How City Year Detroit celebrated Black History Month

As we enter a new month, we want to take a moment to both reflect on and share a few of the celebrations and learnings that took place in the City Year Detroit community during Black History Month. Check out the information curated below and continue the conversation, resource sharing and celebration of Black history.

Black History Month decorations

We take great pride in our office lenticular wall with Detroit Black History facts.

Social media highlights

• AmeriCorps IG live series: Amplifying Black voices of service
• An insightful and reflective blog post by City Year Detroit AmeriCorps member Jaybazz Jacobs: “Black History lesson from the Civil Rights Era: Compassion, understanding and critical thinking“
• City Year Detroit Facebook and Instagram pages for more posts like children’s reading list, adult reading list, and City Year Detroit staff favorite Black-owned businesses around Detroit

Books and podcasts

• Teaching to thrive – a podcast committed to sharing ideas that strengthen the everyday lives of Black and brown students within our schools and communities. Each episode is aimed at empowering our knowledge for collective liberation.
• That they lived, African Americans who changed the world by Rochelle Riley and Christi Smith-Jones
• Linguistic justice, Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy by April Baker-Bell. Bringing together theory, research and practice to dismantle Anti-Black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy, this book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts.