Naleighna Kai's Literary Cafe Magazine NK LCM February 2018 Anniversary Issue | Page 41

We cannot just depend on our teachers to teach our children our history. We also cannot
wait until February to celebrate our history.
Around this time of year, we often hear the question,
“Is Black History Month even relevant anymore?”
I usually tell them to imagine the slaves who belted out
Negro spirituals as they moved through the plantation
fields. Humming them as they nursed cuts suffered
from the pricks of cotton plants. Moaning them as
they bore the sting of the master’s whip. Singing about
a freedom that many of them would never see, even
after President Lincoln’s release of the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863.
How could they sing that, knowing that for many,
death would be the only way they would be done with
the troubles of this world?
That song didn’t end with slavery. More than 100
years later, Mahalia Jackson traveled throughout the
country with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph
D. Abernathy, crooning the spiritual to encourage the
thousands of Negroes—as we were called at that time—
who marched for equality. For many of them, equality
was just a wild dream. For some, it was a ridiculous
notion. Yet, for others, it was a reality that they were
willing to die for.
Why would they want to die, knowing they would
never taste the one thing they savored?
Today, in 2018, as we celebrate the achievements of
people like Oprah Winfrey, Maxine Waters, Barack
Obama, and Colin Powell, I am convinced that our
ancestors weren’t only thinking of themselves when
they sang those spirituals. They weren’t even thinking
of their friends, and possibly not even their immediate
children. Perhaps as they sang Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody
Turn Me Around, Hold On, and Oh Freedom, they
reminded themselves to keep the faith because one
day, a young black man would die trying to register
men to vote so one day his widow could attend the first
black president’s second inauguration.
Maybe they envisioned a man like Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., who didn’t live to see Barack
Obama become the first African American
president or a young John Lewis who was attacked
on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama
go on to become Congressman John Lewis, the
gentleman from Georgia. Dr. King’s life ended
April 4, 1968 by a sniper’s bullet, less than a year
after Thurgood Marshall was appointed to serve on
the U.S. Supreme Court. In his less than 40 years
on this earth, despite his many shortcomings, his
efforts played a pivotal role in ending segregation in
the United States and helped create the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
As my heart swells with pride at the strides we have
made as a people, I often stop and ask myself that if
our ancestors came back today, would they be happy
with what they see? I mean, sure, many of us are
living the dreams of our forefathers, but how many
of us even know it? In a day and age when black
history is only being taught in neat little chunks
during the month of February, when our children
groan and moan when given a book written by an
African American author, when adults proudly
proclaim that not that they don’t have time to read,
but that they don’t read, are we doing our ancestors
any justice?
I can’t help but think back on W.E.B. DuBois’s co-
called Talented Tenth, the group of exceptional men
who would save the Negro race. DuBois believed
that the community needed to work to send only
the best and brightest to college because education
teaches life and character, and only our best and
brightest would uplift our race. Today, nearly every
African American child and many adults have
the option of going to college with or without a
scholarship if they so choose. African American
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