Cherry Hill was the first N.J. district to mandate a Black history class. Here’s how it is done.

The students in Jennifer LaSure’s African American history class listened intently to stories about the country’s racist past during the Jim Crow era.

LaSure also challenged the group of underclassmen at Cherry Hill High School East to explore how that legacy may have impacted Black Americans today in the fight for social justice.

She used the high-profile case of five Black and Latino men exonerated in 2002 in the rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park in 1989. Students watched a clip about the case from filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us.

“Do you think racial bias played a role in that case?” LaSure asked, referring to the case known as the Central Park Five. The students typed their responses in a group chat and she displayed some of their answers on a screen.

Malcolm Calderon wrote: ”Had these men been white and the victim had been Black, this would have gone down way differently. Public opinion would be crazily different, as well.”

Cherry Hill, the first district in New Jersey to mandate the course as a graduation requirement for its more than 11,000 students, has taken a different approach to how it teaches Black history in the United States.

In addition to teaching about Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation and marginalized Black people in the post-Civil War era, the class includes units on early African culture, arts, systemic oppression of today, antiracism, activism, and Black Lives Matter.

“We have made this course a priority,” said Farrah Mahan, an assistant superintendent who helped craft the course. “We did not want students to view African Americans from the oppressed state that is currently taught (elsewhere).”

Students who organized Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 by a white officer asked for the class. They said Black history was mostly taught in February and focused too much on slavery with only token reference to civil rights figures such as Rosa Parks and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“It’s great that it began with students,” said Chanelle N. Rose, an associate history professor at Rowan University. “The history of Black people doesn’t begin with slavery in this country.”

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After vigorous debate, the school board overwhelmingly approved the requirement in February 2021. The district spent about 18 months developing the curriculum and training teachers, and rolled out the course for the 2021-22 school year.

The semester course is now in its third year at East and the district’s other comprehensive high school, Cherry Hill West. Members of the class of 2025 will be the first to need the course in order to graduate.

“It’s definitely something that should be required,” said freshman Gabriella Pizzo, 14. “It fills in a lot of gaps. When you don’t know your history, you’re bound to repeat it.”

Yohan Cho, 18, an exchange student from Korea, said learning about the Central Park case was “disturbing” but informative. Cho, a junior, said he hoped the class would make students more caring.

“If I was in that situation, I would be scared,” said Cho. “It didn’t look good.”

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Cherry Hill made national headlines when it became the first New Jersey district with the graduation requirement, and remains the only one, according to the state Department of Education. Philadelphia requires a course in African American history, including the civil rights movement, as a graduation requirement.

Recent discussions about critical race theory, an academic framework analyzing racism as embedded in institutions that had become a national flashpoint, fueled debate in education, and political circles raised questions about whether Black history should be taught in schools and colleges.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banned the teaching of Advanced Placement African American Studies in public schools. Gov. Phil Murphy responded by expanding New Jersey’s Advanced Placement African American history offerings to 26 schools, including Camden for the 2023-24 school year.

Mahan said the graduation course was desperately needed in Cherry Hill, a predominantly white district, to address systemic racism and implicit bias by staff and students. Cherry Hill, the 11th-largest public school district in the state, is 53% white, 17% Asian, 14.6% Hispanic, and 9% Black.

“If you only hear from a marginalized perspective, that becomes your perspective,” Mahan said.

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Mostly freshmen and sophomores enroll in the course, with a few juniors. Students earn 2.5 credits. Previously, Cherry Hill had two elective African American studies courses.

The district added an elective course this month to expose students to the history and experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. The AAPI class is open to all high school students.

Rose, of Rowan’s Africana Studies program, would also like to see districts better implement New Jersey’s Amistad law, a 2002 mandate that requires all public schools to infuse African American history in subjects year-round. The law was modeled off previous New Jersey legislation that requires public schools to teach about the Holocaust.

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“There has to be something put in place to make sure teachers are teaching it,” said Rose, who is planning an Amistad conference in the fall.