You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study Black history too. - Booker T. Washington

Do you agree this an extremely powerful quote?

We absolutely must give our children confidence. Confidence is a key indicator when it comes to success in school and life. This is what we all want for our children. This is the one thing we can do for them!

Confidence comes from a love and appreciation of self, not just the person they see in the mirror, but of people that look just like them. In short, they must learn an appreciation for their history, their people’s contributions to mankind. I had to learn this confidence myself as I am sure you did too.

However, you and I know full well that the school system is not doing this for our children!

It’s not even close.

In fact, the school system is clearly mentally destroying our children by telling them everyone else’s history and culture is important, but not their own. How are our children to have self confidence when everything bad looks like them and everything good looks like someone else?

You know the answer, they won’t!...

FORTUNATELY, there is something we can all do to fight the mainstream narrative and give our children the much needed confidence of self they need!

My small team and I at Urban Intellectual have been working on a new project called Sankofa Club, it aims to give children the self-confidence to go out in the world to be great and live the promise of their genius. To give them the ability to identify important contributions to mankind by people that look like them. To identify the impact their culture and history has had on the world, not only in the past, but today as well.

I know you want your child to love being Black instead of being ashamed as it seems the school systems attempts to make them. I wanted the same for my children.

My name is Freddie Taylor, the founder of Urban Intellectuals. And what seems like 100 years ago, I started this company as a Facebook page to give space to the Black community to have open, honest discussion about our community, our challenges, our history, and our future.

It has grown to over one million fans (this is still so crazy to me!) and is still growing! The website has millions upon millions of visitors a year.

In 2017, we introduced our first product, the Black History Flashcards. We quickly sold over 125,000 decks to people all around the world, maybe you purchased some yourself! We are sure you've seen the impact they had on social media! We were were interviewed on CBS, TV One's Sister Circle Live, featured in Essence magazine, and much much more.

However none of those media appearances hold a candle to the thousands of individual emails we have received from people telling us about how the cards made a difference for their children and themselves. How their kids picked a card and would not put it down. I knew at that point our next step had to be empowering our children, like I worked hard to empower my own.

Long before the Urban Intellectuals movement, I was a child that grew up in the Western educational system, like most of you. I grew up in the Detroit, Michigan area, The story back then was the same as it is now!.

The schools are not teaching our history, our story.
The truth is the system is not made for us! Why should we be surprised?
However, I had a set of great parents myself, just like you wonderful parents, teachers and guardians.

My father was born in 1929 in Georgia. My mother was born in 1935 in Alabama.

They attempted to instill in me the greatness of our history, it’s importance and that self-confidence every parent must deliver to their child.

In highschool my father would bribe me to read Black history books. $10 a chapter if I read the book, then sat down to discuss it with him! I did it for the money, like most kids, but the lessons didn’t really sink in to me.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized just how skewed our educational system was. I took an History of Economics course in my first year of grad school that really opened my eyes. I learned about “Black Wall Street” for the first time. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of this or no one was talking about it.

Well, I was challenged to learn more and more, then became more and more frustrated with the entire rigged system, purposefully hiding our greatness.

THEN I HAD CHILDREN!! TWO BOYS!!

Okay, my wife had children and I was part of it all.

Actually, I delivered my first child at the hospital. It was such an amazing feeling, but that’s another story for another time.

Going through the school system this time from the view as a parent had me outraged. I couldn’t believe they were still teaching bold face lies in the 2000s. I thought surely the likes of Christopher Columbus “DISCOVERING” the new world would be deleted from textbooks, lectures and the American lexicon.

SPOILER ALERT: He still isn’t in 2018!!!

I realized my children needed to know the truth, so each time they came home with an assignment, I told them the actual truth as we sat down and went through it. I was doing the best I could, but when you are ranting about the global political environment and it’s inequalities to 6 and 10 year olds, you get this glazed look staring back at you.

Not overly effective!

Therefore, you need a different approach and over time I worked out how to keep them interested, I have helped my family with their young kids and that’s what I want to give you here today to help each and every one of you with your obligation as a parent to your children, to deliver self-confidence.

Instead of ranting and pointing out the lies in the educational system, solely, my suggestion is to regularly share wonderful Black history with your children. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming lectures like I would do with my children, nor bribing them to read important books like my parents did me.

5 Simple Steps

Here are my 5 steps for working with our young people I’ve developed over the years and hope you get a lot of use from it.

1. Teach - Regularly share simple Black history facts with your children.
2. Relate - Don’t just talk at the children, make it relatable to them. For example, if you are talking about King Tut, tell them he took power when he was just 9 years old.
3. Read - Read small segments about these facts with your children. Make sure they are age related. No full chapters in the “Autobiography of Malcolm X” for 6 year olds.
4. Listen - Allow them to teach you. Hear what they are saying to you with enthusiasm for their lessons so they feel your energy, the importance and the appreciation you have for it and them.
5. Encourage - Tell them they are doing an amazing job learning these great lessons. Tell them you are proud they are learning these things and encourage them to continue and to share.

I know what you are thinking...

Freddie, I don’t nearly have enough time in my busy schedule to sit down regularly with my children to teach them Black history. And if I did, where in the world would I start? And seriously, how would I hold their attention for any significant amount of time?

These are all valid questions and concerns. Believe me, we have thought about this and as parents totally understand working to keep the bills paid, spending time with loved ones, your own life and more. It gets very hectic!

This is what we are doing with the Sankofa Club, we take all the worry and work out of it for you. We provide you with easy to follow instructions, materials and activities your children will love, they will have fun and learn our history and culture in the process.

I’m not talking about dry reading assignments or lame documentaries. I’m talking about hands on fun, engaging activities that will teach and engage your children. Things like coloring sheets, mazes (a favorite of children in the group), word search, word scrambles, spot the differences, join the dots and much much more.

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you might remember Highlights activities book. Essentially, we’ve created a monthly printable version of Highlights for Black children that emphasis Black history without making it seem like more boring, un-relatable school work.

We loved these sorts of activities growing up and your children will love them as well! The evidence is in and our community of Sankofa Club pre-release members who have let us know their children do as well.

But look, don’t just take our word for it, we want to give you a little test drive to see exactly what we are talking about.

Here are 7 free sheets (download button below) of similar content that are inside the Sankofa Club. You will find it is a mix of our world renowned Black History Flashcards, our Black History Coloring Book, the Highlights magazine, fun, and education all wrapped into a downloadable monthly delivered product.

The Sankofa Club is coming up to its official release fast! The price isn’t going to be nearly what you are expecting. However if you stick around we will have a little surprise for you, an unbelievably hard to refuse early entry offer that will not be repeated!

In fact, it will be BETTER THAN OUR BLACK FRIDAY OFFER!
However, that’s later, don’t want to get into that now. We want you to try out our free sheets. Give it a test run.

The end, I promise, just a few more words!….

Don’t want to take too much more of your time, so let me wrap this up.

Sign up below and next up you will receive an email about the environment your child grows up in. This is very important. Just like the environment, or soil, a plant grows in is critical to its future and survival, so is the one your children grows in as well.

I want to help you with some simple tweaks that can make all the difference in the world growing that confidence in them and fulfilling your obligation as a parent.

Until then, peace and blessings,

Freddie Taylor
CEO
Sankofa Club l Urban Intellectuals