And that's how she taught it. Miss Ratliff leads her class out of the auditorium into the hallway. The first floor of Grant School is dominated by a mural that stretches nearly 50 feet across a wall, high above the blue lockers. It is a rambling time line of African-American history, showing the birth of a culture, the royalty of Egypt, the journey across the ocean and ending with images of 15 leaders, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and Harriet Tubman. Black History Month celebrations bring the past to life for 28 days, but Grant doesn't stop there.
Culture pulses through the curriculum and after-school programs.
The students in Miss Ratliff's room are learning to speak Swahili. They take martial arts. And they are involved in dance. Miss Ratliff has told them stories about Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver during their reading time after lunch, as the children sat on a pink carpet in the back of the room, near a bulletin board decorated with pictures of famous black Americans. Grant has a language club, where they study Spanish and French.