And Education, Forever

Black History is celebrated every year on the month of February. While the single month can serve as a powerful reminder of Black History, every day Black History is made. Black history is to always be celebrated. The window to learn and celebrate together is always.

Black History Month originated in 1915 with the founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). Learn more about association and the founders who created the idea of Black History Month, the idea’s origin from Negro History Week, and understand the significance of February for this celebration.

Black History Close to Home

Major George Shade (1923 – 2016)

Major Shade, along with his fellow airmen, received a Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in 2007 for his service in the U.S. Army Air Corps (later the U.S. Air Force) as a Tuskegee Airman, the first all-Black flying unit of the United States military created during World War II (1939-1945). A native from Lenoir, NC, he was among the original airman in the newly established 99th Pursuit Squadron who trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field at Tuskegee, Alabama.

Read Major Shade’s obituary here

Watch and listen to a brief interview with Major Shade.

Read the U.S. Congressional Record that recognizes Major Shade by name and his service | Watch the 29-March-2007 Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony

Literature

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

James Baldwin, 1964

Consider purchasing the following books from Black-owned book stores or from your local bookstores. Also consider renting the books from the county public library. If they do not carry the title, request it to be shelved!

• Another Country by James Baldwin
• You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Genevieve West
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Punching the Air by Abi Zoboi and Yosef Salaam
• Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• Pushout:The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Dr. Monique Morris
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele