It remains to be seen whether, and to what extent, State Senator Katrina Robinson’s destiny is affected by two pending indictments against her 
State Senator Katrina Robinson
on fraud charges, but the first-term Memphis legislator seems to remain focused on whatever legacy her work in the Senate will leave.
On Thursday, Robinson saw SB 1101, her bill to expand the teaching of Black history in Tennessee schools, pass safely out of the Senate Education Committee and onto the body’s Calendar Committee, which will prepare the measure for an imminent vote on the floor of the Senate.
Tennessee law already requires the teaching of Black history in public schools, but Robinson’s bill would expand the scope of such teaching and mandate that it be taught in the 5th and 8th grades, though, as Robinson pointed out, local LEA’s [school districts] would have broad say on curricular matters.
Discussion of the bill probed into the matter of what is new in the legislation. Robinson stressed that existing instruction on the subject tends to be “somewhat anecdotal,” focusing on “enslavement, the Civil War, and maybe a 30,000-foot view of the Civil Rights movement.” Similarly, State Senator Raumesh Akbari, her fellow Memphian, summarized the thrust of such education as largely being limited to “slavery, segregation, and Barack Obama.”
Both senators noted that a fuller account would include the role of Memphis music in history and an enormous number of social developments, many of which have occurred since 1972, when state standards on teaching the subject were last established. “Black history is our history. It belongs to everybody,” Akbari said.
Some of the objections raised in committee were that the bill’s reach, which extends to “information on the history, heritage, culture, experience, and ultimate destiny of all social, ethnic, gender, and national groups and individuals,” might be over-broad, and that a new and enlarged state mandate might take too much authority on the matter away from local LEA’s.
Education Committee chairman Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) concurred on this latter point with state Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald), and the two of them were the only No votes on the committee, which moved the bill on by a 6-2 vote.
