Kevin Powell was a student at Rutgers University before he learned there was more to black history than slavery.

“Black folks — we were slaves,” Powell said, summing up most of what he was told from kindergarten through the 12th grade. “Everything of significance was done by a white person.”

Powell, a journalist, speaker and hip-hop historian, is perhaps best known as one of the original cast members of MTV’s “The Real World” television show; he spoke to more than 100 people Monday night at the Kansas Union’s Woodruff Auditorium. Powell’s appearance at KU was presented by the Black Student Union as part of African-American History Month activities.

Powell said he grew up watching television shows that further reinforced the black stereotype of “shucking and jiving,” such as “Good Times” and “Sanford and Son.”

“I learned little or nothing about myself as a black person,” he said, adding that a lack of knowledge about black history made him an angry young man.

“I hated myself as a black person,” he said. “When you have been denied your history for a long time, that happens.”

Powell grew up in Jersey City, N.J., and attended Rutgers in the mid-1980s. It was while searching through the library that he began to learn more about black history, he said.

Powell went on to become a university English teacher and a writer for publications such as “Black American” and “Rolling Stone.” In 1992 he appeared on “The Real World.”

Families also shape the way youngsters perceive themselves, and he noted that black history isn’t always passed on by elders.

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“It’s not just the school system — your family shapes the way you think,” Powell said.

Powell recalled that stories told by his mother about growing up poor in the 1940s and 1950s and about the lynching of his great-grandfather was part of what brought history to life for him.