Black History Month Revisisted

Earlier, I had a conversation with a friend about meme that he posted on Facebook. During that conversation, I said the following:

"As a teacher, I challenge myself daily as to why we do things. I have found that Black History Month is not about "history" as much as it's about shattering the stereotypes that still exist about the African American's role in society. Some folks (Blacks included) think our path to success is measured by a ball, a microphone or a role in a movie. If the month of February doesn't do anything else, I hope it shatters those stereotypes. I have been teaching in Montgomery and Clark County for five years. I have only seen one black male teacher, other than myself. I know there are others out there, but there are few. We need to shine a path and let young black teenagers know that teaching is not just for white folks."


A classic example for the need of Black History Month is the movie, Hidden Figures. It tells the true story of how a group of black female mathematicians were instrumental in the NASA program during the sixties and seventies. I have heard several people ask how a story that important could have gone untold for this long. In case you haven't seen the movie yet, I will avoid divulging any details. I will just say that we may have never seen a man in space without the efforts of at least two of these women. 

We forget that kids (and some adults) need to know they aren't traveling in uncharted waters. I can't tell you the number of times I was the first-ever black male to work for a company or accomplish something at school. Sometimes, all it takes for a person to believe they can do something is knowing that it's been done before. I took it for granted that I only had one black male teacher throughout my entire education. It never crossed my mind to even consider teaching as a good profession until about twenty years ago. It was never suggested to me by friends, family or church leaders. Maybe if I had seen more black men teaching, I would have considered it.

To paraphrase a wise saying, you don't know where you're going until you know where you've been. Children of color need to see themselves in our history. They need to know we are capable of doing anything we set our mind to doing. With our changing demographics, history classes needs to be more inclusive of all races. For those of you that say history is history, I would only say this. The United States of America has only existed for 240 years. Out of those 240 years, classrooms have only been segregated less than three generations. Whether we want to admit it or not, history tends to be taught from the point of view of the oppressor. History books are changing. but it's nice to take a little road trip and get history from a different point of view.