Just after the unfortunate passing of the late Coretta Scott King, I have come to the realization that black history has been reduced to a short spiel on Martin Luther King, Jr. and a series of McDonald’s commercials. In the short month of February, school children all over the states will be taught about the same black figures for what amounts to about a half of a school day.
Subsequently, all that children are being taught about African-American history, which is also American history, in the school systems can be summed up in about five pages and a coloring activity.
Sadly enough, there are many black and white families who have not taken the time to teach what has been ever-so-stealthily left out of the miseducation of the American child. What about the Barbara Jordans, the Emmit Tills, the Ralph Ellisons, the Bessie Colemans, the Cornell Wests, the four freshmen at North Carolina A&T and even the Assata Shakurs without whom blacks would not enjoy even the partial freedoms they possess while tracing their pictures of Rosa Parks during black history month.
I recently read the autobiography of Assata Shakur. Many of today’s youth would see her name and wonder if she was any relation to Tupac, not knowing that she was one of the most persecuted political prisoners in the history of the American penal system. And for what? Freedom for blacks and political prisoners of all races. Falsely accused, imprisoned, interrogated, beaten, tortured, starved and deprived of medical care and all physical contact for months on end — simply because she was presumed to be a part of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). The BLA, in her time, was separate from the infamous Black Panther Party, of which she was a part. It was presumed that she was a reactionary that fought the injustice against the black race by killing state troopers and other whites in authority. Assata Shakur has never even fired a gun.
Due to her connection with the Black Panther Party and her assumed valuable presence in the BLA she was tracked by the FBI and accused of numerous crimes, the majority of which she was acquitted of because no physical evidence could even place her at the scene of the crime. Yet she was accused of armed robbery, attempted murder and actual second degree murder of a state trooper simply because the FBI wanted her to release information that would allow them to crush the liberation movement. Not to mention the fact that while in prison she was pregnant and was still put in solitary and denied adequate milk and other dietary needs of a woman with child.
Her struggle is still our struggle, not only for the rights of African-Americans, but for those of women, of political prisoners and for the rights of the oppressed in America. Although many famous black political prisoners, inventors, scientists, doctors, lawyers, politicians, historians, writers and visionaries have been left out of the history books, there is no reason for us as an entire and inclusive community not to educate ourselves and our children. Not simply out of anger, but a hunger for the knowledge and freedom that these people were fighting for us to know. It has been said that a people will perish because of a lack of knowledge and this is so true. Through their examples we can be inspired to keep the dreams of not only Martin Luther King alive, but that of Assata Shakur, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Daniel Hale Williams, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Richard Wright, Charles Isabel and many other Americans whose presence may be forgotten — but their impact is eternally felt.
If you don’t recognize some of these names, go find out — they may have begun a dream that you desire to fulfill. African-American history is American history, so take this month and every day of the year in which so many contributions were made by blacks to learn about our history, your history.
