The Black Experience in America: The Course

Introducing Jon Fortt’s new photo portfolio at fortt.net, including this shot from the streets of Bangkok, Thailand.

I took a pictures of some street musicians in New Orleans a few years back, when I was first practicing shooting with my Sony a7ii and a long lens. I decided to turn one into a t-shirt design.

Blow Short Sleeve Tee - Etsy This Gender-Neutral Adult T-shirts item is sold by CatFortt. Ships from Hialeah, FL. Listed on Feb 12, 2024

When Jon Fortt designed The Black Experience in America: The Course, he wanted it to be accessible. So from the beginning, the digital resources have included this free version of the curriculum overview. Hundreds of people have downloaded it. Share the post, and get yours today.

Curriculum: The Black Experience in America Black history, identity and culture provide a window into American history and the challenges ahead.

"One way of looking at The Microscope — and it’s the way I look at it, because I’m a communicator — is that it’s about storytelling. At the macro level, the data uncovers stories that otherwise would have been ignored. At the micro level, digital video clarifies stories that would have been dismissed."

Our Stories Drive Change: Black Entrepreneurs in D.C., and Johns Hopkins Sibley's Ward Infinity The last full lesson in The Black Experience in America: The Course — and this material is for adults down to junior high — is called The Microscope. It’s called that because I believe that’s an apt name for today’s reality when it comes to race in America. Under digital technology’s mic...

Join Jon Fortt tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET!

Bonus episode! Join the village on September 8 at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT as Jon Fortt, CNBC Anchor and Creator of The Black Experience in America: The Course shares how exploring the Black experience in education can build strong and positive identities and empower students.

"This, I believe, is part of the universal importance of the Black experience as part of the American experience: As the nation struggles to emerge from a pandemic, we know our creativity can overcome hardship — even when the hardship is self-imposed."

Bessie Smith, St. Louis Blues, and Breaking Convention I was thinking about Bessie Smith today, because I’m working on a personal project and I need some inspiration. And as I was designing The Black Experience in America: The Course, she brought me one of those “Aha” moments. A little more than a year ago I was in the post-Civil-War home stretch ...

"The negative countercurrents had their roots in false racial narratives about Black people — no matter that some of those narratives were now amplified in our own community. What would I believe? What would I internalize?"

Race and the Truth Behind the Ugly Duckling When I was growing up in Washington, D.C. in the '80s, identity — blackness — was a smorgasbord. Through eighth grade I went to mostly Black public schools. My mother, an artist, started an afrocentric greeting card line. My father pastored a Black church in Northeast, and beginning when I was n...

"The mental health of the high-achieving is getting attention lately, as first Naomi Osaka and then Simone Biles stepped back from big competitive moments for reasons many in the public did not understand. As I’ve reflected on it, the dynamic at play for these athletes — the pressure to remain composed and perform, even at the cost of their wellbeing — reminds me of a lesson in The Black Experience in America: The Course."

Masks, Black Achievement and Mental Health The mental health of the high-achieving is getting attention lately, as first Naomi Osaka and then Simone Biles stepped back from big competitive moments for reasons many in the public did not understand. As I’ve reflected on it, the dynamic at play for these athletes —

“I love America, this work in progress, rife as it is with contradictions. And it occurred to me that with branches that reach this high, roots this deep, no one gets to tell me how to be an American. It’s not ‘love it or leave it.’ It’s ‘love it and build it.’ That’s the work ahead.”

This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land* A couple of years back, before I had the spark of an idea to create The Black Experience In America: The Course, I spent a few months doing some obsessive digital sleuthing. Using public records on Ancestry.com, I was determined to see how far back I could trace my family tree.

"... it’s honestly a bit jarring to have Juneteenth suddenly in the mainstream — a bit like the photo last year of White Democratic lawmakers kneeling in the kente cloth scarves/stoles long favored among ministers in the Black church. Juneteenth went from being not a Black community observance, but a regional Black community observance, to a federal holiday at warp speed."

What, to America, is Juneteenth? A longtime regional celebration in the Black community is suddenly a national holiday