‘Do I know my history?’ Los Angeles teens study Malcolm X and MLK with Stanford professor

For Cole Kahn, a student at Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet High School in Los Angeles, taking a Stanford course about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., was a transformative experience. “I’m from Compton, I go to Westchester, like, that’s me,” she said. “But like, do I know my history? Do I know where I belong? I feel like this course changed the way I view that.”

Through a program targeting high schools serving under-resourced communities, 89 students in Los Angeles earned Stanford credits last semester for completing the Stanford course “Between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Freedom,” taught by Lerone A. Martin, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and in African & African American Studies at Stanford.

More than half of those students received A’s.

Professor Martin worked with Stanford Digital Education and the New York-based nonprofit National Equity Education Lab to bring the course, previously offered to Stanford undergraduates, to seven high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In addition to earning credits from Stanford, the students also earned credits from their high schools.

The accompanying video offers a quick take on what students thought about the experience and on how the course provides students with subject matter not typically offered in high schools, as well as teaching them skills they will need to succeed in college. Equally important, their success in taking a course at Stanford — a college that had not been on their radars — gave them confidence that they could flourish at more selective schools than they had previously considered. 

“It transformed them . . . in terms of what they thought was possible,” said Martin, who also serves as the director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. In an interview earlier this year, he said that he hoped that the two leaders would become "conversation partners" for the high school students throughout their lives, as they grapple with the pressing social issues of the day. 

If you're interested in being a teaching fellow in the course or helping to support it in some other way, please send an email to digitaleducation@stanford.edu and put "Malcolm-Martin course" in the subject line.

Transcript

Lerone A. Martin, professor: [In the Westchester classroom, addressing students] We need conversation partners and we need to be able to talk across difference, and you all and your generation, you do not have really good examples of that. Democracies don't work when people are yelling and screaming at each other. They don't work when people are not having conversation. They actually work when it's deliberative. And you all, your generation especially, my generation, I would say as well, we got to have a place where we learn how to do that. And the classroom has to be that place.

[In his office] This particular class that I teach through the King Institute is a class called “Between Malcolm and Martin,” and it's a class that we put students in conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. And we chose these two individuals, one, because of their social impact. They are two of the most iconic Americans. You can hardly go anywhere in American life and not see references or images to these individuals.

Cole Kahn, Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet student: Well, I'm from Compton. I go to Westchester, like, that’s me. But like, do I know my history? Do I know where I belong? I feel like this course changed the way I view that, because now I see these people. Martin and Malcolm were kind of like our George Washington and our Hamilton. I feel like I don't know who I am without knowing that these two worked so hard.

Joan Ilegbameh, Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet student: Well, one thing that kind of is like ringing in the back of my head is that speech we watched where Malcolm said, Who taught you to hate the way you look, hate the way your hair is, you know, hate the way you see yourself? I'm in this body until I go, so there's no reason why I should hate the body that I was given.

Lerone A. Martin: This dual enrollment course that we're offering is made possible by a partnership between Stanford Digital Education and the National Education Equity Lab. The course is a hybrid course. The students are in their high school classrooms across the country, and they're led by their high school teacher. But the curriculum is provided by myself and it's the same course that I teach students here at Stanford University.

And the secret sauce to the course was this role we invented called “teaching fellow.”

Anna Rose Robinson, Stanford student: I decided to become a teaching fellow for the Malcolm and Martin dual enrollment course because I was missing the student engagement that I got in high school. But I wasn't sure how I would get that same kind of engagement at Stanford. And so when I saw this opportunity, I was like, That sounds perfect.

Lerone A. Martin: The first reason I taught this class has a lot to do with who I am and that is the fact I'm a first generation college graduate. And so I took a class at a local college and was like, Wow, like, yeah, I can do this. I can do this work.

Anna Rose Robinson: The meat of our section was the passage discussion activity. So those passages were taken from primary sources, so like the writings of Malcolm X and MLK themselves. And then after that we normally did an exit ticket. So the exit ticket was usually, like, a reflection of the class that they had learned something new, or thought in a way that they hadn't before.

Cole Kahn: This course has changed the way I think about college. I think that the course itself taught me that college isn't a place necessarily where you learn knowledge all the time. It's also a place where you shape the person you're about to be for almost the rest of your life.

Lerone A. Martin: It transformed them in terms of their own political outlook and how they understand the circumstances in which they find themselves. But more important, it transformed them and transformed them in terms of what they thought was possible. Taking a college course at Stanford University, no less.

Joan Ilegbameh: Honestly, part of me kind of tried to envision myself being at Stanford, and I was like, Wow. Like, I'm really taking a course at an exceptional school, at Stanford. I was like, Oh, my God, wait. Like, I'm actually doing this. And I feel like it also helped motivate me to do better than I can and just, like, prove myself.

If you're interested in being a teaching fellow in the course or helping to support it in some other way, please send an email to digitaleducation@stanford.edu and put "Malcolm-Martin course" in the subject line.

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