As February marks Black History Month, a group of Democratic lawmakers has introduced the African American History Act as they claim states are “purposefully” removing Black history from school curriculums.

The group of Democrats, led by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, cited Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent announcement blocking an Advanced Placement course teaching Black history from being taught in Florida high schools.

“The story of Black people in America is inextricably linked to the story of America. The fullness of this rich history must be told -- both its dark chapters and the light brought by generations of people determined to overcome and make our country better through an ongoing quest for justice,” said Booker. “We have seen this happen far too many times throughout history – where some dismiss our important stories and intentionally change the way history is told to fit political agendas. As we begin Black History Month, I am proud to reintroduce this legislation.”

Advocates for the legislation said it would invest $10 million over five years in the National Museum of African American History and Culture to support programs that are voluntarily available for students, parents, and educators. 

Other Democrats have wanted to go a step further. 

Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio introduced the  Black History is American History Act. Her bill would require entities applying for and receiving grants through the Presidential and Congressional Academies to include Black history as part of the American history and civics-related workshops and teachings for educators and students, she said. 

DeSantis has said Florida schools currently allow the teaching of Black history but took issue with certain aspects of the framework of the new Advanced Placement course. The course, which the College Board is developing, is undergoing a review process.

“This course is an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture,” said David Coleman, CEO of the College Board. “No one is excluded from this course: the Black artists and inventors whose achievements have come to light; the Black women and men, including gay Americans, who played pivotal roles in the civil rights movement; and people of faith from all backgrounds who contributed to the antislavery and civil rights causes. Everyone is seen.”

LELAND, N.C. — Buildings are knocked down every day to make way for new construction.

But in one community, people are coming together to rebuild an old chapel to preserve and honor its history.

If you look past the cobwebs and chipped paint, this building has a story to tell.

“Reaves Chapel is located on the banks of Cape Fear River, and we’re estimating that it was built by former enslaved African Americans on the Cedar Hill Plantation right around the 1850s, 1860s,” Al Beatty, the president of the Cedar Hill/West Bank Heritage Foundation, said.

It was moved to the lot it sits on now in the early 1900s, just outside Wilmington, North Carolina.

“It became active and stayed active until roughly 2005,” Beatty said. “The church was deteriorating pretty rapidly.”

Beatty has been visiting this building most of his life.

“Around 1955, 1956 somewhere in that time frame,” he explained.

“I grew up in the community here. I can walk to the church from my house.”

So he decided to create the Cedar Hill/West Bank Heritage Foundation to restore it.

With the help of partner organizations and fundraising, renovations started about three months ago.

They are trying to preserve every part possible, including the original bell which currently sits in storage.

“Historic preservation is important for a variety of reasons. First of all, when you preserve the built history of a community it grounds your community, to give your community a sense of place, a sense of identity, of uniqueness,” Travis Gilbert, executive director of the Historic Wilmington Foundation, said.

The nonprofit provides resources in the community to preserve the area’s history.

It has also played a role in restoring Reaves Chapel.

“Our region has lacked the preservation and interpretation of Black historic sites, and the preservation of Reaves Chapel is one of many efforts to bring that history back to the forefront of our shared experience,” he explained.

“This particular structure is at the northern range of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which is a national park service corridor identified specifically because of the culture of the descendants of the people, the Gullah Geechee, from West Africa that were brought over specifically for their knowledge of rice cultivation,” Jesica Blake, associate director of the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, said.

The land trust has partnered with Beatty’s foundation for the past six years to help buy and preserve the chapel.

“It’s American history that hasn't been told really well and this structure is a piece of that history,” Blake said.

“It’s the oldest building, African American structure in this area. You have to realize after slavery because of the laws and because of Jim Crow, African Americans weren't allowed to socialize at a lot of other public places, so churches and schools were very instrumental,” Beatty said.

He said the project sends a message about preserving this piece of the past.

“It’s not being wiped out as other history in the country had been,” he said.

The plan is for the building to be finished by the end of the year.

While it may never hold services again, Beatty and Blake hope it will be accepted by the state as a historical site, with the original bell and all.

“This was our venue for outside letting us know there was a bigger world than just here,” Beatty said.

February is all about celebrating black history, and throughout the month we'll be honoring influential African Americans whose stories you might not yet know. Some are pioneers in their field, some helped spark the civil rights movement, and all have contributed incredible things to not only black history, but to the history of the United States as a whole.Discover the story of how Bessie Coleman became the first African American woman to earn her pilot license by watching the video above.

Tell the whole story. That’s the goal as $3 million is awarded by the National Trust to sites vital to Black history.

