Reading for Black History Month
According to History.com, it has been 399 years since 20 Black people were kidnapped in Africa and forcibly brought by a Dutch ship to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia. It has been 155 years since Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a document intended to free Black people from the institution of slavery. It has been 53 years since the Civil Rights Movement ended. It has been 9 years since Barack Obama began his two terms as president of the United States of America.
The numbers cited above indicate that Black people in the United States have experienced a dramatic improvement in quality of life over the course of American history. However, individual memoirs reflect an ongoing struggle rather than a clear path up and out of bondage. In When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, Patrisse Khan-Cullers and Asha Bandele give voice to the persecution that Black people continue to face. It is a painful but necessary read.
The history of the Black person in the United States cannot be separated from the history of the United States. Read, for example, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, by Frederick Douglass, who educated himself while enslaved, escaped the institution of slavery, and participated peacefully in the movement to abolish slavery. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, painstakingly tells of a child of enslaved parents whose cell samples were taken from her by the medical community for research that was denied her, despite her terminal illness. To this day, Henrietta Lacks’ cells are used for research in several diseases.
Read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings--or any poetry--by Maya Angelou, for its beauty and depiction of the Black person’s struggle in the United States. In His Day Is Done, she turns to South Africa, acknowledging Nelson Mandela’s struggle and paying tribute to him for his part in striking down apartheid. In The Other Wes Moore, Rhodes Scholar Wes Moore describes how it feels to have escaped the dire fate of the Wes Moore who grew up in the same neighborhood and spent the majority of his life in prison.
Black History Month is an opportunity to catch up on American history lessons that we may have missed in class. Listen to the stories of some of our great African American orators, poets, historians, and authors:
James Baldwin
Octavia Butler
W.E.B. Du Bois
Alex Haley
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Terry McMillan
Toni Morrison
Barack Obama
Alice Walker
Cornel West
The numbers cited above indicate that Black people in the United States have experienced a dramatic improvement in quality of life over the course of American history. However, individual memoirs reflect an ongoing struggle rather than a clear path up and out of bondage. In When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, Patrisse Khan-Cullers and Asha Bandele give voice to the persecution that Black people continue to face. It is a painful but necessary read.
The history of the Black person in the United States cannot be separated from the history of the United States. Read, for example, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, by Frederick Douglass, who educated himself while enslaved, escaped the institution of slavery, and participated peacefully in the movement to abolish slavery. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, painstakingly tells of a child of enslaved parents whose cell samples were taken from her by the medical community for research that was denied her, despite her terminal illness. To this day, Henrietta Lacks’ cells are used for research in several diseases.
Read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings--or any poetry--by Maya Angelou, for its beauty and depiction of the Black person’s struggle in the United States. In His Day Is Done, she turns to South Africa, acknowledging Nelson Mandela’s struggle and paying tribute to him for his part in striking down apartheid. In The Other Wes Moore, Rhodes Scholar Wes Moore describes how it feels to have escaped the dire fate of the Wes Moore who grew up in the same neighborhood and spent the majority of his life in prison.Black History Month is an opportunity to catch up on American history lessons that we may have missed in class. Listen to the stories of some of our great African American orators, poets, historians, and authors:
James Baldwin
Octavia Butler
W.E.B. Du Bois
Alex Haley
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Terry McMillan
Toni Morrison
Barack Obama
Alice Walker
Cornel West
- Mary A., West Windsor Branch
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