February Black History Month

Here are a variety of suggestions for anyone wishing to increase knowledge of the history of our American Continent and our African American fellow citizens. The hidden, lost, and erased hisstory of people has always been a great interest to me - I like a MYSTERY! Let me get right to it:

On pbs Passport (which you can access with a one time $60 donation to pbs) is hosting the History of Hip Hop. Iy is a marvelous musical adventure to see the history of the times evolve with the music and to understand how the music evolved from parent music genres like R and B and Blues. A surprise for me was the involvement of Disco which I confesss I never liked until I watched this series. Don't Miss It - you will be glad you had the opportunity.

On HULU you can see the 1619 Project which was first feaured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, then a book, and now this infinitely enlightening series which has reached 6 episodes in Season 1 so far. The brilliant and entirely engaging narrator dips into everything - music, literature, and adds the voices of the notable scholars and celebrities as well as ordinary people who light up the narrative. I watched three episodes last night, one on the music aspect, and one on the growth and transformation of policing as a result of the Race/Slave hitory of the southern half of the country. Of especial history to me due to my family history with Union efforts was the view of the history of the exploitation of labor as a result of this past.

Finally, this morning I was reading Early American Life a longtime favorite magazine of mine from my former volunteer days at the Whitall House. There was a fascinating article on the International African American History Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, which opened in January. It is hard, if you have any empathy at all for your fellow human beings, to face the facts of this horror, the slave ships, the suffering, the generations of misery the kidnapped and enslaved people were then to face, but there must be a reckoning and repair. For too long there has been a kind of blind, romantic view of the Old South that completely ignored the suffering it was built upon. The time is now for us all to take every opportunity offered to us to understand our own history and how things got to where they are today. All of these entries into history, are, also, interesting, and you get a blossoming of understanding in your brain when the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together and you see the full picture. Enhance your month with an expansion of your knowledge of American History - check out these available and entertaining sources!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann (as usual to contact me, don't bother with comments as it is polluted by robospam - use my e-mail. Thanks

wrightj45@yahoo.com