When I was a little kid, I learned about a couple of unofficial holidays.
I became aware. of Mothers Day and Fathers Day, and I asked my grandmother if there was a Children’s Day.
“Every day is children’s day,” she told me.
My grandmother has been gone for nearly 35 years. I think that particular conservation took place nearly 35 years before that. It came to mind for the first time in years today when I noticed it was Black History Month.
I was in my mid 30s when we began commemorating Black History Month. I would say “celebrating,” but I don’t remember ever hearing of anyone, white or black, who ever had a BHM party. Actually the idea of Black History Month is a good one. At least when I was a kid, most of the other kids I knew had very little knowledge of anything black people had accomplished.
One of my friends knew about Sammy Davis Jr.
Another was smart enough to mention George Washington Carver, but he lost points for saying Carver was famous for inventing the peanut.
Of course now that Barack Obama has been president and we’ve had a black vice president and three black justices on the Supreme Court, inventing the peanut isn’t such a big deal. Even if one of the judges is Clarence Thomas.
I remember finding it ironic that Black History Month was the shortest month of the year, but I recently learned that February had been chosen because it was the month both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass had been born. Of course Lincoln was only an honorary black person, an honor bestowed upon him for freeing the slaves.
Douglass may have been the most important black American of the 19th century. He was an escaped slave who became one of America’s greatest orators and abolitionists. He also became a leading spokesmen for equal rights for women.
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
Quite a few interesting quotes have been attributed to Douglass, but that’s one of the ones that still have the most significance in today’s world. Certainly one worth considering as we look at Black History Month.
Oh, by the way, when February turns to March and Black History Month ends, Women’s History Month begins.
And before the Trumpanzees among you get worked up and ask why there isn’t a White Man’s History Month, I’ll tell you what my late and dearly missed grandmother would say.
“Every month is White Man’s History Month.”