The Importance of Education – Cheryl Braude

Today at the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum we met a group of visitors who were a Black church group from Florida.  I looked at the children in this group and immediately felt saddened by Florida’s efforts to diminish historical reporting of the events about which we were learning.  While there were numerous moving moments during my visit, my most emotional moment came via a conversation I overheard. A woman was telling some children that they needed to make sure the information they were learning was accurate; they shouldn’t take anything at face value.  Given these children are victims of the education system of DeSantis, my heart sank. At the end of our visit, I had the opportunity to speak with one of the women in this church group (they were mostly dressed in gold t-shirts) and shared the conversation I overheard in the context of the whitewashing of education in FL.  I expressed my concern and she just  looked at me and said “It’s a lot “.    I teared up and shared that my heart breaks for her community and she again repeated “It’s a lot”.  My hope is that the children of FL will again have access to quality education.