In 2019, SDARJ brought Sussex County something it had never quite seen: a structured, frank, and completely free conversation about racism. The program began as Dialogue to End Racism, a nationally recognized YWCA curriculum. SDARJ obtained permission to use it, then adapted it for the realities of Southern Delaware and gave it a new name — Dialogue Toward Ending Racism, or DTER.
Samuel Eli Cornish was born in 1795 to free parents of mixed race and lived in the vicinity of Georgetown in Sussex County. A journalist, he was also an ordained Presbyterian minister, abolitionist, and publisher.
Of the 50 states in the U.S., Delaware is among only 13 that have legally mandated the instruction of Black history in grades K-12 in public schools. HB 198, passed in 2021, includes eight minimum content areas. One of these requires instruction on “…the history and culture of Black people prior to the African and Black Diaspora, including contributions to…art.”
“Borrowed Labor,” a politically correct euphemism for slave labor, reaches back to the fourth to sixth centuries, when people became indentured servants, who were primarily poor Europeans, agreeing to pay off a debt, such as rent or taxes, over a specified term owed to a king. Such bondage continued over several generations into the New World colonies.
Every American genre—jazz, blues, gospel, country, rock and roll—is born from the voices of the oppressed. These genres were frequently repackaged for white audiences and industry profits. This story is not just about music; it is the contrast between creator and beneficiary.
When we talk about the education of Black students in America, the conversation often begins with the long shadow of systemic injustice: underfunded schools, segregated neighborhoods, and policies designed to exclude rather than uplift.
