Black History & Me

Also called African-American History Month, this event originally began as Negro It pains me to see people overlooking Black History Month because Black.
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Martin Luther King, Jr.

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But these are only a few of the significant and important events to know and remember. But just as Black history is more than a month, so too are the numerous events and figures that are often overlooked during it. Before there was Rosa Parks, there was Claudette Colvin. Most people think of Rosa Parks as the first person to refuse to give up their seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. There were actually several women who came before her; one of whom was Claudette Colvin. Claudette had been studying Black leaders like Harriet Tubman in her segregated school, those conversations had led to discussions around the current day Jim Crow laws they were all experiencing.

I couldn't get up. Arrested and thrown in jail, she was one of four women who challenged the segregation law in court. As an adult with the right look, Rosa Parks was also the secretary of the NAACP, and was both well-known and respected — people would associate her with the middle class and that would attract support for the cause. But the struggle to end segregation was often fought by young people, more than half of which were women.

Claudette Colvin by Phillip Hoose. Martin Luther King Jr.

10 Little Known Black History Facts | PBS

As Martin Luther King Jr. The night before the march, Dr. King began working on his speech with a small group of advisers in the lobby of the Willard Hotel. The original speech was more political and less historic, according to Clarence B. Jones, and it did not include any reference to dreams. King transformed his speech into a sermon. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream…. And while this improvised speech given on that hot August day in was not considered a universal success immediately, it is now recognized as one of the greatest speeches in American history.

For more information on the March on Washington, visit pbs. Inoculation was introduced to America by a slave. Few details are known about the birth of Onesimus, but it is assumed he was born in Africa in the late seventeenth century before eventually landing in Boston. One of a thousand people of African descent living in the Massachusetts colony, Onesimus was a gift to the Puritan church minister Cotton Mather from his congregation in Onesimus told Mather about the centuries old tradition of inoculation practiced in Africa.

By extracting the material from an infected person and scratching it into the skin of an uninfected person, you could deliberately introduce smallpox to the healthy individual making them immune. Considered extremely dangerous at the time, Cotton Mather convinced Dr.

Zabdiel Boylston to experiment with the procedure when a smallpox epidemic hit Boston in and over people were inoculated. Black celebrities such as actor and director Morgan Freeman and actress Stacey Dash have criticized Black History Month, [19] [20] with Freeman saying, "I don't want a Black history month.

Black History Month

Black history is American history. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the song, see Black History Month song. Special Collections and Archives: Retrieved September 28, Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Archived from the original on February 1, Retrieved February 14, Black History Month Retrieved March 13, The Fourth Year", p. Ford Presidential Library and Museum. Archived from the original on February 21, Reflections on Black History Month".

Listen to this guy:. I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men, to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences…Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men—David Hume.

Also gave us the fruits of natural scientific racism. Those black figures were not deemed important or as worthy as their white counterparts. Sorry, you guys have just gone about doing it very, very badly! But more than it being racist, it would be plain dumb. I mean, slack-jawed, mouth-breathing, monstrously dumb.

Go back to the first question. If Black History Month exists because of past racism by white society, and most of the history we learn is already about white people, exactly what purpose would a White History Month serve?

Tips for Understanding Black History Month- 2016 Edition

To recall the several hundred years of white enslavement? To commemorate when white people got their freedom? To talk about the White Civil Rights Movement that helped transform America and stop discrimination against white people? How come they gave us the shortest month?


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The irony is, a little Black History is all one needs to understand the answer to that question:. Through this organization Dr.

Woodson initiated the first Negro History Week in February Woodson selected the week in February that included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two key figures in the history of African-Americans. Stop asking it please. Or, read more books. Also from the black side of the spectrum.

Black History Month is not Christmas. Historians of Black History still have jobs the rest of the year. Books on Black History remain stocked on the shelves.

Throughout social media, black people will continue to send me tidbits of Black History—some of it good, some of it suspect. The purpose of Black History Month is to place a spotlight on that history. Okay, so not stupid exactly. Yet at the same time, Black History Month has varied interpretations.

14th Amendment

For some, it is mostly about what is more conventional African-American history that deals with the history within the national boundaries of the United States and the previous 13 colonies. But there has been a long history of expanding beyond that. African-American researchers like JA Rogers early on examined Black History across space and time—from the ancient world to the United States to slave rebels in Haiti and beyond.

Black History Month can thus at times be about slave maroons in Jamaica, jazz artists of the Harlem Renaissance, ancient pyramid building pharaohs or black faces popping up in places you least expect. All of those stories may in time become part of this grander narrative. So you know, make it yours. Another one from the black side of the spectrum. And again, not stupid. But at times misguided.