Yay! It’s Black History Month! This year can you teach our children about the rest of the important people?
I am not saying don’t tell them about the Malcom Xs and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jrs, but stop omitting the Claudette Colvins and Matthew Hensons.
Colvin was arrested March 2, 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks for the same “crime”. She was 15 years old and the first Black person to be arrested for defying bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama.
She was a spark for the black community that ultimately lead to Parks’ role but the Montgomery Bus Boycott as a whole. Henson was the first African American Artic explorer. He is actually credited as the first man to reach the North Pole, in 1909.
Essentially, not passing on this knowledge of true black history you are further miseducating the youth and being an active participant in the depletion of Black History! Stop pretending like we have not always “slayed”.
Black history is also made everyday. Beyonce Knowles whom many individuals are rallying against in her efforts to wake the Black community up, decided to take a firm stance against police brutality. You have got to be sick and tired of being mistreated if you perform at an event like the Super Bowl; nationally televised, high attendance, and the most anticipated event of the National Football League.
Rise up Beyonce! It’s like we’re stuck in a time machine that only travels to years between 1940 and 1970. We need to know our history. We must be truly educated about who we are as a people otherwise history will continue to repeat itself.
If the teachers will not teach it in school then parents must teach it in the home. Do not let them whitewash our history. Do not forget how hard those before us worked for us to have the smallest of luxuries today, you know, like education for instance. Tell their stories and tell them accurately.
It’s a shame when no one can tell me who Dr. Charles R. Drew is; a brother of Omega Psi Phi who invented the blood plasma transfusion, but was denied his own invention because of racism.
It’s scary that some Black people really believe the Black Panthers were a terrorist organization. We cannot have the likes of Stacey Dash spewing ignorance and the youth absorbing it. Instead we need conscious role models like Tammara Ellis, the president of StrutLa Modeling Troupe here at GSU. They gave a riveting performance at the Fifty Shades of Purple and Gold Fashion show inspired by Beyonce’s Formation and Kendrick Lamar’s Alright.
The members of the troupe were dressed as members of the Black Panther party. The message spoke for itself. Black history cannot be compressed into just one month, its everyday. Please stop depriving our youth of knowledge they are so hungry for.
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Kyrea Booker is a junior biology major from Miami, Fla.