I waffle between hating the "specialty" history months as condescending, trivialized twaddle, and trying to figure out a way to make EVERY month a history of somethingorother Month since it isn't like we have any surplus of knowledge about the subject drowing out everything else.

But Black History Month does have a tendency to get great quotes out in circulation that I had either never heard or long ago forgotten. Somebody on one of my Civil War lists put this one up the other day and I promptly snatched it and put it in the Quotes queue here:

Great God! Is injustice nothing? Is honor nothing? Is even pecuniary interest to be sacrificed to this insane and vulgar hate? But it is said that this is the “white man’s country.” Not so, sir. This is the red man’s country by natural right and the black man’s by virtue of his suffering and toil. Your fathers by violence drove the red men out and forced the black man in. The children of the black man have enriched the soil by their tears, sweat and blood. Sir, we were born here, and here we chose to remain…. I elect to stay on the soil on which I was born, and on the plot of ground which I have fairly bought and honestly paid for. Don’t advise me to leave, and don’t add insult to injury by telling me it’s for my own good; of that I am to be the judge. It is vain that you talk to me about “two races” and their “mutual antagonism.” In the matter of rights there is but one race and that is the human race.

— Robert Purvis, 1862, in response to a proposal by government emigration agent Samuel Clarke Pomeroy to colonize American blacks to Central America.

:)

I try not to impose on those who might be less inclined to embrace Balck History, week, month . . . But this one I couldn't let pass. I don't think we should have to have it. But when it was policy to eradicate every vestige of a people's humanity . . . can we at least tell the children they aren't sambo, Tarzan isn't the lord of the Jungle, Africans aren't a nation of savages anymore than anyone else, that they had great civilizations, cultures, artistic achievements, that they had empires, trade and were more than beast of burdens, carriers of water and hewers of wood? Considering that until the 1970's it was near impossible to find a book on black history that didn't begin with 1619. What do you tell your child when they look at you and ask are we just Niggers? How do you explain to them why they used to hang us from trees, peel the skin off our backs, change our complexion? I missed that part in American civ.

Xan. Black folk are not every other peole in this country. Black history month is a step towards honest history. If we had more of it we wouldn't be in Iraq now. The systematic decimation of a civilization for natural resources and profit is the very reason I'm in North America. America creates for itself the image of a city on a hill when in reality it stands astride a mountain of skulls. It is the most genocidal nationin history, more brutal than Hitler, Pol Pot, and Pinochet put together. America is a nation of serial killers, mass murders, rapist and thieves. It's an inconvenient truth but it's ours and we have to live with it and hopefully make something out of it. Because, the other thing you learn from Black history is hope.