Between giras and xirês

how the negro movement and the university black history teaching in Ceará

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the erasure of black history and memory in the state of Ceará. In light of this, different events and characters related to the slavery, abolitionist, and post-abolitionist periods are studied in order to understand how the official memory, shaped by the local white elites, reserves a place for the Afro-Ceará population linked to oblivion in the history of the present time. The set of sources analyzed, as well as the bibliography reviewed, indicate the predominant black presence in this territory. In this sense, we demonstrate how the black movement, alongside the production of knowledge within the scope of study and research groups and centers that base their productions on themes of Afro-descendants in public universities in Ceará, questions this framed memory. This process results in a historiographical production and a curriculum around the idea of ​​Public History that aims to blacken the teaching of History in Ceará in basic education. In this way, we can consider the existence of a set of actions, around part of the black social movements and part of the public universities of Ceará, which focuses on establishing a new historical consciousness, aligned with the policies of recognition and rights of the black population in the present time.