Thousands of years of the rich culture of African empires are ignored in the history books, leaving people with an inaccurate and incomplete portrait of where Africans really came from and all that their descendants went through.

During Black History Month schools may put up a Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) poster in the hallway or feature a display of cobwebbed black history novels in the library for a couple of weeks, but what else are they doing to teach black history to students? This month is set aside to remember black heritage, so why are students so rarely taught black heritage? And better yet, why is black history always glazed over in the school curriculum for the other eleven months of the year?

As far as most people are concerned, black history started when the Europeans first landed in West Africa and is confined to slavery, MLK and President Barack Obama. Before the Europeans arrived, Africa had several thriving empires with hundreds of thousands of citizens. They traded luxury goods and made advancements in mathematics, astrology and medicine. Despite the fact that Africa is the second to largest continent and Europe is the second to smallest, students have a far more comprehensive understanding of Europe’s history. Unfortunately, that is a reflection of the curriculum’s neglect to acknowledge African history.

Not only are Americans unaware of Africa before the Europeans arrived, but the true horrors of slavery and the middle passage are hardly given the acknowledgement they deserve. Many Texas textbooks refer to slaves as “workers” or “immigrants” and give only mild descriptions of the physical, psychological and sexual abuse that generations of Africans endured every day. Furthermore, the racism and abuse did not stop with the emancipation of slaves–the news of which did not reach many slaves until years after the fact. Many people are still unaware of the brutality that black people faced under the laws of Jim Crow that led to the outbreak of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. My own parents have countless stories of facing harsh racism in their lives, all of which are a culmination of centuries of bad blood between blacks and whites.

America cannot be expected to move past the racial conflict plaguing this country until we fully acknowledge the origins of the issue. Black history and American history are synonymous, and because of that it is crucial that we start properly educating people about what black history means. Even a small step such as showing a slavery documentary or two in class would make a considerable impact on people’s understanding of black history.