The always affable, always informative Donald Cleveland, of BCC Central Campus Student Success, gave a terrific public presentation on February 19th about Black History Month. We asked him for a synopsis for those who may have missed his presentation.

Black History Month Presentation

Understanding one's family history is important. Knowing where your ancestors came from and what they accomplished provides one with a sense of identity, heritage, and destiny. This is why Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded "Negro History Week" in 1926. In 1976, the week was expanded to a month and the name was changed to "Black History Month." Dr. Woodson selected the month of February, to celebrate the many contributions that people of African descent have made to this world, in honor of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

Dr. Woodson, (1875-1950), the "Father of Negro History Week", was the guiding force in the formation of The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. To help support the family income, young Carter Woodson did not attend school until he was twenty years old. Having taught himself to read and write, and most of all, to think independently, he received his high school diploma in less than two years, which later followed by the Litt.B., the B.A. from the University of Chicago, and his M.A. degree a year later.

Not satisfied with the educational system in America, Woodson went to Europe and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Later he returned to the U.S. to earn the Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. His most celebrated work is the book Mis-Education of the Negro which was first published in 1933.

Donald Cleveland's presentation on the "Origin and Purpose of Black History Month" introduced information about people of African descent that is rarely known by numerous people today. Such information included the real "Father of Medicine" who was Imhotep, an African, instead of Hippocrates; Africa being the birth place of all mankind; The first university in the world created by Africans; African symbols on the dollar bill; and much more.

During his presentation, Mr. Cleveland quoted Dr. Naim Ak'Bar, psychologist and author, regarding the definition of education: "The human being is a blessed creature because he is not restricted by instinct. The way that the human being is able to find out what he has to do is by learning, by development of consciousness, by beginning to study himself, study all the rest of creation, study his history as a human being, and in the process, discover the patterns which dignify and make him what he is. That is what education is supposed to do--to provide the human being with the correct knowledge about himself, so that he can be what he is supposed to be!!"

"When people are educated to respect the knowledge, scholarship, history and background of everybody except themselves, then those people are "MIS-EDUCATED."