Good morning, and Happy Black History Month!
When I was young, my mom created a library in the den, a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases crammed with titles of all kinds, many of them about Black men and women and the history they made. There were biographies of Malcolm and Martin, but also people less familiar — Dr. Charles Drew and Althea Gibson, Stokely Carmichael and Bessie Coleman — some unknown to even my Black friends.
This was my mother’s intent all along: To widen my knowledge base and deepen my understanding, to add nuance to the vast flatness of what is typically understood about Black people in America. I will never forget the day I came home, thrilled to share what I’d learned about Abraham Lincoln and his supreme benevolence toward our ancestors, the way he so graciously freed us from our shackles in order to usher us, unencumbered, into full, equitable citizenship in these United States.
I couldn’t have been older than 8. Still, my mother didn’t hesitate. “Sit down,” she said.