BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Black and Blessed

*Celebrating Black History Month

**At the close of Black History Month let’s take a look at ourselves and our country. DSM/Calamity**

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Black and Blessed

By Wes & Anna Hessel

 

A Black Mark Not On Our History

As Black History Month comes to a close, we must actively insure that the true history of Black Americans is told. All of it. The dark and the glorious. How this story ends will be a predictor of how our nation embraces our black brothers and moves forward.  We all recall as children eating peanut butter spread on crackers as we learned about George Washington Carver, but no other significant Black history was ever taught, at least any school I ever attended. African-American history remains mostly hidden and not taught in schools.

Inventors and Heroes

It is not a significant part of any school curriculums and it should be.  An accurate depiction of the history and culture of African-Americans must become part of American history classes.  Teaching a truthful history lends respect to those activities could over a generation change core attitudes. The history of blacks in America is our history, some dark and tragic, some brilliant and glorious. It is time we as a country accept that not all history worth being written down and taught was that of  white men.   The poem that became the lyrics of our National Anthem was written by an attorney who had little or no respect for Black people.   We now must educate about the atrocities of slavery and the important roles Blacks have played and continue to play in our history and our future.

Nothing New

Various peoples of Africa were brought to the “New World” as slaves, bought, sold, and treated like the property they were considered to be, not the persons of rich culture and tradition they had been.  The “first” African slaves brought to what is now the United States is typically thought to be a load of captives from what is now Angola, sold to Jamestown Governor George Yeardley and Abraham Piersey, the colony’s trade head, for food, near the end of August 1619.

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