”Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.” President Barack Obama [44th President of the United States] Black History Month, (February)also known as African-American History Month in America, is an annual observance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom for remembrance of important people and events in the history of the African diaspora[ Wikipedia] Rosa Louise McCauley (Rosa Parks)February 4; (1913-2005) was born on this day in Tuskegee, Alabama. She became famous for refusing to obey bus driver James Blake to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. An African American Civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.” Maya Angelou: Maya Angelou (1928-) Angelou is a celebrated author and poet. Her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, described her tumultuous childhood. Dr. Carter G. Woodson selected the month of February for the celebration of then Negro History Week now changed to Black History month as a way to honor the birth of two men whose actions drastically altered the future of black Americans. Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. President who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, was born on February 12th and Frederick Douglass, one of the nation’s leading abolitionists was born on February 14th. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Minister and an activist who led the U.S. Civil Rights Movement from the 1950’s until his assassination in 1968 Slavery in America ; Slavery and its legacy have shaped American history, from the Civil War to Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s to the struggle over civil rights a century later. Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940)[1] was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).[2] He founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement, which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.[Wikipedia] African Americans in Government. Colonel Colin Powell [Military official/diplomat]: Born Colin Luther Powell on April 5, 1937, in Harlem, New York. The son of Jamaican immigrants Luther and Maud Powell, Colin was raised in the South Bronx. Powell was educated in the New York City public schools, and graduated from Morris High. (Served as the Secretary of State under President George W. Bush) Medgar Evers (1925-1963) was a U.S.civil rights activist and NAACP field secretary whose murder received national attention and made him a martyr to the cause of the...