One place that’s been around since the early 1900s is now looking to bring back a very special room.

The story goes, in the old days of the Hotel Metropolitan in Paducah, Kentucky, there'd be a slice of pie for the man playing guitar on the porch and slices of pie waiting for the guests in the rooms upstairs.

"Food had a real part in the hotel,” said Betty Dobson, who runs the hotel today. "Food is the way most Black people express their love."

Dobson said there's something you should know about who was being served those slices of pie.

"Oh, you wanted that pie story?" she smiled.

The man on the porch? That was BB King. The guests in the rooms upstairs? That was any number of musicians, so famous that their faces are on murals across the country. They were acts like Ike and Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, and Moms Mabley.

"Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Billie Holliday," Dobson listed off. "It still excites me to come through these doors cause those famous souls were here."

Dobson will tell you the place that's key to the Hotel Metropolitan's story is an unassuming little building around the back.

"The Purple Room," she said, unlocking a door to a two-room building with dirt floors.

Before their gigs in Paducah, this was the space where the acts would rehearse, meaning this little neighborhood had free admission, front porch seats to hear the greats.

"Folks were dancing!” Dobson laughed. “It sounded like Mardi Gras in there! It kinda tells you there was some fun in here."

Dobson remembers her work in the room.

"If your suit needed pressing, I could take care of you here at the hotel," Dobson continued, showing an old suit presser in the Purple Room.

Dobson said the presser and the barber station at the hotel were things born out of necessity.

In the 1940 edition of the Green Book, an on-the-road guide for Black travelers to find safe places, there were only two hotels listed for Paducah. Dobson shared, it was in the years of Jim Crow laws, the Purple Room had to be here as rehearsal space.

"The venues were white,” she explained. “It was intolerable to have you there in the daytime if you were a Black entertainer. Once they got to here, being owned mainly by women, I can see that compassion to say, ‘Come on in, baby. I know it's been hard, but you done made it here. Go on upstairs and lay down, get you some rest, and we'll make a plan tomorrow.’"

Dobson said something has just come along to help her tell the story of the people who stayed in these rooms.

The National Trust has just awarded $3 million to 40 different sites important to Black history, including the Karamu House in Cleveland, Ohio, the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge in Atlanta, Georgia, the Sarah Rector Mansion in Kansas City, Missouri, and an unassuming little building around the back of the Hotel Metropolitan.

Dobson wants to use the funds to restore the Purple Room, to make it a gathering space again.

"If I'm here or not, the dream is to make the Hotel Metropolitan story whole," she said.

HUDSON, Ohio — According to an American Legion Department of Ohio news release, the Hudson Lee-Bishop American Legion, whose post officer cut the microphone of a veteran as he spoke about Memorial Day’s connection to Black history during a speech on Memorial Day, has been suspended pending permanent closure.

Jim Garrison, the Hudson American Legion’s post officer and the man who was discovered to have censored retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter’s speech at Markillie Cemetery on Memorial Day, has also resigned as a post officer, and the American Legion has demanded that he resign his membership altogether.

“The American Legion Department of Ohio does not hold space for members, veterans, or families of veterans who believe that censoring black history is acceptable behavior,” the release states. “We discovered that the censoring that occurred at the Memorial Day Ceremony in Hudson, Ohio, sponsored by Hudson American Legion Post 464, was premeditated and planned by Jim Garrison and Cindy Suchan."

American Legion officials told News 5 partner the Akron Beacon Journal that Suchan, who chairs the Memorial Day Parade Committee and is president of the Hudson American Legion Auxiliary, has not resigned.

Still, her case is being handled by the American Legion Auxiliary of Ohio.

During his Memorial Day speech, Kemter referenced historians from Harvard when he said, “Memorial Day was first commemorated by an organized group of freed black slaves less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered."

News 5 was provided an original copy of Kemter's complete speech. You can read it here.

Just before Kemter expanded on how the Black community paid tribute to Union troops, his microphone was cut off — which Kemter recognized — but he kept going and spoke louder.

Watch the video of Kemter's speech in the video player below, as recorded by Hudson Community Television. Kemter's microphone is cut off at around the 50-minute mark.

Memorial Day 2021 from Hudson Community Television on Vimeo.

Suchan and Garrison “knew exactly when to turn the volume down and when to turn it back up,” the American Legion Department of Ohio release stated.

Before the event, Kemter gave a copy of the speech to Suchan, who asked him to remove the specific part of the speech about how newly freed black slaves first commemorated Memorial Day after the Civil War.

“These actions of Post 464, through its authorized representatives or officers in attempting to censor or suppress that portion of LTC Kemters’ speech and effectively doing so by reducing the speaker system volume, constitutes a violation of the ideals and purposes of the American Legion,” the release states.

