Minneapolis Public Schools

Over the years Ms. Crisler has nurtured her love and curiosity about the past by studying and travelling to historical sites. In doing this she realized how little she had been taught during her formal education about the contribution of people of color to the settling and building of the United States. After taking a 5 day historical tour trip to Civil War battle fields in 2010, she became disheartened to find that there were few if any references to the African-Americans who lived in the area, fought in those battles or contributed to local society. She began reading historical novels of the period, along with biographies of African-Americans men and women, the Slave Narratives, who had lived before and during the Civil War. While researching these topics Ms. Crisler noticed how similar various periods in the African-Americans journey down the road to a more perfect union, matched current events. She progressed to reading fact driven historical and contemporary accounts of African-Americans during Reconstruction, the Great Migrations, creation of the African-American identity through culture, the fight to regain Civil Rights, the fight to take their place in the economic, political, cultural and social life of the Nation.