Nikole Hannah-Jones, Cornel West, Dr. Jelani Cobb, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Sherrilyn Ifill, and John McWhorter make up an all-star team of scholars. These brilliant minds are coming together to provide a 10-hour-plus MasterClass offered during Black History Month about our story.
And access to this invaluable learning experience is free. Yes, free!
Such an offering (free) to the general public is a first for MasterClass and is possible because of the $2 million commitment MasterClass is making to create content that inspires and educates people about social justice and fighting against systemic racism.
The class, entitled Black History, Black Freedom, and Black Love, a three-part, 54 lesson class that deals with past, present, and future race relations, is available to stream for no cost on its website during February and can be accessed via Masterclass.com, IMDB TV and Amazon Prime Video. The class is broken down into three parts:
- Part I: The Past explores the ties between slavery and American capitalism, the 14th Amendment, and how the law acts as an agent of white supremacy, the history of voter suppression, and equality in education.
- Part II: The Present examines essential topics such as the origin of critical race theory, the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, and the legacy of Thurgood Marshall.
- Part III: The Future discusses how members can take what they have learned to move forward and create a society built on justice.
“Black History, Black Freedom, and Black Love is the most important and comprehensive class MasterClass has ever created,” said David Rogier, founder and CEO of MasterClass said in a statement. “This class teaches us how to build a society that honors Black voices, love and joy—lessons everyone can and should hear, which is why, for the first time ever, we are making a full class available for free on MasterClass.com. We are also teaming up with Amazon to make the class available to all Prime members on Prime Video, as well as on IMDb TV.”
Black History, Black Freedom, and Black Love cover over 400 years of American history and is said to “contextualizes thoughts of race and racism, discusses gaps in traditional education in U.S. history, and challenges these obstacles while offering tools and techniques to empower change in our own lives.”
“This class provides an uncensored and unfiltered version of Black history that is not typically taught in school,” said Nekisa Cooper, VP of content at MasterClass said in a statement. “Our groundbreaking instructors teach us the context of timely and important topics, hopefully delivering powerful lessons that will inspire action and help solve the problems we still face as a society today.”
-theGrio