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Dr. Marvin Dunn’s ‘Teach the Truth’ tours are what Florida needs to hear about Black history | Opinion

Back in the 1940’s and 50’s when I was attending Miami-Dade County’s segregated public schools, the textbooks we learned from often were passed down to us from white schools.

I remember one such book was our American history textbook. There was a chapter in the book about colonial life. Slavery was only mentioned briefly. There was no indication of the horror that slavery inflicted on the Black people who were in bondage. And there was little, if anything at all, about the contributions that Blacks made in the building of America.

The movies we saw didn’t tell the truth, either. I saw the movie “Song of the South” as a child. The Uncle Remus character was a slave who seemed to love his life as a slave. Even the slaves picking cotton seemed to enjoy working bent over under the blistering sun. It must have been fun because the movies depicted the slaves singing as they worked.

Later, as a teenager, I saw “Gone with the Wind.” What a wonderful life the slaves must have had, caring happily for their good Whites on a grand plantation. There was no sign of the beatings and lynchings of slaves in that movie, either.

Over time, we Blacks took the telling of our history in our own hands and we taught our truths to our children — in our homes and in our churches and schools. The stories told of the bitter hate toward Blacks that left many of them hanging from trees in the South. Being a woman, even a pregnant woman, often didn’t save one from the hangman’s noose.

While the stories aren’t pretty, they are a part of our history and need to be told, unadulterated, to everyone.

This is where Dr. Marvin Dunn enters the picture.

Exploring Florida’s Black history

A retired public school principal and university professor, Dunn has a passion for uncovering and teaching Black history, especially Florida Black history.

Dunn started the “Teach the Truth” tours, which takes high school students, their parents, and teachers to the sites of some of the worst racial violence in Florida history. The first tour took place on Jan. 8.

Dunn’s devout interest the racial violence in Florida got its start when he was working on a book about the riots in Miami linked to the death of Arthur McDuffie at the hands of police officers in 1980.

“I wanted to put a section of Miami history in the book. And while doing research, I learned a lot about anti-black violence in Florida,” Dunn said.

In 1996 he went to Gainesville, and while there, he said he decided to take ride to Rosewood — where in 1923 a massacre of Black people also destroyed the Black town.

“It was getting late in the day. I’m driving west on Highway 94 and there was nothing in Rosewood but a white Baptist church and a house. I took the first left off the highway and the road ended at an old railroad bed,” Dunn said.

As he walked down the old railroad tracks, Dunn saw a graveyard. Walking in, one of the first gravesites he saw was that of a Mr. Goings. Later, after doing more research, Dunn learned that the Goings family was the wealthiest Black family in Rosewood.

As he started walking back to his car that day, Dunn said he started felling “scared” because he was out in the woods alone:

“Nobody knew I was there. But as I walked, I had the strangest feeling — like the spirits [of the Black souls buried there] were following me out of the woods. I never got away from that feeling. It was like they were saying to me, ‘Thank you for finding us out here.’”

Once back in Miami, Dunn made plans to buy property in Rosewood. Dunn and a partner have purchased nearly six acres of Rosewood land, with plans to acquire more to be used later to develop a national park. His plan is to turn the land into a park to preserve Rosewood’s history: “This will be a place where people can go to pray and try to deal with their problems.”

When Dunn first acquired the property, he said, it was so overgrown that looking up, you couldn’t see the sky. “We have cleared it out. But I must be very careful about what I’m doing. The word is out,” he said.

And so it is. Last September while visiting the property with a group that included his adult son, a White neighbor near Dunn’s Rosewood property assaulted the group by yelling racial slurs and nearly running over his son. Dunn reported it to the local law officials. To this date, no charges have been filed against assailant.

Cemetery yields vivid details

Even so, the Jan. 8 “Teach the Truth” tour to Rosewood was held on schedule. One stop was to the Pleasant Plain Cemetery Dunn discovered on his first visit to the area. The weathered, timeworn cemetery holds the stories of the Blacks buried there.

One story is about the Rev. Josh J. Baskin, and five other Blacks, including a pregnant woman, hanged by a white mob in 1916 in nearby Newberry. Their crime? They were accused of stealing a hog. Today the incident is known as the Newberry Six Lynchings.

The story is so horrible that it is the kind that Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to ban from being taught in public schools because it just might make white student who hear the story feel guilty or uncomfortable.

I wonder if the governor cares about how the victims must have felt as their life was being choked out as they hung from an oak tree? Or how their loved ones must have felt as they were forced to watch the horrible event?

If DeSantis’ ideas about teaching history to our children is whitewashed and carried out as he wishes, such stories could even be wiped from Florida’s history books under the new education law he has put in place. Under the new education law, lessons on race must be taught in “an objective manner.” The lessons must not be used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view. Or to make them uncomfortable.

Dunn has challenged the DeSantis’ new education law, which went into effect last summer.

“DeSantis is dangerous. I don‘t of anyplace where kids are being told they must feel bad because of slavery. Where is this happening? It’s a ruse and it’s a lie. He [DeSantis] has touched a live wire here. He has hit a nerve. You can’t have states telling professors what they can teach. We don’t do that in America,” Dunn said.

Meanwhile, Dunn plans to continue his “Teach the Truth” tours. It would be a good for DeSantis to take the tour. He could learn a thing or two.

Bea L. Hines can be reached at bea.hines@gmail.com