Microsoft Launches Immersive Black History Month Experience Free for K-12 Students
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
Microsoft is bringing 13 of the world's top Black history museums to North American classrooms virtually to celebrate Black History Month.
The month-long series is free for K-12 students and schools who enroll in the program.
Teachers can also request private workshops for their classrooms.
"Black History Month is a time for people to come together and learn lessons from the past and apply them today and in the future," Global Sr. Community Program and Events Manager for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington Shy Averett, said.
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
Experiences students can expect to learn are watching Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; a presentation of Muhammad Ali's fight against systemic racism from the Ali Centers "Truth Be Told" exhibit; a virtual scavenger hunt of George Washington Carver's inventions presented by the Carver Museum; a tour of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum; a history of Black music during the Civil Rights Movement at the Grammy Museum; and a reading of Hidden Figures and Let the Children March from NBA & NFL players.
"We need to know our history so we can know what our future will look like," former Seattle Seahawks player Cliff Avril said in a statement.
Avril, 34, also shared, "My Black history hero is Toussaint Louverture, Haitian General, who led the Haitian Revolution and led the entire island of Haitians to freedom."
Microsoft
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Students can also learn about the history of slavery and eventual emancipation with Fort Monroe Authority.
Phyllis Terrell, Director of Communications at Fort Monroe Authority, added, "Teaching US history is incomplete if we don't include Black history. During every time period in the creation and development of this country, Africans and African Americans were a part of this history," Phyllis Terrell, Director of Communications at Fort Monroe Authority, said. "
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"It is extremely important to learn about our past—and share the truthful stories of beginnings in this country so that we can address the problems of race and inequities of today," Terrell added.
Microsoft will bring classrooms up to speed with information from its Current Day Black History Museum that highlights stories of today's African-American significant figures.
