“The black man's music in America been copied by every race that come to America. So, it used to be against the law for, like country and western. It was against the law for the white man to sing the blues," said Lloyd "Teddy" Johnson Jr., owner of Teddy’s Juke Joint.

Blues is a genre of music played across America, but it’s been home to the deep south for decades. However, the roots of blues are a never-ending debate.

“From what I know about it talking to a lot of old people, it started from the Africans out of Africa," said Johnson.

Regardless of where it started, Henry Turner Jr. a Baton Rouge blues artist said, "Louisiana has one of the oldest blues histories.”

"What did blues mean to the community back then?" asked Sydney Simone, a reporter for BRProud News.

“The blues is life. From the time you are born until you die," said Johnson.

Johnson said in the mid-1900s, nightclubs were on plantations. Singing blues was a way for slaves to connect and share stories.

“They tried to stop the Black man from singing in the cotton fields. So, they found a place and put him in there. But when they found out, they stopped him from singing in the cotton fields. There was no communication with the workers," said Johnson.

Turner and Johson both agree that blues, R&B, country, and rock all have similarities. 

“They say if you listen at the baseline drum, country and western, blues, rap all it got the same line. Then they just changed it up in different ways," said Johnson.

“They’ll say that’s an R&B song. What's the difference? The difference is the culture and who is going to accept the music," said Turner.

Turner said blues tells a story, but the narrative can change by region. But the question that remains, how is blues defined in Louisiana?

“It’s a feeling, it’s what it really is," said Turner.

And in the words of Johnson, "It’s just the life that the Black man and woman had to live.”

At the end of the day, it’s been known to heal wounds left behind in Black families.

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Under Spanish Governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez, Spain would use Black infantry units in the American Revolution, to help a burgeoning United States of America fight against the British.

Louisiana Native Guard would fight in the Civil War. In 1886, the United States Congress established six African American military units, which would later be called the Buffalo Soldiers, after the Civil War to help with the reconstruction effort and the country's push towards the Westward Expansion.

Rhett Breerwood is the Louisiana National Guard Historian and says, "The 9th and the 25th regiments of the Buffalo Soldiers were both from New Orleans. Half of the Buffalo Soldiers nationwide came from New Orleans. Both of these regiments served with distinction. The 9th Cavalry served alongside Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders unit and he gave them great acclaim."

The 25th Infantry Regiment of the Buffalo Soldiers was headquartered where the Jackson's Barracks National Guard is today. In New Orleans, the Historic St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church at 222 North Roman Street, was a space where both the 9th and 25th Buffalo Soldiers units, as well as other Black organizations, were recruited.

Today, the 9th Cavalry 25th Infantry Buffalo Soldiers exists as an organization, whose mission is to preserve, document history, and raise awareness of the Buffalo Soldiers.

Richard Keller is a member of the 9th Cavalry 25th Infantry Buffalo Soldiers group and says, "I'm dressed in my father's clothes. My father was very instrumental in getting the proclamation that July 28, would always be Buffalo Soldier Day in the city of New Orleans. People call this Black history, but this is American history. We should be proud of it because it's ours."

Keller's father was Lawrence F. Keller, the late Vice President of the 9th Calvary and 25th Infantry Buffalo Soldiers of Louisi­ana.

The Buffalo Soldier Infantry in the United States survived until around World War Two. However, the Buffalo Soldier legacy continues today.

John Anderson is the President of the 9th Cavalry 25th Infantry Buffalo Soldiers and is very well-versed in research.

"They served their country, which they called their country! They fought gallantly in every war and skirmish they were in," explains Anderson.

The Buffalo Soldiers' name comes from the 10th Cavalry of the Buffalo Soldiers. It was a name given to them, but Native American Adversaries, who felt the Buffalo Soldiers were as fierce as the buffalo in battle.

The term "Buffalo Soldier" would eventually be adopted by many different African American military units, regardless of military association or war. Over the years, as the Buffalo Soldiers made their way into legend, they also made their way into popular culture and song; like in Bob Marley's 1983 song.

They exist as a reminder of the many military contributions that Blacks have made in helping to cultivate the United States of America.

(The Hill) -- Advocates are sounding the alarm about growing pushes from conservative-led states to downplay the impact of slavery and racism on U.S. history and change the way Black Americans’ stories are taught in classrooms.

As Black History Month nears its end, they say it’s a subject that should be getting more attention, warning the shift will wind up hurting students.  

“We should be scared of undercutting the future of America by not endowing our students with the knowledge they need to not only compete in this society, but in global society,” Ashley White, the NAACP’s inaugural education fellow for equity access and opportunity, told The Hill’s The Switch Up. 

“This is about so much more than making sure that our children know what happened in America,” White added. “It's also about our economic prosperity, because if you cannot deal in the global economic environment, we will not be able to maintain our status as a nation, and you cannot deal in that global environment if you do not know history.”

Mounting limitations

Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills to limit teaching students critical race theory or how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to a report by Education Week.

In some ways, this type of legislation can be traced back to September 2020, when then-President Trump signed an executive order banning certain types of diversity training for promoting “divisive concepts.”

The next year, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas used the same language to pass legislation banning teachers from instructing students in ways that make them feel guilt or anguish because of their race or sex, or teaching the idea that anyone is inherently racist or sexist. 

