Returning to Retrieve What Was Forgotten

Rudyard Kipling penned the words, “East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” Except in the case of Fund for Teachers Fellows Natasha Alston and Denise Carter-Mataboge. 

Natasha teaches at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, AZ, and Denise teaches at the Neighborhood Charter School: Harlem, NY. They didn’t even know each other a year ago. But they DID know they wanted to teach African American History in a way neither of them experienced as students.

Today, we are learning from “Team Sankofa,” the name Denise and Natasha gave their Fund for Teachers partnership that used a $10,000 grant to explore the life of William Tucker, tracing his origin story from the first slave ship landing in North America back to the colonized country of Angola. Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana that means “to go back and get;” but Natasha and Denise prefer the interpretation used by the Akan people of Ghana which is "it is not wrong to go back for that which has been forgotten.” 

Toni Morrison writes in the preface of Beloved, "To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must get out of the way." Denise and Natasha took Morrison’s words to heart, using their grant to push beyond cursory narratives in textbooks and bear witness to enslavement from its starting point in Africa. The following conversation with Team Sankofa centered around their experiences and deepened motivation to reclaim forgotten chapters of history often omitted from American education and ensure that these crucial early stories of our nation are preserved and shared with students.

(Click here for more information on The William Tucker 1624 Society and here for the USA Today article Natasha references on the podcast.)

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Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress