Growing up, my school was normal for the most part. I had the usual classes just like everyone else I knew. I played sports, avoided the dances, and protested the teachers. You know, woke high school kid stuff. My favorite time to raise my fist was in February. This school district, at the time I was going there, didn’t really go all out for Black History Month. In elementary school, instead of the same MLK coloring sheet, I received the coloring sheet with a combination of Malcolm X, MLK and Frederick Douglas. In high school, I thought it would be different. I’m older, so now they could go more in depth on different figures and topics. Then my teacher, wheeling in the video cart, pressed play and Amistad was on. Basically, in the early years of my education, I learned that Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that we would all live in racial equality and black folks were not slaves. Then they were free to become exploited entertainers and ball players.  Lucky for me, my learning didn’t stop at school. Otherwise, I would not think too highly of myself.  Just think about it, when you are a kid you start to learn about who you are and what you could possibly be when you grow up.  Well, all I saw were slaves, athletes, and entertainers yeah, my future looked real bright.  

This was Black History Month in a predominantly white school district.  If they were not catching a ball or wearing shacklesI didn’t learn about them.  If I had left my history in the hands of my suburban school district, I would not know about black entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors, kings, queens, authors, scholars, activists and the list goes on.  Learning so little about this history could make a black kid think that there isn’t much for them to look forward to in life. Could you imagine growing up not knowing what you are fully capable of?  Thinking that all you could do is work for someone and never own anything because you had no idea that Black Wall Street existed.  This could have been me but I could do my own research.  Don’t get me wrong, this school district wasn’t all horrible it just sucked at black history.  It prepared me well enough for college and that’s where the big bucks were spent because college is expensive.

I was in school learning about the Holocaust over in Germany but didn’t learn anything about the Apartheid in Africa.  I learned about the Great Depression of white folks who were broke but nothing about the black folks that have been broke and struggling the whole time.  I didn’t even learn about the Black Panthers Ten-Point Program until I was in college.  So just remember again if I was not doing my own research outside of school, I would have gone most of my life without knowing a lot about my own history.  It’s great that we have Black History Month butI feel all events that happened on this soil is a part of Americas History. For some reason, I felt that my history classes should have been more diverse. The oppressor was made out to be a hero and people of color received honorable mention.  If I was thinking outside the box, I could make an argument saying that maybe race relations in our country would be different if we learned a little more about each other at an early age.   Since we did spend about 8 hours a day in school and when you add what you learn through family and traditions at home, it will play a huge role in who you are as a person.  Different people and different cultures are what make up this beautiful messed up country of ours, we should learn about them in schools.

Aside from the lack of content in our history books, the programs that they would try to have would be well interesting.  I would imagine that the schools my friends went to in the city, had all these cool events throughout the month.  They would talk about how there was a girl that came to the school one day, all the local African Dance companies came and taught everyone some dances. As a finale, they had James Cameron himself come and tell the story of his lynching.  In case some of us are unaware of Mr. Cameron, he survived a Lynching in Marion, Indiana. He later founded the America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  That’s what I thought Black History Month would be like at the suburban school I went to.  I was also very wrong when I came to school one day and somebody’s grandma was explaining the history of soul food and we had a soul pot luck. Have you ever been to a soul food pot luck at school, where there were only 6 kids in your class with “soul”?  Yea I wasn’t eating the macaroni.

I don’t want you to think that I grew up being the only black person everywhere I went. That was not the case, I just went to a different school district that had more white folks than black folks.  I lived in a neighborhood that was the opposite.  I would not change my situation because as I stated earlier, it’s a good thing to learn about other cultures and know that everyone is not like you.  However, for us to do this we would have to be introduced to these other cultures.  You can’t just teach one side of history because there is not enough representation at the particular school. This is also why it is important that we do not leave our children’s education solely in the hands of their school.  We should take some time to educate them on their culture and let them know where they came from and how this rich history is responsible for where they’re going.  Marcus Garvey said, “People without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without its roots”.  If these schools won’t teach them, then we should simple as that. If you don’t know a lot about black history it’s the perfect time to learn together.  There is always something new. These figures in history didn’t sit back and wait. We need to do the same for our education.  We are free and able to read now so open a book or two. Let us show the kids that they can be whatever they want to be and show them a black pioneer that made sure of it.