November 09, 2007

Horse rider promotes black history

• N.J. equestrian to take message across the nation

By Gary Harki
Staff writer

Miles Dean has rode from Harpers Ferry to Charleston mostly with one hand on the reins of his horse. The other, he says, was usually waving to people as they drove by or watched him go by from their homes.

“West Virginia has some of the most beautiful, hospitable people,” he said.

Dean, along with his horses Dooley and Sankofa, is traveling from New York to California to promote learning about black history in public schools.

Dean said he came through Charleston to visit the memorial to Booker T. Washington at the Capitol and to visit the church in Malden he attended.

So far he has ridden through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.

Dean said two things made him decide to take on the journey.

“I am an equestrian, and as such I wanted to take the sport to its highest level. As a trail rider, that was to go from the East Coast to the West Coast,” he said. “And as a teacher, I didn’t want to do this without having something to say.

“I want people to get a deeper understanding of the relationship that African-American people had to the land and the amount of hard work they put into helping establish this country.”

There are many places where black people are a part of the story of America, but aren’t taught in the history books, he said.

Africans were a part of early explorations into the Americas, he said. Stephen the Black, also known as Estevanico, was an African who helped explore what is now the Southwest United States in the 1500s. There were also Africans on other early explorations, he said.

Dean is the director of Black Heritage Riders, Inc., a nonprofit organization that promotes increasing education about blacks and minorities in history.

Dean was teaching fifth and sixth grade last year in New Jersey when the idea to make his trek across country occurred to him.

“My fifth-grade students helped me lay the framework for this journey,” he said. “We explored the topics that led to this journey.”

To contact staff writer Gary Harki, use e-mail or call 348-5163.