By RENÉE M. BARON

Last February, a fourth-year drama student eloquently lamented the manner in which African-American history is rarely recognized as a central aspect of American history—except during Black History Month, "the shortest month of the year." At the end of his piece—inspired by a visit to the exhibition "Slavery in New York," shown at the New-York Historical Society last year and now a permanent feature there—the author, recent drama graduate François Battiste, wrote: "In order to get into our nation's veins, we must not count on our classrooms to reveal what has so long been intentionally buried. It's outside the classrooms—it's in the libraries, it's in taking a vital role in our children's education, it's in the exhibitions like the one currently at the New-York Historical Society that we'll get a deeper portrait of the land in which we live."

These words stung. They reminded me of the pain and alienation that over the years I have heard some black students express about their educational experiences. The holes that this neglect created often sent students—no, compelled them, really—to do extra work in order to compensate for what was missing. Nonetheless, I believe what happens in the classroom must also be an integral part of the process. In September, African-American literature was added to the ever-growing array of electives taught in Juilliard's Liberal Arts Department. Although it had already been proposed and added to the curriculum when Mr. Battiste's article was published, the experiences of the students in the class demonstrate his point and offer some insight into why a course like this is so important, particularly at Juilliard.

The class, taught by Ron Price and myself, includes an insightful, multiethnic mix of students, who often reflect that the African-American history and literature to which they were introduced during their elementary and secondary educations was generally limited to knowing what fourth-year trombonist Christopher Reaves calls "the occasional Black History Month special mentions": Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and Martin Luther King Jr. Fourth-year jazz pianist Aaron Diehl remembers "being taught a segment on Dr. Martin Luther King during Black History Month, and the civil rights movement in my junior English class, but aside from that, there were no required assignments regarding the subject of African-Americans."

Knowing one's history is the first step in developing a critical sensibility about one's world, and it is this critical dimension that is lacking in the way African-American experience is included in most curriculums today.

Third-year organist Mitchell Crawford also recalls that the celebration of diversity at his school was reserved for this month as well, but in actuality became even shorter. "I always found it ironic that 'month' became week, which became day … and that was that," he notes. "However, I went to a magnet high school where 60 to 70 percent of the student body was black. The cultural question marks that were implanted there have been thankfully addressed here at Juilliard. Students for whom diversity is important should make African-American literature a priority; the experience of the African- American is as central to the American tapestry as any other."

Because African-American-related material was limited to one month and not integrated into a multicultural vision of American history, the most a student could learn were some basic facts, nothing more. This is where the real problem lies. There was no further exploration, no critical assessment of what these people of color thought about the world or their place in it. If there had been, students would have known, for example, that before Phillis Wheatley's first collection of poetry was published in 1773, she was examined by a group of Boston's most elite men—a group including the governor and Declaration of Independence signer John Hancock—who believed it impossible that an 18-year-old black girl could be so accomplished as a poet. (Another great American, Thomas Jefferson, would never believe it.) Despite this (or perhaps because of it?), Wheatley felt compelled to make her voice heard among her contemporaries. She wrote poems about the great leaders and events of her day. Indeed, she corresponded with and sent George Washington a copy of her collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. She even managed to meet with him.

Wheatley also had her own expertise in black history. When she was bought by the Wheatley family at the age of 7, research shows that she could remember some aspects of her culture in West Africa, which informed her lyrical sensibilities. She was also aware of all the African people in her world, both real and literary. She knew of her contemporary, the poet Jupiter Hammon. Further, she had her own black literary forefather, the second-century playwright Terence. In her poem "To Maecenas," she invokes him and writes in a footnote, "He was African by birth" before she asks the patron Maecenas, "why this partial grace/to one alone of Afric's sable race." Although the insistently Christian approach to her work might seem naïve in today's world and some (including some of my students) find her work artistically and thematically limited, her role as a critic of her own experience is my emphasis here: that she used her knowledge of her own history to empower herself, to define her experience for herself, particularly in a world that did not acknowledge her humanity in the most rudimentary sense.

Knowing one's history is the first step in developing a critical sensibility about one's world, and it is this critical dimension that is lacking from the way African-American experience is included in most curriculums today, even during Black History Month. The issue is not simply knowing the facts and details about one aspect of American culture; it is about using those facts and details, no matter how painful, to inform one's individual perspective about living in the world. It is like existing in Plato's cave; one needs to see the whole picture—the sun—to have perspective on one's own experience. It is a critical sensibility that all students need but that students of color often don't get.

I recently spent the day with my mentoring student, NiJa Okura, visiting an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society titled "Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on Slavery." In it, contemporary African-American artists contemplated the manner in which slavery affected their sense of themselves as individuals and as artists. For most African-Americans and others sensitive to the cruelties of history, reflecting on slavery and its legacy is necessarily painful, but these artists did so fearlessly. Their works were always compelling and often beautiful. Even the pieces with troubling references to rape and lynching were mesmerizing. The bravery entailed in grappling with the ugliest parts of American history ultimately empowered these artists to express themselves. And in the end, this is what classes like African-American Literature hope to offer students in the Juilliard community: the paradigm of others who grappled with history in order to create art—in this case literary art. Third-year actor Finn Wittrock writes of his own experience in class that he had been "finding myself naked of heritage at times and looking for a body of art with some connective tissues and here it is, albeit painful and full of quiet rage, but such is the best fuel for the most beautiful creations."

Liberal Arts faculty member Renée M. Baron specializes in American and Caribbean literatures and cultures. In 2006 she received the Erskine Prize for faculty to support her scholarship.