Getting Ready for Black History Month: A Little Girl's Dream

The following story was sent to me by a former classmate of mine from high school. I thought it a creative way to remind us all that Black History Month is approaching, February 1-29. Like most children's stories, there's a message for all of us as well. This is a Guest Contribution.

A STORY FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH
by Diane Williams Cunningham

Please close your eyes and open your mind to a school girl kneeling down to pray at bedtime.

“Almighty God, thank you for this day in my 9-year-old life. Forgive me for anything I did, or thought wrong. Thank you for my family, friends and my teachers, too. God, I’m the only black person in my history class, and I’m sad that no black people who look like me get mentioned for achieving anything, but were only used in slavery to pick cotton. Could you please answer me, Lord, as to what else they did, so me and my people can feel part of history? You put us in this color skin and You teach us that our lives do matter. In Jesus Christ’s name, amen. Goodnight, Lord.”

I fell asleep and in my dream the Lord appeared as a tall man wearing a green tee-shirt with bronze-colored arms. I could not recognize His face, but he took me on a history journey. In my dream, morning came fast.

As I awoke and touched the lamp next to my bed I found a name written on a tag--Lewis Latimer: black inventor, 1848-1928, light bulb carbon filament. He was the draftsman for the patent Alexander Graham Bell was awarded.

Thomas Elkins

I rushed to use the bathroom and here I found another tag--Thomas Elkins, black inventor, 1872. The commode toilet. It had an easy chair, washstand, table/mirror and bookshelf all in one dresser unit.

Much to my surprise everything I needed for my hair was lying on the sink; shampoo, conditioner, healing formula and straightening comb. The tag read--Born Sarah Breedlove; married name--Madam C.J. Walker--the first self-made female millionaire, black inventor, 1867-1919.

Thank you, Madam C J. You knew us girls needed help for our hair.

As I ran down the stairs and opened the refrigerator another tag stared at me--T. Elkins again, 1874, refrigerator apparatus. He used metallic coils that chilled as coolant liquid cycled thru them. No more ice needed to keep food preserved and cold.

Well, now I needed a sandwich to go with my glass of cold milk, so I grabbed the peanut butter. Oh, to my surprise, yet another tag: George Washington Carver, first version of peanut butter 1860-1943, botanist, chemist, nicknamed the plant doctor. He is accredited for over 300 uses for peanuts, soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes.

George Washington Carver by F.B. Johnston
Library of Congress

George W. Carver was educated at Iowa State University 1894-1896. He invented crop rotation. He made improvements to peanuts and many other things such as: adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, wood filler, gasoline, washing powder, plastic pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, hand lotion, face lotion, talcum powder, wood stain and so much more!

Dr. Carver was asked in a letter from Booker T. Washington to come help him at Tuskegee University where they could not pay him the salary he was earning, nor give him a luxury place to live. He felt so honored that he adopted Booker’s middle name, Washington.

He said, “It’s not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank that counts. These mean nothing. It is simple service that measures success.”

Whoa, I thought, go my people!

Mailbox invented by Philip B. Downing (1857-1954)

I’m on my way to catch the school bus now, and passed a mailbox tagged--Black inventor, Philip B. Downing 1891. I’m smiling and excited, too. Then the bus stopped at a traffic light--tagged black inventor 1877, Garrett Morgan.

History class just couldn’t come fast enough. I’m going to tell them all about our black achievements. Lord, just let me out of this dream. The man in the green tee shirt said, “It’s Black History month every day. Go on and tell them how important All my people are to me. Wake up now, my child, and go tell them.”

Copyright Diane Williams Cunningham

* * * *

"I love to think of nature as unlimited broadcasting stations, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour and every moment of our lives, if we will only tune in and remain so."
--George Washington Carver, letter to H.W. Pelt

Related Links
Against All Odds: The Rags to Riches Story of Sarah Breedlove Walker
Inventions By Thomas Elkins @ My Black History
Inventor, Entrepreneur & Publisher Garrett A. Morgan
Inventor and Engineer Lewis Howard Latimer
100 Great Books by African American Women  

EdNote: If you are a children's book publisher or know someone in that field, I believe this little story could easily be expanded and become a wonderful teaching tool. 

Inauguration Trivia

It's official. At noon on Tuesday, January 20, we'll have a new president. Numero 44. Our first person of color to be officially seated in the Oval Office. Here are a few slices of inauguration trivia to help you get in the mood for this historic event.

Inaugurations used to take place in March. After Obama was elected in November, some people hoped that could be moved up to Thanksgiving, but alas... January it continues to be.

