Black Lives Matter!

BY WILLIAM R. FREEMAN (M.Div.‘01)

WOW!  Here we go again.  On Thursday, November 22, 2018, Thanksgiving Day, we received a report of another police killing of a Black man.  This time a young twenty-one year old, at a mall in Hoover, Alabama – ten miles from Birmingham.  His name: Emantic Fitzgerald “EJ” Bradford, Jr.

At first, the police put out a statement that Mr. Bradford was shot in the face because he was seen brandishing a gun. Later on, we found out that that story was not totally true and the police withdrew their statement.  However, of course this did nothing for EJ and his family as EJ was already dead!

This is just another in the string of murders of young Black men by police in the United States of America.  I believe it will not stop as long as the police are afraid of young Black men and young Black boys; and, as long as many white Americans still harbor resentments, and in many cases, hatred and racism against Black people because many of African descent have proven to be as talented as any other group – as proven throughout history.

That brings me to why we celebrate February as Black History month.  On February 7, 1926, Black historian, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be “Negro History Week.”  This particular week was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.  Forty-two years later, in 1968, The Black United Students at Kent State University proposed to expand Negro History Week to Black History Month and, two years later, in February, 1970 the first celebration took place.  It is also celebrated in February in Canada (1995), as well as October in the United Kingdom (1987) and Republic of Ireland (2014) and as Black Achievement Month in The Netherlands.

A statement attributed to Dr. Woodson as to why there needed to be a time set aside to recognize the history, culture and achievements of the Negro was because, “The contributions of African-Americans were overlooked, ignored, and even left out by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.”  Race prejudice, he concluded, “is merely the logical result of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind.”

This writer can attest to the fact that this is definitely a true statement having graduated in 1957 from a specialized high school in New York City with honors in both math and science without ever being taught about the accomplishments of any Blacks besides Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes, and Jackie Robinson to name a few.  My childhood friends and I became Brooklyn Dodger Baseball fans because of Mr. Robinson. We were not taught about the work of Dr. Charles R. Drew, who in 1942 invented the Apparatus for Preserving Blood as blood plasma which saved many lives in WWII, Korea, Viet Nam and Iraq.  Due to other omissions from history textbooks we were not made aware of the accomplishments of the lady “Computers” (Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan) who were major factors in America’s space program.

These are just a few modern examples.  What about the hundreds and hundreds of Black men and women inventors who have been left out of history books? To name a few: William Burr (1899 – The Switching Device for Railways); Sara Boone (1892 – Ironing Board); J. L. Love (1897 – Pencil Sharpener); William B. Purvis (1894 – Electric Railway and 1897Electric Railway Switch); Frederick M. Jones (Thermostat and Temperature Control System); Granville T. Woods (1888 – Railway Telegraphy).  My research produced eight and one-half single spaced pages of the names of African-American inventors from 1845-1980.  You may get a copy of the list at http://www.Smith-Lenoir.com.

Finally, I am sure that Dr. Woodson would have been proud to have been alive to see the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture(NMAAHC) which opened on September 24, 2016 as part of the Smithsonian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.  If you have not been, it is well worth your time to visit this historical building with friends, co-workers and family, especially young children, where a lot of Black history, inventions, and culture are on exhibit.