If there is anything that I enjoy more than writing it is learning about history. I especially enjoy tracts that reveal something that I have never before learned about the world or my country. History is alive. It tells us where we have been and serves as a guideline for what kind of people and ideas to embrace and what we should consider avoiding. 

When I was a school girl we learned about American History in the fifth grade. It was more of an outline of events from the time of the first settlers to around World War II. There was so much information jammed into a single school year that we never really heard many details about various events. I learned much more when I also studied American History in high school. It was not until college , however, that the history of my nation really came alive for me. I had a professor who created a kind of tapestry of stories threaded together in such a way that I finally understood the reasons why certain things happened rather than just learning one fact after another. It was so fascinating and it sparked my lifetime interest in history of all kinds. 

One of the areas of American History that was all too often downplayed when I was younger was the role of slavery in literally building our nation on the backs of Black people kept in chains. In college the watered down version of the teachings about slavery that had dominated my youth was abandoned for the honesty of even the most terrible truths.

I will never truly know what it was or is like being Black but I now at least better understand how wrong slavery was and how it demeaned the value of people in the most horrific ways. Somehow I still have a difficult time accepting that even learned and respected individuals like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were able to justify having slaves. It is a question that has haunted me. 

I feel as though there is an original sin associated with slavery that taints human history and most especially American history. It is difficult to imagine why it was ever acceptable for anyone to own another person. No matter how I attempt to find some kind of reasoning for it, I always end up believing that surely something must have felt wrong to them and yet they did it anyway.

The aftermath of slavery should have been a time of jubilation for those who had once been slaves but the reality is that it took almost a hundred years before our nation really attempted to rid itself of segregation and racist ideologies. I can still hear the ugly words and thinking of my youth that far too many people used in connection with Black citizens. Things are certainly better now, but sadly far too much of that kind of thinking seems to be bleeding into national attitudes toward anyone who appears to be different. There is even a movement to consider White people as the ones being mistreated and misunderstood while those who are Black or Brown are getting special favors. 

I know that America still has a long way to go before everyone begins to see our fellow humans as our equal brothers and sisters. Maybe that day will never come. Prejudices abound and many of them are uttered by the president. The throwback is something that I truly believed had disappeared and when some of my Black and Brown fiends and students insisted that the dark sides of racism had never really gone away I was naively stunned. They opened my eyes like that college professor had done and I began to see that people with hateful ideas still exist and some of them even view themselves as good people.

The current administration has seen fit to deemphasize Black History month out of a feeling that there is no need to spend several weeks learning about a group of people who should just be grateful for the progress that has been made. What I know and believe is that it is critical that we keep unfolding the history of people who first came to our nation with no rights humbled by an attitude that they were little more than raw labor for enriching the White people who owned them. 

Few people have ever learned that it was slaves who labored to build the White House. Most do not understand how those tragic souls were the engine that created the wealth of much of America. We don’t really talk about the fact that they were purposely kept uneducated lest they realize that their captivity was morally wrong. They were bought and sold like farm equipment rather than being acknowledged for their wit and intelligence. They were literally considered to be almost subhuman but we don’t really like to talk about that, especially with students who might be compassionate enough to feel sorrow for what was done to them. 

I think we should do more not less about Black History month. It’s time we celebrate the heroic stories of people without whom our nation would not be as rich and advanced as it is. We need to learn all of the stories of Black imprisonment, inventiveness and bravery. In fact, we might want their stories to be told all year long in a celebration of how much they have given to all of us. They are as much part of the founding of America as anyone. They have earned our great respect. It’s time for an honest and joyous rendering of the contribution to the nation that they continuing to give.