Then, in 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) led a charge against a new Advanced Placement African American studies pilot course. DeSantis said the course, which initially required lessons on intersectionality, the Black Lives Matter movement and Black queer studies, lacked educational value. Arkansas soon followed suit and banned the course in August.

Florida hit headlines again when the state’s Department of Education passed guidelines requiring students be taught that slavery was beneficial because it helped enslaved people to learn useful skills.

The curriculum swiftly drew backlash, including from Vice President Harris, who accused “extremists in Florida” of pushing propaganda on children. 

“Adults know what slavery really involved,” Harris said. “It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world. So in the context of that, how is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”

'A huge rise in resistance'

Sonya Douglass, director of the Black Education Research Center (BERC), at the Teachers College of Columbia University, told The Hill that these restrictions should not be surprising because anti-Black sentiment has been growing since the election of the nation’s first Black president. 

“With the election of President Obama, we saw a huge rise in resistance. We saw the development of the birther movement, and then we would later see the individual who was leading the birther movement become president,” said Douglass. 

“I think a better understanding of Black history and a fuller account of American history would help us to not be terribly surprised by some of the things that we've seen over the last 10 to 20 years,” she added. 

If students had a comprehensive understanding of Black history, Douglass said, they would understand that the topic dates back to well before Africans were enslaved and brought to America in the 1600s. 

Douglass said Africans were scientists and alchemists, and their knowledge had a significant role to play in the shaping of societies and communities, including how government works. 

“Much of that has been misrepresented in terms of who we view as the original progenitors of knowledge, whether it's the Greeks or the Romans, but many of those knowledge systems were taken from ancient Kemet and other places in Africa,” she explained. 

For Black students in particular to have this knowledge would change their perception of how they fit into not only American society but global society. 

“I think that is why we see a lot of the fight and the resistance to teaching these topics because it does shift power in many ways,” said Douglass. “It shifts who we value in terms of those who create knowledge, those who are producing information, as opposed to only consuming it. And I think for many people, that can be a bit frightening.”

BERC is now developing a K-12 Black history and studies curriculum for New York schools, and Douglass said it will include significant history prior to the enslavement of Africans. 

In a survey the center conducted in October, they found that 73 percent of respondents approved of the curriculum. 

Teaching students an incomplete American history

As some Republican leaders and parents continue to take a stance against topics such as the teaching of systemic racism, a recent study by Pew Research Center found that nearly half of students said they’d rather learn that the legacy of slavery still affects the position of Black Americans today.

Thirty-six percent of White adults said parents should be able to opt their children out of learning about topics related to racism or racial inequality, but Marvin Dulaney, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, said this could have devastating effects. 

Dulaney has spent time researching police officers' attitudes toward Black Americans. In his work, he found that many did not know much Black history, and he posits it makes police killings of Black Americans easier to justify. 

“They believe we haven't contributed anything, that we are people who are a drag on society,” Dulaney said. “They don't know our history and, of course, they sort of grew up there with these negative attitudes and feelings about Black people, and they act on them on the streets, in terms of arrest and brutality and shootings. They don't have the empathy that is needed to treat us like regular human beings.”

The effects of limitations on Black history are unclear at this time, but advocates are adamant that it should be taught for the simple fact that American history is incomplete without it. 

“Quite frankly, without the contributions of our ancestors, America would not be what it is,” said White. “And I would dare to say that given the historical context of the Atlantic slave trade, etc., Black history is also the history of many other countries and nations beyond the US, so the implications for the importance of Black history and its contribution to American society and global society at large should be recognized for more than anything so that we can capitalize upon those contributions as a collective.”

Finding themselves in Sacramento, Samuel B. Hyers set up shop in the future capital city as his wife Annie E. Hyers tended to the musical education of their daughters Anna and Emma.

The young sisters showed a natural vocal and musical ability as he continued to invest in their education.

German professor Hugo Sank and later opera singer Josephine D'Ormy taught the young girls before they began performing for private parties to prepare for larger audiences.

The Hyers Sisters, at the ages of 9 and 11, would make their public debut on April 22, 1867, at the Sacramento Metropolitan Theater, which was located on K Street between 4th and 5th streets.

This performance in Sacramento would launch their pioneering career as professional singers and stage actors in post-Emancipation America.

The young girls' opera performance received glowing reviews, which jumpstarted their careers that would take them across the country.

With their father leaving behind the barber chair to manage his daughters, they hit the road in August 1871 for their first nationwide tour.

They performed in Salt Lake City, Chicago, Cleveland, New York City and Boston.

Their performance in Boston was part of the 1872 World Peace Jubilee, which was one of the nation's first integrated major musical concerts.

As the sisters' fame grew over the following years, they decided to launch their own theater company, where they produced musicals and dramas.

Some of the more notable works to come out of the theater company were:
• Out of Bondage, written by Joseph Bradford
• Urlina, the African Princess, written by E. S. Gethchell
• The Underground Railway, written by Pauline Hopkins
• Stage version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Pauline Hopkins

According to Nadine George-Graves' The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville, the 1890 production of Out of Bondage was the first Black-organized musical show.

These shows would create a new pathway for future Black artists and those looking to bring the stories of the African American experience to the stage.

From the late 1870s to the 1880s, the Hyers sisters' theater company had more than six shows running. They traveled with the shows through the mid-1880s and continued to appear on stage into the 1890s.

In 1893, the sisters announced their retirement from stage life at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.