Olympia Fourth of July Protest Sets off Discussion About Education Reform

Instead of setting off fireworks and grilling hot dogs, hundreds of people in Olympia used the Fourth of July holiday to march to the state Capitol and share untaught histories of the United States and their demands for change in the education system.

Beginning at Woodruff Park in west Olympia at around 2 p.m., demonstrators headed across the Fourth Avenue Bridge and then to the steps of the Legislative Building. There, a small group who organized the event set up a microphone and welcomed speakers. Others took seats on the Capitol steps and listened to speakers share stories of U.S. history that are not taught in schools.

Javoen Byrd, a former Seattle resident who moved to Olympia to attend The Evergreen State College, was invited by organizers to speak. With a microphone in his hand and a drum in the other, he told the crowd about atrocities committed against Black people. He told the audience that school children are taught a biased, white-washed history that erases the wrongdoings of the past.

“Each and every one of you who received an American education,” Byrd said, “received a white supremacist education!”

Byrd is a member of the Hawk Foundation for Research and Education in African Culture, a nonprofit that hopes to implement restorative education curriculum into Washington schools. He said the current history curriculum in schools portrays white people as superior and people of color as inferior, which in turn affects the way school children feel about themselves and their culture.

Representation in classrooms is important to Byrd, which is why he also advocates for history classes focused on race and ethnicity to be taught. “We can make sure all students feel empowered through their education, and a piece of that is teaching culturally relevant education.”

His message is similar to one students and teachers in Thurston County school districts have shared. Students from River Ridge High School in the North Thurston Public Schools district held an event on Juneteenth (June 19) to draw attention to their initiative to hire more Black educators, mandate Black history and ethnic studies courses, end zero tolerance discipline and divert funding from police to go to schools instead. Since then, students and teachers in the Olympia School District began circulating their own letter to the district with similar demands.

Saturday’s march brought out a large crowd. For others, like Simeon Rivers, it was just another in what has become a new routine. Rivers went to Saturdays protest “to get another black voice speaking,” he said.

Rivers took the microphone to address the audience, saying, “systems are put in place to erase history,” which he said is used to keep people down. A country that does not acknowledge its past wrongs and does not make up for them cannot move forward, he said.

One of the first thing’s Rivers talked about was the stories he did not learn in school. Stories about historic injustices are either left out or told in a way that “glorified and made sure white people are put up on this pedestal” while people of color are left out. He told The Olympian he wants to see truth be taught in school, even if it is ugly.

Rivers was one of many protesters in attendance demanding that reparations be made to ensure an equal America. Reparations and restorative justice are a way forward he said.

“We need a foot in the door economically,” he said. “It is not an ask, it is a demand.”