By Victoria Rivera
For the spring, flocks of students traveled across Florida. From the century old Newberry and its historic railroads to the forests of Rosewood, the beauty of the trip is only an accent to a far deeper history.
Through a grant from the Mellon Foundation, any student at Barry was eligible to take the “Teach the Truth Tour” with all expenses— save for dinner— being entirely covered by the Miami Center of Racial Justice. This trip included free transportation, breakfast and lunch, and even hotel accommodations from March 2-7 for students. The trip bounced around historical towns in Florida like Ocoee and goes all the way to Alabama, turning spring break into a chance to become better educated about the South’s racial history.
The “Teach the Truth Tour” was started by the Miami Center for Racial Justice in 2023 for high school students to see historical artifacts of Black history in Florida. They are dedicated to helping more students learn their state’s history and preserving historic black locations for future generations.
Out of every southern state, Florida was the most dangerous for Black people— having had more lynchings than anywhere else. It took until 1968 for Florida to desegregate -- a mere 56 years ago.
Barry students learned about these conservation efforts as well as saw this history for themselves. With minority voices being silenced through a nationwide rollback of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion programs, this tour will off er participants a chance to learn about Black history firsthand.
Sarah Riva, a history professor at Barry, participated in the trip two years ago.
“I was a little surprised that a number of our students didn’t know some of the basic history about the civil war, and the aftermath that led to these moments of racial violence that we were visiting,” she said. “[You’re] going to these sites of racial violence, going to the graves of these men and women that had been killed... you could see it in the students that something was hitting home. History was becoming real.”
In Florida, Black history has been ripped from schools under Governor DeSantis’ Statute 1003.42(h)
Books made by Black authors, pieces of history that paint white people in a bad light, detailed reviews of slavery: all of it is being swept under the rug due to the recent changes in the state’s education system. This erasure has continued to spiral through another bill DeSantis signed in last April, banning all public universities and colleges from being allowed to invest in DEI programs.
Barry University, as a private institution, is able to weave out of this bill to give attending students opportunities like these to learn. Where it’s easier for current legislators to do away with curriculum that depicts racial violence that occurred in the state, “Teach the Truth” shines a light on these events for Barry students.
Points of interest for the tours include mass lynching sites, graveyards, and the EJI Legacy Museum and National Monument to Peace and Justice.
Heather Burdick, steering committee member of TEAR, was in awe of the tour herself.
“The visceral experience of standing in the spaces where such trauma and tragedy occurred, hearing the stories from such knowledgeable and invested storytellers, created in me a deeper, more gut-level, recognition of the reverberations of historical racial terror still present today,” she said.
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