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Ron Jackson's Perspective
The Sunday Journal -
Think
Kankakee, Illinois
February 8, 2004
What has black
history taught us? |
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His life began
in 1856 as a slave. Although it was never his intention, he
was destined to make black history. He lived during a time
when blacks were considered property and not human. It was
illegal for slaves to learn to read and punishable by death.
Eight years after his birth, President Abraham Lincoln
signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring slavery illegal.
It would take another three years and a civil war before that decree
could be enforced. Booker Taliaferro Washington is his name.
His extraordinary accomplishments
are well documented. As a young free man with no education and
with no child labor laws to protect him, Washington applied his
strong work ethic to make a living packing salt. Like most
freed blacks, he wanted an education more than anything else.
Using his only
skill, manual labor, he earned entrance into Hampton Institute.
Started and run by former Union General Samuel Chapman Armstrong,
Hampton Institute would become a school to train black teachers.
The entrance criteria were work ethic, hygiene, morality, and
self-discipline.
As the story goes, the rest is history.
Washington became a champion for the rights of freed slaves to get
an education. He is most notably known for founding what is
now Tuskegee University, the crown jewel of Historical Black
Colleges and Universities and an American institution that has its
own storied legacy.
Washington’s legacy of establishing the importance of
education and finding a way to accomplish it is well known. He
was also a very controversial speaker and much repudiated by other
free blacks for his outspokenness on how blacks would achieve
success in America. He made enemies of the black agitators of his
day by labeling them foolish for calling for social equality before
there was economic and educational equality.
Fast forward to today. Meet Johnny,
representative of many black young men born free, 100 plus years
after slavery was abolished, and 35 years after the civil rights
movement. Visit any American junior high school. Then
ask why it is that so many black kids can’t read or read well below
their grade level when Booker T. Washington could. Ask why so
many blacks don’t value education in a society where education is
free to all its citizens. Ask why, after Booker T.
Washington’s legacy of educational triumph, do more black men go to
jail than to college. Ask why the legacy of Booker T.
Washington is forgotten.
What has black history taught us? Does it
demonstrate that the farther we get from slavery, the less black
America progresses? How did so many freed men learn to read at
the risk of death while so many of today’s blacks die before
learning to read?
There is an old saying that sadly still has some merit
today. “If you want to keep something from black people, put it in a
book because that is the last place they will look.”
Black history should be about asking why, not who did
what and when. Why were ex-slaves able to accomplish so much
while some present day black Americans who have only heard about
slavery seem to have limited potential?
Booker T. Washington learned the value of education;
the Johnnys of today are learning of reparations. Washington
found a way to earn an education. Many blacks today have
thrown away free education.
Booker T. Washington turned desire into opportunity and
reality. If he could see the continued fruitless and divisive
agitation going on today, he would turn over in his grave.
Black History looks so great because today looks so
bleak. |
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