A black history class was held under the trees at the University of Florida

The Rosewood Massacre was just a short paragraph in one of Stephanie Borden’s textbooks when she was in elementary school.

“I didn’t teach a lot of black history from school,” a 27-year-old marine biology student at Florida International University told the Miami Herald. Slavery, Abraham Lincoln freed slaves, Martin Luther King Jr. and his assassination, and Barack Obama’s presidency, were highlights of the black history she studied at school.

“My study of black history came from my family,” she said.

But on Tuesday, as she sat on the newly baptized Black History Learning Tree on Florida International University’s campus, a small sip of history she learned about the Rosewood massacre transformed into a full-scale lesson from historian and former professor Marvin Dunn. In an Instagram post on March 17th, Dunn announced that he will be holding a free class for those who want to learn black history under the trees at Stephen and the Dorothea Green Library. And he did it without the permission of FIU officials, he said.

“It’s important to stand up now, and now it’s important to resist this attack on our democracy,” Dan said. “Most of my colleagues are vulnerable, if not all of the FIU. I don’t expect any of them to sit under that tree with me. I don’t blame them.

In February, former Lieutenant Colonel Janet Nunez was appointed interim president of the FIU. Her appointment was the latest in a wave of conservative and well-connected politicians taking over president at state universities under Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Dan’s black history lessons come when the state limits how black history is taught in schools. This is a trend seen nationwide as the Trump administration signed executive orders to eliminate diversity, equity and comprehensive initiatives and to eliminate those threatening to withhold funds from schools that feel ideologically radio. At the same time, FIU and other state universities had to eliminate general education courses that included “theories inherent to the US systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege.”

Dan, who spent his academic background at FIU, chose the tree as a way to institutionalize black history on campus and specify a place where black history can be taught, he said. Dan said black people often used trees as a gathering place when elders gathered in Africa to make decisions and pass through oral history. “I don’t know of a single black community where black men usually interact, tell stories, play dozens, and don’t have the trees to gather to get drunk from time to time, but I mainly tell our history,” he said. “That’s the tradition I come to and I hope that other universities will establish that they learn trees, just as other universities will protect our history on those campuses.”

Dan’s voice fought the din at the Open Plaza, noting the importance of telling such history before a assembled class of about 30 people.

Today’s lesson jumps into the story of the Rosewood massacre, explaining the burning of a predominantly black Florida town, inciting violent white mobs after white woman Fanny Taylor lied about the black man who was beating her. Dan owns five acres of land in Rosewood. One of his neighbors in the small Gulf town launched a racially motivated attack on Dan and was convicted of a hate crime. Dan famously forgave his attackers and sought Renience in his federal trial.

“I was raised in a church and my parents taught me to forgive at least once,” he answered a question asking why he forgave his neighbors. “That was the motivation, but I caught some fever for it.”

Dan also spoke about the lynching of Willie James Howard, a 15-year-old boy from Live Oak, Florida. Howard later wrote her. Golf’s father and two other white men took the boy out of the house, tied him down, took him to the Suwanee River, and chose to be shot or drowned. As his father watched, he jumped into the river.

While onlookers passed and listened, Dan continued with some stories of Florida’s black history, teaching him about the lynching of Kingsray Plantation and what constitutes history. Students also received a free copy of “1619 Project: A Story of New Origins” by Nicole Hannah Jones.

This is a kind of history of 19-year-old FIU student Abigail Costello, who said she was afraid of being erased. She said she noticed that certain terms were being used incorrectly now. For example, she said high school teachers began using the term “indentured service” rather than “slavery” when referring to American slavery. Indentured servants include labor contracts in which a person agrees to work for a certain number of years, with a promise of freedom.

“There are a lot of things I didn’t learn from school that I’m excited about learning outside of school in this field,” she said. “It was just about taking in a lot of information, but now I know I brought my next notepad.”

Borden said he felt that he had the driving force to eliminate professors who teach specific subjects and efforts to inaccurately teach history.

“Black history is American history,” Borden said. “It all comes together. Sorry if it makes you feel bad because your history may be a bit contaminated,” she said.

Dan is scheduled to continue his weekly black history lessons, and has already lined up two guest speakers, including Chanle Capelly, whose legs had been amputated at the age of 12 during the Miami riots of the 1980s. Dan encouraged people to follow his social media about when the next lesson will take place.

“It was important to me to make the first statement that Day was not dead on this campus. We’ll be here again and again,” he said. “It’s not just one,” Dan plans to tell more stories in other parts of Miami-Dade. On Wednesday afternoon, he posted on Instagram about the Overtown Black History Learning Tree at The Teach the Truth Garden, 901 NW Third Avenue. No dates were announced.

As for Borden, she will make it as often as possible. “I learned a lot, and that was (only an hour and a half,” said Borden. “Anything I have to do, come to hell or high waters, I’ll come back.”