Why We Should Celebrate Black History

8/13/2019 Why We Should Celebrate Black History

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Why We Should Celebrate Black History

Celebrating our history didn't just start with the creation of Black History Month.

When the Israelites were done wandering in the wilderness after 40 years, andJoshua got ready to lead them over the Jordan river, God told them to get 12

stones out of the place where the waters had parted, and bring them to the other

side and leave them for a memorial for their children and future generations so

that they would never forget their struggle in the wilderness before they got to the

Promised Land. Most importantly, it was to remind them that the same God who

was with them in struggle is the same one who brought them out into abundance.

Likewise, we must never forget from whence we've come. Not only on the

spiritual level, but in every aspect of our lives. Those who forget the past arecondemned to repeat it. And you don't know where you've been, you don't know

where you're headed. We must always be like the sankofa bird, looking

backwards to reflect, and then moving forward with new purposes.

We need to focus on our history, so that the wise among us can learn from the

fools' errors and not go down the same paths. We need our history so that in the

dark times, we can be encouraged by the victories of people who have

accomplished much with very little. We need to understand the strategies that

worked for us, as well as those that didn't.

There is nothing new under the sun. If we look at what's happening now through

the lens of history, we would see that closing 50 schools in mostly black

neighborhoods on the South and West Sides of Chicago, and then opening

charters, and giving them more resources while taking resources from public

schools is just another twist to the Separate But Equal concept that was struck

down in 1954 in Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka, KS. If we studied our

history, we would see that an appropriate response to compounded segregation

is the School Boycott of 1963, where students walked out of schools for 3 days to

protest overcrowding and Willis wagons. I believe that if we had studied our

history and strategies of the past, we could have avoided school closings.

If we studied our history, we would see that today's TIF's are yesterday's

conservation areas, located in blighted communities like North Lawndale on the

West Side and Kenwood on the South Side. While conservation areas and TIFs

have the same qualifiers, the Conservation areas had community councils that


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made decisions about community planning in areas like education, job creation

and our parks, etc. You are very lucky today if you get an alderman that will allow

a TIF advisory council so that residents can at least make suggestions about how

TIF funds will be spent.

If we don't study our history, we begin to believe the narrative, that African

Americans are inherently inferior to whites and other racial and ethnic groups;

that we are violent and lazy and don't want to work. When we see that black

people built the Pyramids, invented calculus and had the first universities, it's

kind of hard to see us as being inferior. The narrative won't tell you that the late

blues singer, Dinah Washington, was the first African American homeowner on

the 1500 Block of Trumbull. The narrative won't tell you that Ramsey Lewis'

father was the Minister of Music for Carey Tercentenary AME Church on 15th

and Homan. The narrative won't tell you that the late, great, Rev. Milton Brunson

got his start at Carey Tercentenary AME Church as the choir director. The

narrative won't tell you that the late John O'Quinn, who owned a barber shop on

Central Park and Roosevelt, and his wife, the late Cleodia O'Quinn, started the

O'Quinn Gladiators marching band, and served as informal ambassadors for

North Lawndale at the invitation of the late Kwame Nkrumah, the President of

Ghana. The O'Quinns risked their reputations by entertaining Paul Robeson and

going to his concerts.

When we hear the narrative about North Lawndale, it was founded in the late

1800's. The first people to live here were Eastern Europeans. In the 1920's therewas an influx of Jewish people, who developed the community even further and

took it to its highest level. In fact, under their leadership, the North Lawndale

community had one of the strongest political organizations in the country. The

blacks came in the 1950's. There was white flight and the jobs left. Martin Luther

King came here in the 1960's to protest the living conditions. He was killed in

1968. Blacks got mad and burned down their own community. It hasn't

recovered in nearly 50 years. Those folks are a permanent underclass. They

have failing schools...yada yada yada and the list of negatives goes on and on.

Because we have not taken the time to focus on the great accomplishments of

the African Americans who live there--including our family members--we are

stuck in the narrative rather than celebrating the full history of the community.

How can we celebrate our history on a daily basis? We can honor our family

members, our neighbors, our church members. This, in addition to studying


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about the Frederick Douglasses and Harriet Tubmans of the world. We can hold

CPS accountable to making sure that African American history is taught in every

school at every grade level. We can sponsor projects that honor our history and

culture. We can urge our elected officials to create a cultural center on the West

Side focused entirely on the African American experience on the West Side.

These are but a few ideas. What will you be doing for the next 365 days to study

black history and culture?

These remarks were provided by Valerie F. Leonard to the Phi Delta Kappa

Black History Program on Saturday, February 22, 2014.

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Why We Should Celebrate Black History