Observance

Excerpts from an article by Teresa Dear, member of the National Board of Directors, NAACP:

February is Black History Month. Black History Month is a time to recognize, reflect and celebrate the contributions, achievements and advancements of African Americans.

This is not, however, a month set aside whereby African Americans exclusively celebrate themselves. It is a month where everyone can come together and appreciate how African American inventions and activism have led to advances in most professional disciplines and society as a whole.

While African Americans reflect on their accomplishments to society, they do so remembering the countless sacrifices of their ancestors. They remember how ancestors survived the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights Movement. All of these experiences brought their own atrocities, barbarities and inhumanities with an agenda of free labor, oppression and profit.

Throughout heinous acts their fight was with their owners, the government, neighbors and even themselves — not knowing who they were. Victories did not come swiftly or easily. They were arduous, hard-fought and blood-stained. Little by little, inch by inch, decade by decade, their resolve, resilience and resistance grew, and so did their confidence, competence and cohesiveness.

This shared struggle, pain and wounds brought African Americans closer together. Their skin color and features united them as a tribe, but their journey bound them for life.

Black history is an undeniably rich history where their contributions have made life easier for people all over the world. Black history is also a beautiful history of how strangers showed up as friends. White people mentored, sponsored, partnered, protected, advocated and supported African Americans during dark, deep-valley experiences.

There were notable leaders who supported African Americans, not under duress, but because it was the right, moral and humane position to take. White founders of the NAACP include Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz. President Gerald Ford formally recognized Black History Month in 1976. 

While African Americans have achieved many firsts — such as president of the United States, Supreme Court justice, governor, senator, congressperson, mayor, media mogul, etc. — they can also be assigned the descriptors of overcomer, survivor, resistor, antagonist, activist, advocate, inventor, barrier-breaker, innovator, pioneer, record-breaker and trailblazer.

They have bowed, toiled and begged at the hands and feet of their oppressors. Yet, they maintained hope. They continued to rebound, progress, advance, invent, contribute and make a difference around the world. For these accomplishments, we all celebrate their capacity and their culture. We thank our friends. We thank our God.  (end of excerpts)

Insight

It is my belief that much of the strength of our nation comes from all of its people and their determination to make life better — their resolute unwillingness to accept injustice and oppression. Such determination comes with many challenges, but history has shown that freedom is born in only one way, and that’s by courageous people fighting through adversity. 

Without question, one of those courageous people was Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Douglass secretly learned to read as a boy and even began teaching other slaves. But his efforts earned brutal punishments from slave owners. He finally escaped bondage at age 21, found employment, raised a family, and created a life of honor and respect, becoming a celebrated orator and writer — all the while trying to avoid being recaptured. He used his gifts to profoundly influence public views on the plight of black slaves and even advised President Abraham Lincoln.

Years later Douglass wrote to his former master, recounting the “deep agony of soul” he felt on the morning of his flight from slavery. Though he escaped in broad daylight, he described it as “a leap in the dark, ... like going to war without weapons — ten chances of defeat to one of victory.” (In Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters, ed. Andrew Carroll (1997), 95) But of course he had to try. “We are two distinct persons, equal persons,” he explained. “What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both.” (In Letters of a Nation, 96)

A century later, Reverend Martin Luther King continued Frederick Douglass’ quest. In an effort to strike down continued injustice, he called for Americans to rededicate themselves to the commandment from the Bible: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Mark 12:31)

The course has not been easy, nor is it yet fully realized. But we can take hope in our ongoing efforts to correct wrongs, to embrace one another as equal persons and citizens of one nation. This is, after all, a “sweet land of liberty,” the “land where (our) fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride.” So “from ev’ry mountainside let freedom ring!” (Hymn, “My Country Tis of Thee”)

Southern Standard contributor Cordell Crawford can be contacted at crawfordcordell@yahoo.com.