Antes da lei: a luta histórica dos movimentos negros pela obrigatoriedade do ensino de história e cultura afro-brasileira e africana (1982-1992).

Abstract

Based on a historic political struggle, the black movement achieved the mandatory teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture in basic and higher education curricula, formalized by Law 10,639/2003. This demand had been on the agenda since 1930, and gained more impact from 1982, with the reorganization of the Black Movement in the MNU and the “redemocratization” process. However, despite the historical debt of the Brazilian State to the black community, the mandatory teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture did not occur peacefully and “unanimously”. Therefore, this work has the general objective of analyzing the historical conditions that conditioned the insertion of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture in Brazilian education curricula, between 1982 and 1992, in the key of historical and dialectical materialism, using as main sources speeches from meetings of the National Constituent Assembly, meetings of the Chamber of Deputies and complementary sources of journalistic texts. The central hypothesis is that this dominant racial group used the “myth” of racial democracy and the “thesis” of harmony between the races as a way of stopping the legal advances of the black community in the fight for equality and in the agenda of mandatory teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture.