TUESDAY THOUGHTS: BLACK HISTORY MONTH

I read a facebook status that asked, "Is Black History Month relevant? 

Another status read, "I'm tired of Black people putting down current Black folks, and only talking and talking all month about what people did in the past".

 
Mind you, both writers were young. 

Let me clarify. "young", to me, means anyone who thinks Diana Ross was the original "Dorothy", or anyone who hears Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean A Thing" and wonders, "Who stole Chuck Brown's song?" 
(When you were born has an impact on so many things.)

I wonder how long it takes for people to forget the consequences of history's gross and damaging errors, and mindlessly repeat them. 

It is no accident when folks come on the scene. 

A lot of contemporary people would not have made it two steps in a march, one second at a sit-in, and, for darn sure, wouldn't have survived on a plantation. Let's not even mention the boat ride over...

I for one, am glad God knew when to place me in time.

Is it relevant? Huh? 

There are just days when I look in the mirror and see my grandmother's face. 

There are days when I read what a youngster has written, and say to myself, "Poor thing doesn't have a clue.."

You just can't read verse 6 and run off half-cocked with a piece of the truth. 

You've got to read verses 1 through 5-- and maybe verse 7, and then realize you have to continue reading until you get to the index and glossary.

I'm afraid that some people want their history to start today, and refuse to acknowledge the critical impact of yesterday. 

I know--some things make you wish for a bout of amnesia. 

Some things are weighted down at the bottom of the Sea of Forgetfulness, and you pray that no one goes deep sea diving to bring it up and put it on display. However, some things from the past are positively priceless, and will help you fully understand and appreciate where, and who you are today.

When I was a student at Abram Simon Elementary School in SE Washington, DC, we celebrated Black History Week, (and someone had to fight hard for that to be implemented). 

From the time we set foot across the classroom threshold on Monday morning, my teachers filled that week with more books, filmstrips, songs, photographs, mimeographed worksheets, stories, and personal memorabilia than I'd ever seen. 

The ban on Black had been temporarily lifted. These educators (without computers) had a week, and they intended to take full advantage of it. 

Nina Simone and James Brown's affirming records (45 RPM vinyl on the school-issued portable record player), made sure that a vital point was driven home:

"Forget everything you've previously heard about the inherent stupidity, laziness, and inferiority of people of color. You, class, are descendants of kings and queens". 

My teachers were on a mission. 

"If no one told you that you were a prince or princess, you need not wait any longer. A vast majority of the things you touch and see, and as a matter of fact, the city in which you live were handed to you courtesy of the brain power of someone who looks just like you."

 
My teachers embraced Black History Week like it was golden. 

 We had to learn EVERY verse of "Lift Ev'ry Voice", and endure overly articulated recitations of poems by Langston Hughes and Phyllis Wheatley. 

There were posters and shoebox dioramas to be created. 

The Science teacher, Mrs. Swinton, talked about Charles Drew. 

The gym teacher, Mr. Richards talked about Jesse Owens. 

The Music/Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Williams, talked about Marian and Mahalia. 

Every bulletin board, black board, and available wall was covered with information. 

Miss Sally Letterlough wore her African garb, and big, beautiful, Angela Davis-like afro. 

She established a charm club. 

She made sure we walked like the princesses she believed us to be. 

You would have thought, on Monday, that they were trying to beat the sound of a giant game show buzzer that was scheduled to scare the daylights out of everyone precisely at 3:00PM on Friday. 

"Alright. Time's up. No more talking about Black people. Back to your woefully inadequate History books.."

Now we have a whole month (albeit the shortest month) of permission to talk about ourselves, as if the time limit is etched in stone, and we only have 28 or 29 days worth of information to share. 

We all know that the fabric of America would be a pile of string if not for the uncompensated contributions of people of color. 

Today, we take information for granted. 

Who has to thumb through an encyclopedia or visit a library when the Information Super Highway can bring famous Black people to your computer screen in a matter of seconds? 

The questions are:

Are our children looking? 

Are they being encouraged to look? 

Do they care? 

