Paying tribute to black innovators and inventors
Elizabeth Simpson
What's Your Shade?
It's that time of year again when walls are filled with colorful decorations in the elementary schools around the country. No, unfortunately I am not talking about Valentine's Day, but rather Black History Month. Yes, it's that time of year, 28 days when blacks are actually recognized for having some influence in this country. Twenty-eight days for teachers to pack all the information into their restless students' minds that they can about blacks in the United States.
Memories of Black History Month in elementary school bring to my mind thoughts of posters with pictures of famous blacks like Martin Luther King Jr., who received most of his accolades on one day last month, Garrett Morgan, Mary McCloud Bethune, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and a paragraph at the bottom highlighting their most well-known accomplishments.
Maybe at your school your teacher read a book by a black author or read some book with a main black character like "To Kill A Mockingbird." Maybe your class all got to take a field trip and see the play. Maybe in music class you learned the song "We Shall Overcome" or "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
And maybe if you don't know, or dare I say, don't care, I can see how this would pose a problem. But then my problem would be realizing the irony in trying to celebrate the accomplishments of a race of people for a month whose ancestors, in reality, were from the place where life began. Don't be shocked. I did not mean for this to come as a surprise. Yes, life began in Africa.
And no, I am not saying this because I am some militant black woman, feeling empowered by 28 or, if we're lucky, 29 days in February. I am saying this because it's an anthropological fact. The bones of the first human, Lucy, a lady about three feet tall, were found in Africa. Did you know that most of the books of the Bible, expect for Luke, were written by people of African descent? Solomon, supposedly the wisest man on earth at the time, was African.
If one thinks about it, when Joseph took Mary and Jesus to hide from Herod, he took them to Egypt. The last time I checked, Egypt was in Africa. It seems to me that if you are trying to hide from someone, you generally hide somewhere where you wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. So even if I don't say that Jesus was African, or at least had a couple drops of African blood in there somewhere, I am just saying that Jesus had some color in him.
But let's get away from all the shocking facts about blacks and their descendents — I won't even begin to talk about all the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians: the first surgeries, astronomy, the architectural mysteries of the pyramids and how they were built.
I remember when I was little my aunt got me a T-shirt that I wore to Ms. Halloway's third grade class which had names of different objects all across the front and back. The sentence, "Do you know what all these have in common?" was on the front. When I turned the shirt over to see, it said at the bottom on the back, "They are all inventions and discoveries of African-Americans!"
And just to give you a brief rundown so you don't leave this month without some extra knowledge of the accomplishments of blacks to show for yourself here are a couple things that a black person invented: the washing machine, the gas mask, the stop light, the folding chair, the propeller for airplanes, the folding bed, the shampoo head rest, interliners to prevent tire punctures, the railway signal apparatus, biscuit cutters, the clothes line support, the jack, the release valve, the coin changer mechanism, the rotary engine, the letter box, dough kneaders, stainless steel scouring pads, the locomotive smoke stack, the fitted bed sheet, the spring seat for chairs, the ironing board, the street sweeper and the apparatus for automatically transmitting messages over a telephone line.
I could go on, but I'll spare you — all these facts about Africa and blacks might be too much for one day. In 1926 Dr. Carter G. Woodson took the initiative of launching Negro History. He chose the month of February for the celebration because of certain key events that happened for blacks in the month of February throughout history in this country.
In Feb. 1870, blacks got the right to vote, and in that same year the first black, Hiram R. Revels, took his oath of office. In Feb. 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by a group of citizens in New York City.
In 1960, a group of college students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter, which would soon become a civil rights milestone, and in Feb. 1965, Malcolm X was shot and killed. So since 1926, first known as Negro History Week, blacks have been recognized for contributing to the history of the United States.
In closing, I guess what this month comes down to, for me, is a certain sense of sadness that all the contributions of blacks to this country have to be crammed into a month and that without this month I would venture to say that they would continue to go unaccounted for. The irony of it all is that we recognize the "first" blacks did something when in ancient cultures in Africa. They were already doing things ahead of their time.
It's strange that black children learn that they came from slaves when some of the greatest kingdoms of the ancient world were in Africa. In history books, our history seems to start with slavery. So while I feel saddened, on the other hand I feel vindicated because we go on learning about the same select group of blacks that history books chose to highlight.
While history books do highlight a few blacks who did great things here, we were already doing wonderful things there. I don't need 28 days to tell me that I am important and to show me that black people were indeed intelligent enough to think great thoughts, start colleges and invent things. I know the truth.
"What's Your Shade?" is the Multicultural Students Programs and Services column and appears every other Wednesday. Contact MSPS at sacharya@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, February 13, 2002