Suchan had told the Akron Beacon Journal that the volume was turned down during part of Kemter’s speech because “it was not relevant to our program for the day” and the “theme of the day was honoring Hudson veterans.”

The American Legion Department of Ohio concluded the news release by stating:

“We are deeply saddened by this and stand in unity and solidarity with the black community and all peoples of race, color, religion, sex, and gender, so that those who are exclusive of such persons will know that this behavior is not acceptable in The American Legion, in our homes, our hearts, our communities, in private, public, or anywhere. We will continue to educate the value of diversity. Being different amongst each other is what makes us better – together.”

Ian Cross at WEWS first reported this story.

WASHINGTON —

President Joe Biden will take part in a remembrance of one of the nation’s darkest — and largely forgotten — moments of racial violence Tuesday when he helps commemorate the 100th anniversary of the destruction of a thriving Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Biden’s appearance, in which he marks the deaths of hundreds of Black people killed by a white mob a century ago, comes amid a national reckoning on racial justice.

Biden will be the first president to participate in remembrances of the destruction of what was known as "Black Wall Street." In 1921 — on May 31 and June 1 — some Tulsans looted and burned the Greenwood district.

He will meet privately with survivors of the massacre. Up to 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.

During Tuesday's meeting, Biden will "convey his heartfelt gratitude for their bravery in sharing the stories of the trauma and violence that was wrought on them and their families," said White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Biden also "will explain that we need to know our history from the original sin of slavery, through the Tulsa race massacre to racial discrimination and housing in order to build common ground, to truly repair and rebuild," she said.

America's continuing struggle over race will continue to test Biden, whose presidency would have been impossible without overwhelming support from Black voters, both in the Democratic primaries and the general election.

Biden has pledged to help combat racism in policing and other areas of life following nationwide protests after George Floyd's death a year ago that reignited a national conversation about race. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes.

After Chauvin was convicted in April, Biden said the country’s work was far from finished with the verdict, declaring, "We can't stop here."

He called on Congress to act swiftly to address policing reform. But he has also long projected himself as an ally of police, who are struggling with criticism about long-used tactics and training methods and difficulties in recruitment.

The Tulsa massacre has only recently entered the national discourse — and the presidential visit will put an even brighter spotlight on the event.

"This is so important because we have to recognize what we have done if we are going to be otherwise," said Eddie Glaude, chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. Biden's visit, Glaude said, "has to be more than symbolic. To tell the truth is the precondition for reconciliation, and reconciliation is the basis for repair."

Biden, while visiting the Greenwood Cultural Center, is set to announce new measures to help narrow the wealth gap between Blacks and whites and reinvest in underserved communities by expanding access to homeownership and small-business ownership.

The White House said the administration will take steps to address disparities that result in Black-owned homes being appraised at tens of thousands of dollars less than comparable homes owned by whites as well as issue new federal rules to fight housing discrimination.

The administration is also setting a goal of increasing the share of federal contracts awarded to small disadvantaged businesses by 50% by 2026, funneling an estimated additional $100 billion to such businesses over the five-year period, according to the White House.

Historians say the massacre in Tulsa began after a local newspaper drummed up a furor over a Black man accused of stepping on a white girl’s foot. When Black Tulsans showed up with guns to prevent the man’s lynching, white residents responded with overwhelming force.

Tensions persist a century later.

Organizers called off a separate commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, saying no agreement could be reached over monetary payments to three survivors of the deadly attack. It highlights broader debates over reparations for racial injustice.

Reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved and for other racial discrimination have been debated in the U.S. since slavery ended in 1865. Now they are being discussed by colleges and universities with ties to slavery and by local governments looking to make cash payments to Black residents.

Some of Tulsa’s Black residents question whether the $20 million spent to build the Greenwood Rising museum in an increasingly gentrified part of the city could have been better spent helping Black descendants of the massacre or residents of the city’s predominantly Black north side several miles away from Greenwood.

Disagreements among Black leaders in Tulsa over the handling of commemorative events and millions of dollars in donations have led to two disparate groups planning separate slates of anniversary events.

Biden, who was vice president to the nation's first Black president and who chose a Black woman as his own vice president, backs a study of reparations, both in Tulsa and more broadly, but has not committed to supporting payments. He recently declared the need for America to confront its past, saying, "We must acknowledge that there can be no realization of the American dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery and the centuries-long campaign of violence, fear and trauma wrought upon African American people in this country."

He issued a proclamation designating Monday as a "day of remembrance" for the massacre.