March 4, 1793. At his second inauguration, George Washington delivered the shortest inauguration speech on record. The speech totaled 135 words. There is but a single copy of this analog recording which is played once a year in the national archive to help us remember the father of our country. Inauguration speeches since the First Bush administration have been digital. All speeches since Lincoln, who incidentally was the first to have people of color in his parade, have been digitally re-mastered.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, was the first to have a parade afterwards down Pennsylvania Avenue.

James Madison was the first President to take the oath of office outdoors. March 4, 1817. The day has been described as warm and sunny with a temperature at noon estimated to be 50 degrees which allowed more Americans to enjoy and appreciate this grand event.

An unfortunate consequence was that it is seldom fifty degrees in Washington this time of year, especially now that inaugurations are in January.

In 1841 William Henry Harrison decided to brave the elements and deliver the longest inauguration speech ever, an oration lasting an hour, 40 minutes. His bluster was matched by equally blustery weather and Harrison, wearing neither coat nor hat, caught a cold which developed into pneumonia. A month later he died.

Not to be outdone, in 1853, President Franklin Pierce was also sworn into office on a cold and snowy day. The heavy snows continued from morn till just before the ceremony. But, events had been set in motion and the inauguration took place as scheduled. Unfortunately, Abigail Fillmore, First Lady to the outgoing President Millard Fillmore, caught a cold as she sat in the cold and damp during Franklin's swearing-in ceremony. The cold developed into pneumonia and she died by the end of the month.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inauguration was the first to be held on January 20, in 1937. Evidently he was eager to put his first term behind him and get on with the second. Some 200,000 visitors came to Washington for the event. Because of the cold, rainy weather -- nearly 2 inches of the wet stuff -- 3,214 people caught colds which developed into pneumonia. All but three died within a month.

The coldest inauguration came in 1985 when Ronald Reagan was greeted by an arctic blast that included extreme cold and wind. That morning it was 4 degrees below zero with the temperature reaching only 7 degrees by noon. The daytime high reached 17 degrees, but wind chill temps in the afternoon were well below zero. The swearing-in ceremony had to be held indoors and the parade was canceled when half the population of Northern Minnesota caught pneumonia and died. That evening President Reagan conceived of a satellite network which could alter the future of the world and bring an end to the Cold War. By the end of the decade the Berlin Wall fell.... and we've lived happily ever after.

More Than a Peanut Farmer

Yesterday I finished reading (listening to) a truly inspirational audio book by Tony Dungee called Quiet Strength. At the outset he explains that this book is not about football. It is about the meaning of life, faith, God, truth, and all the lessons of his lifetime, both on and off the field. Dungee was an athlete who became a coach, and the first NFL coach to lead his team to the Super Bowl.

I would say more about this book, but his numerous George Washington Carver quotes, from whom he’d clearly found inspiration, led me to make Carver -- whose image graces this page -- the topic of today’s blog entry.

I’d read a Scholastic Book Club book about this remarkable man when I was young. I remember it making an impact on me at the time. George Washington Carver, though born a slave, grew up to be a prestigious scientist who made significant contributions to agriculture in the South. He learned about crop rotation and how to restore the nutrients which had been depleted from the soil during decades of growing cotton.

What he’s possibly most remember for is his creativity with regards to the peanut. He had purportedly discovered over 300 uses for the peanut. The story I most vividly recall from the book was the banquet he served on one occasion, all dishes being some kind of peanut variation. You might say he was nuts about peanuts. It wasn’t just foodstuffs that he made from nuts, however. Adhesives, fuel briquettes, ink, linoleum, shaving cream, talcum powder and wood stain were just a few of the kinds of innovative uses he developed.

His Christian faith was also central to his personal life. Perhaps it was this, as much as the fact that Carver was an influential black man and role model, that led Tony Dungee to find such encouragement and inspiration from Carver’s life and work.

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia. “Dr. Carver's faith was foundational in how he approached life. He viewed faith in Jesus as a means to destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification. For Dr. Carver, faith was an agent of change. It increased knowledge rather than competing against it. The greater his faith increased, the more he desired to learn. The more he learned, the greater his faith became.”

Many chapters in Dungee’s book began with a quote from one source or another. A few of these were from Dr. Carver. I share several here. For more check this website.

"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom."

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these."

"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in."

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."

"No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving something behind."

"There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation - veneer isn't worth anything."

"Where there is no vision, there is no hope."

And last, but not least, the one most frequently cite in Quiet Strength: "When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."