Shirlee Smith | Black History Month – Let’s Start Running Away With Ourselves

Welcome to the first week of Black History Month. Quite an advancement, some would say, from back in 1926 when the historian Dr Carter J. Woodson created Negro History Week.

But knock on just about any door anywhere in America and ask the family who Carter J. Woodson is, and when they look puzzled then tell them he is a famous Black man.

Kids and parents alike will ask which NFL or NBA team he plays for. Letting them know they’re off course, the family members, whether black or white, will ask if he played in Prince’s back-up band or if he’s with Jay Z or Beyonce’s music team.

It is a sad and pathetic state of affairs with scantily-clad Beyonce being idolized while Marion Anderson, the world-renowned Black opera singer, gets a question mark next to her name on the Black History Month quiz.

We can’t identify Black people who, against the odds, have made significant historical contributions, but we’re able to allow our culture to be minimized by the sounds of marching bands.

I’m not at all convinced that we need parades to celebrate my history. The last one I attended (and the only one I ever went to) had an inordinate amount of very cute black girls shaking their rumps while swishing their long store-bought Chinese hair in sync with the rhythm of the fierce drum beat.

Ask the parade-goer standing next to you who Phyllis Wheatley was, and you’ll probably get an answer something like, “Uh, I think she’s the one in the third row of pom-pom girls. Yeah, yeah, she’s the one with that long blonde ponytail.”

And just why should we know who Phyllis Wheatley was ? One reason we should know of her is because she is the epitome of who we, as black people, are not.

Phyllis Wheatley became the first African American and one of the first women to publish a book of poetry in the American colonies, in 1773.

She was born in Senegal/Gambia about 1753 and at the age of 8, in 1761, was kidnapped and brought to Boston Massachusetts on a slave ship. Although she was in poor health, she was purchased by John Wheatley, whose family educated her, and she went on to write highly acclaimed poetry. She published her first poem in 1767 and her first volume of verse in 1773.

This took place at a time when African Americans were discouraged and intimidated from learning how to read and write.

Former slave and orator Frederick Douglass quoted the words of his master: “Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. If he learns to read the Bible it will forever unfit him to be a slave. If you teach him how to read, he’ll want to know how to write, and this accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself.”

Not much of an advancement has taken place by the increase from one week to a full month of Black History.
Our children still can’t read and still don’t know who we, as a people, are.

Too bad we haven’t accomplished what the 8-year-old kidnapped Phyllis Wheatley managed to do. If we had, we could make the words of Douglass’ owner come true.

Just think, if we were to replace the Black History Month hip-shaking parades with focusing on that which would make us run away with ourselves, in the years to come, when we knock on a neighbor’s door, no matter the color of their skin, they would know who we are.