School Program Finds There’s Lessons to Be Learned From Black Heroes : Education: Teacher stresses that not all cowboys had white skin. It’s part of a curriculum that attempts to blend learning and self-esteem.

When John Cearnal talks about cowboys to students in his history class, black rodeo champion Bill Pickett takes his place alongside Tom Mix and Will Rogers.

“To know your history is to know your greatness,” reads a sign on his bulletin board at the Afrocentric Educational Academy, a program for blacks who make up one-third of the students in the Minneapolis school system.

Who’s Bill Pickett? Ask Robert H. Miller, a writer who lives in Willingboro, N.J., and has just had published a series of four books for children telling the stories of unsung black heroes of the West.

As a youngster growing up in San Antonio, Miller idolized popular white cowboys because movie cowboys never had black skin.

His allegiance quickly shifted after his mother told him about the escapades of his great-uncles, Ed and Joe Cloud, two black cowboys of the Old West.

“In the movies, most blacks had roles as cooks, shoeshine boys or stable hands,” says Miller, 43. “Judging from what I saw in those movies I figured there were no black cowboys.”

In his four-part book series called “Reflections of a Black Cowboy,” written as historical fiction, Miller depicts the adventures of pioneers such as Willie Kennard, a member of the all-black “Buffalo Soldiers” infantry regiment and the first black sheriff of a Colorado mining town. Another trailblazer portrayed is “Stagecoach Mary,” a former slave who fought bandits and became the second woman to carry the U.S. mail.

Then there’s Bill Pickett. Pickett invented “bulldogging,” the rodeo event in which a cowboy jumps from his horse onto a bull and wrestles the bull to the ground. He later left the rodeo circuit for Hollywood, where he made several silent films and trained two white cowboy legends, Tom Mix and Will Rogers.

Miller found that during the late 1800s more than 8,000 black cowboys roamed the West.

“Blacks played a very important role in founding the West and protecting the West,” says Paul Stewart, the founder and curator of the Black American West Museum & Heritage Center in Denver.

Cowboys aren’t the only heroes to John Cearnal’s students in Minneapolis. They also learn about the black men and women who invented the elevator, eggbeater, pencil sharpener, lawn sprinkler, lawn mower, guitar, fountain pen, ironing board and refrigerator.

But, in an ironic twist, the program designed to help black youths succeed in integrated schools has come under close scrutiny from state education officials because the academy’s students are all black.

State Education Commissioner Gene Mammenga ordered the city’s school district to apply for a waiver from state desegregation rules, which would require nearly one-third of the academy’s students to be white.

Minneapolis school officials maintain that the state requirements on racial balance apply to schools, not programs such as the black academy, and Mammenga backed down in late August, saying the program could continue while state officials examine it more closely.

The program was launched because, as in many urban school districts, the black students weren’t achieving on a par with whites, says Dr. Willarene Beasley, the academy’s principal.

Since Jan. 29, 30 students in grades six through eight have been bused from their home schools to spend two hours of their regular school day plus an hour of their own time at the academy. The curriculum emphasizes building the students’ self-esteem while they learn history, English, math and science with an emphasis on the contributions of blacks in those fields.

The program’s strategies include introducing students to black role models such as lawyer Alan Page, a former Minnesota Vikings football player, and Gloria Naylor, author of “The Women of Brewster Place.” Volunteers from other ethnic groups also are brought in to work with the students.

Cearnal has introduced his students to the music of opera singer Leontyne Price. “They may not understand it, but we have to present as many experiences as possible in conjunction with their learning.”

Teacher Grace Rogers broke into “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as she discussed what can be learned about a country’s history through its music.

Rogers, who teaches English and communications skills, uses fables, novels by black authors and drama as classroom tools.

Getting through to the students isn’t always easy, Rogers acknowledges.

“How do you transform a sense of hopelessness to a sense of hope? How do you change a mind? Because there is a mind there,” she says.

The effort begins shortly after the students enter the building.

“We’re going to leave everything outside the door,” Rogers tells the students as they link hands in a circle in the hallway, eyes closed, for a moment of silence.

Then they repeat in unison, “I am very special, I like who I am and I feel very good about myself.”