Surprisingly if your schools get their textbooks from someplace other than Texas, there ARE a lot of black people in them who are covered. Including George Washington Carver (the second most famous George Washington), Wilma Rudolph (Tennessee native so of course she’d show up in Tennessee textbooks), Jesse Owens (olympian), and several others such as the Tuskegee Airmen of WWII fame. Harriett Tubman, of course, also shows up. Doesn’t really count as a civil rights leader, seeing as how she was a century prior. Some of the history books have sections on sub-Saharan African history too, notably the book I read in 8th grade included a few paragraphs discussing the various large kingdoms. Would have been a whole chapter, but we’re still lacking on information on them*. Oh, and that one guy, whatshisname, first black president….still in office, I think? What is his name what is his name…yeah he’s in textbooks now too.

The trick is getting the schools to stop buying textbooks that’re written in Texas. 

*Turns out the main reason most history books focus on Western Civilization these days is a lack of written sources from most other civilizations. Why they don’t cover more about China, who also had plenty of written sources, is beyond me. Could be racism or could be China simply wasn’t relevant to the creation of the US.