JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – In honor of Black History Month, News4JAX is spotlighting an African American male educator who spent 40 years teaching for Duval County Public Schools.
Over his four-decade tenure, Michael Williams taught visual arts in at least three different schools in Duval County.
However, Williams said he often found himself as the sole Black male teacher in every school he worked in.
Growing up as a young Black kid in segregated Jacksonville — achieving milestones like this — seemed outright impossible.
“There were not a lot of opportunities for African Americans at that time, that’s just the way things were. But I used to hear people say ‘Whatever you’re going to be, be the best you can be. If you are going to be a garbage man, be the best garbage man you can be. If you’re going to be a maid, be the best maid you can be,’ and a lot of the people on my street in the area, that’s the kind of work that they did,” Williams said.
Despite the constraints on Black individuals during that era, Williams recalled how his teachers always encouraged him to aim for the stars.
“I think they were our guardian angels in that neighborhood where I grew up,” Williams said.
There’s one particular “angel” who changed everything for him: Mr. I. Emerson Bryan, an art teacher at Stanton High School.
“I saw some things I’ve never seen before in Mr. Bryan’s class. He was teaching architecture, he was teaching printmaking, photography, all kinds of visual arts and everything just kind of fascinated me… and so, I continued to pursue that,” Williams said.
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That pursuit turned into a 40-year-long career as an Art teacher in Duval County Public Schools.
Williams saw himself in Mr. Bryan.
In Duval County Public Schools today, that kind of representation between Black male students and Black male teachers is rare.
According to a Winter 2021 Jacksonville Public Education Fund analysis of three years of data from Duval County Public Schools:
Black students make up about 45% student body, while Black teachers make up only 29% of the teacher workforce.
JPEF and Duval County Public Schools have teamed up with Real Men Teach to hire 1,000 male educators of color by 2025.
“That representation matters so much for all of us. Not just in teaching but for every profession but for us it is key,” Curtis Valentine, educator and founder of Real Men Teach, said.
Real Men Teach is a national effort to recruit and retain men of color in education.
“Right now it’s sort of an effort to celebrate Duval but also say it’s a destination, come to Florida come to Duval County, and teach with these amazing men of color,” Valentine said.
In Florida, there are some recent policy changes, especially in the way how Black history will be taught in classrooms.
Valentine said he thinks these changes could deter some Black males from wanting to teach in Duval County.
“And I don’t want to minimize what’s happening in Florida. But I also want to highlight that there are men of color in the state who are really standing as a vanguard for their students, going by the policies, but ensuring that they’re still able to teach America in its full history,” Valentine said.
It’s a long road ahead, but Williams’ 40-year-career in education is proof of how representation can change everything.