What do they consider noteworthy or famous? 
Are teachers as diligent as they were in the past to make sure that little children know that, at one time, and not so long ago, someone would have been arrested or murdered for trying to teach them how to read?

Unless one was self motivated, or had thinking parents and bold teachers, for a while there, it seemed that Black people were purposely forbidden to know the truth about their royal and honorable past. 

The illustrations in the history books were like your box of crayons---you had beige, peach, white, and pink, but no caramel, tan, olive, or chocolate. 
Every now and then you'd see the Big Three--Carver, Bethune,  and Douglass. 

For years, they were trotted out as the only Black folks worth talking about. 

Later you learned about someone with the hip name "Booker T." who didn't play with the MG's, and like a gift, you learned that one of your classmate's-next-door-neighbor's-mama was the daughter of Ernest Everett Just.

 
From time to time, you'd get a phone call to turn on the television and there was Bill Cosby, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and, if you stayed up late enough, Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene. 

What Don Cornelius and "Soul Train" did to your psyche was amazing. 

When Eartha Kitt played Catwoman, and Diahann Carroll portrayed nurse "Julia", you would have thought we'd hit the lottery.

 
Jet and Ebony magazine articles and pictures were cut up and re-pasted so much, it was hard to tell whose Black History project was whose. 

Then, Sam Patrick and George Reasons were given Page 2 in the Washington Star's 'Weekender' Magazine, and my 4th grade teacher Lenora Hall encouraged us to clip every "They Had A Dream" article each week. 

Even after 4th grade, the scrapbooks grew. 

We soon found out that the Big Three weren't the only ones who'd done great things. 

Then we looked closer, and there was Walter Washington, Marion Barry, Todd Duncan, James E. Coates, Walter Fauntroy, Roberta Flack--and we thought our Principal,  Robert Bond, was somebody important, too.

 
Could anything good come out of DC? 

How about SE, DC? 

Every time I hear Denyce Graves sing, or see Renee Robinson dance, I know the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

The operative word is "history". For us, it meant the inclusion of thousands, who had been conveniently erased from our textbooks, and an insatiable need to know why. 

It was exciting to know that people, who looked like you, had accomplished so much more than picking cotton. 

It is no accident that we felt so much pride when President Obama was inaugurated, in spite of late endorsements and character assassination attempts. 
I saw the look on my 83 year old father's face as he watched the Inauguration. Words are inadequate to describe the shock, relief, joy, and pride. 

We are still a little sensitive, and getting over hundreds of years of direct, intentional oppression and divide-and-conquer strategies. 

Generous seeds of doubt, skepticism, fear and mistrust were often sown and watered with two very implicit messages: 

"You have to be twice as good" and 

 "Don't embarrass your people". 

It is no wonder that we STILL expect each other to represent us all---and when one of us messes up in public, (where everybody's mama warned you NEVER to mess up), it is still looked upon as a reflection of us all.

 
For our elderly, it is disappointing when it seems that their life-threatening efforts, teaching, and sacrifices are slowly going down the toilet--- or sagging like so many over-sized pairs of jeans.

When our elders start talking, in often more racially charged, un-politically correct ways than anyone on Earth, it's worth listening and grabbing a pencil and paper, too. 

Their first hand accounts of danger, rejection, exclusion, terror and disparity aren't fairy tales. 

We need to remember that their experiences occurred in eerily recent history, and that there is nothing new under the Sun.

We now know that our problems aren't always color issues, but human issues. 

Every race has its share of knuckleheads. 

Our knuckleheads just seem to make the news more often, cause us to shake our collective heads, and like game pieces after a bad spin, take two awkward steps back.

Is Black History Month relevant? Absolutely. 

As long as History is being taught, and blanks are strategically left unfilled, it is. 

As long as others, with the best of intentions, take it upon themselves to tell your story for you, it is. 

As long there is a conversation about race in America, and as long as anyone, young or old, dares to declare that any measure of accomplishment or success in their lives is attributed to their own tenacity and talent alone, it is. 

Black History Month still has a place, and whether we are classroom teachers or not, we need to break out the bulletin boards each February--and keep them up until the last kid cleans out his or her locker in June.