem “For My People.” Black history has always been deeply connected to acts that encouraged learning, education, and intergenerational uplift. Knowledge and learning were things no one could take from you.

From poetry and oral storytelling to visual art, music, and contemporary hybrid forms, Black literacy has consistently moved across modes, refusing confinement and inviting readers to participate in multiple ways of knowing and feeling.

Too often, Black history is framed solely through the lens of struggle and exclusion. While those realities matter, they do not tell the full story, one that is rich with advancement and innovation. Black history is also a history of excellent teachers who advocated to ensure that, during segregation and Jim Crow laws, their students received an education focused on the whole child, weaving quilts that carried memory and paths to freedom when words could not, and learning songs and stories passed down through front porches and classrooms. It is a history of joy found in reading circles, libraries, churches, and schools—spaces where literacy and a sense of community were nurtured collectively.

In my work as an educator and scholar of oral histories, including in my book Unlearning the Hush (2025), I have learned that literacy is rarely singular. It is multimodal and relational. The educators whose stories I documented spoke about teaching students to read and write, but also about teaching them how to listen, speak with confidence, and see themselves as worthy of being heard. Education and civic engagement were deeply connected, and students left these classrooms prepared to advocate for voting rights, civil rights, and more. Literacy lived in poetry (such as the poems of the Freedom Summer), handwritten letters, and carefully chosen aspects of history that affirmed students’ lives and communities. Through these methods, teachers and communities made long-lasting positive impacts on students and one another.

Learning Across Forms and Generations

Black literacy and learning have always extended beyond the printed page, as they live in the educators, families, and community members who have carried forward stories and histories that have worked to prevent erasure and illuminate Black history. Poetry, for example, has long served as a site of truth, joy, and imagination. From early writing to contemporary written pieces that continue to shape how we understand language and voice. Poets such as Patricia Smith, Evie Shockley, Ashley M. Jones, Ariana Benson, Claudia Rankine, and many others demonstrate how writing can hold history, critique, memory, and reflection all at once, sometimes within the same line. These writers help us move from the past to the present and envision new possibilities. Learning also lives in oral histories, artwork, primary source documents, and the wisdom of elders and mentors.

Unlearning the Hush, Centering Joy

Unlearning the Hush grew out of a desire to honor stories that had been silenced or overlooked, but it also grew from moments of joy—laughter shared during interviews, the deep connections formed, pride in former students’ successes, and deep love for teaching as a communal practice. It was the hope of telling the full story from the words and memories of those who lived it, expanding the historical record. As one participant, educator Charles Cooper, shared:

“Somehow, someway, teachers found a way to teach us what we needed to know to empower us. They poured their hearts out to us to make it possible. We found a way, and we had moments of joy.”

This quote remains with me, as it so perfectly sums up how the past holds legacies and carries forward stories that carve out spaces for educators, librarians, and community leaders today.

Carrying Literacy Forward

This February and for the following 365 days, may we honor Black history by reading widely, celebrating creativity, and making room for joy. We can begin to do this by recognizing literacy and learning as a living practice that continues to shape who we are and who we are becoming, and by recalling the names of those (living legacies, past and present) who have worked to preserve, protect, and expand access to knowledge, freedom, and possibility, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Barbara Ross, Joyce Ladner, and Mary McLeod Bethune, among countless others whose words, labor, and love remind us that education, literacy, and Black history has always embodied resistance, liberation, and love.

Resources for Further Learning

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it offers useful starting points for those looking to explore the theme of literacy within the Black community, covering both educational advances and poetry.

The Civil Rights Movement

Black Schooling and Community Knowledge

Black Teachers and Educational Thought

Education, Sociology, and History

Poetry

Headshot of Dr. Marlee Bunch

About the author:

Dr. Marlee Bunch is an interdisciplinary educator, author, researcher, and lifelong learner. Her research examines the oral histories of Black female educators in Hattiesburg, Mississippi who taught between 1954 and 1971.

She received her doctoral degree from the University of Illinois in 2022 in Education/Policy/Organizational Leadership. Additionally, she has a Masters in Education (MEd), a Masters in Gifted Education (MS), a Bachelors in English, a certification in Diversity/Equity/Inclusion, and a certification in ESL (English as a Second Language).

Bunch has been an educator for 17+ years and is the founder of the un/Hush teaching framework. You can reach out or learn more about her work at https://www.marleebunch.com/.

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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.

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