The Black Excellence Project

The students whose work appears in this collection spent months learning and writing about Black Excellence. Their efforts show that Black Excellence is not one thing, but is as rich and diverse as the variety of Black experience itself. From Dorothy Height to Benjamin Banneker to Taraji P. Henson, across fields like math, law, and entertainment, readers will find pictures of Black Excellence that not only celebrate a life but show how that life stands up to the racism shaping society still today. Each essay profiles at least one leading Black figure connected to the home where our students live and go to school: Washington, D.C. Students analyze the life of these individuals and try to find what, in their unique way, makes each a model for Black excellence. In the process, students learn how to let these lives inspire their own. Both the figures profiled in these essays and the students who wrote them resist the racism in our society not by calling it out directly but through vibrant and forceful examples that undermine the assumptions and failures of imagination on which racism thrives. This book stands as a showcase to what a dedicated, positive anti-racism curriculum can look like in a high school setting that promotes Black Excellence through pride, scholarship, and understanding.