Tag: African American History Month

Black History Week 1969

By Michael February 7, 2015 Off

It was the forty-fifth day of the year, the last day of Black History Week 1969. I was a senior at the Lanier Senior High School, probably no more than five feet eight inches tall, and weighing in, after being soaked in a rainstorm, at one hundred and fifteen pounds.

Lanier had opened its doors to educate white boys exclusively in Macon, Georgia, three years before Dr. Carter G. Woodson began the first observance of Negro History Week in 1927.  Most of the town’s leading white citizens had graduated from Lanier. Many did not go on to college. It was enough to have been a “Lanier Boy.” The discipline and bearing of a Lanier boy were unmatched by any white youngster growing up in Middle Georgia during that day. read more

Black History Month More Than a Month

By Michael February 6, 2015 Off

Black history is more than a month. Black history is made every month. There is hardly a day that goes by when some black person does not make history.

Prior to 1927 there was not any observance of black history, nor of the accomplishments of black people. There had always been historical markers made by black people that changed the course of human history. Those events were usually whitewashed leaving the public to think that only white people had contributed to the development of civilization. read more

Dr. King On Economic Boycotts

By Michael February 5, 2015 Off

During his last sermon, April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke on economic boycotts. He believed that economic boycotts could be used to gain civil and political rights.

Dr. King, was a pragmatist. He realized that to bring about change in America it would require programmatic solutions.He knew the real power of the civil rights movement centered around the power of economic boycotts. read more

Dr. King’s Vietnam War Speech

By Michael February 4, 2015 Off

Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against war during an address at Riverside Church in New York, April 4, 1967. Exactly one year later, Dr.  Martin Luther King, Jr. would breathe his last breath. Some say he should not have gotten himself involved in the Vietnam War. However, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that it was his abounding moral duty to lift his voice up for peace. He made his position clear and the distance between him and President Lyndon B. Johnson began to widen. read more