Celebrating unsung heroes for Black History Month
October is Black History Month, an annual celebration of black history, culture and heritage taking place in the USA, Canada and the UK. It’s a time of reflection and celebration for all black people, and whilst the limelight will stay firmly cast on historical greats like Malcolm X, Bob Marley and Sojourner Truth, I also wanted to remember everyday black people. The unsung heroes whose remarkable deeds and achievements continue to inspire others.
I met my personal heroes in 1982 when my family moved to the Pine, an urban ghetto with all the trimmings – poverty, violence, drugs and houses so overcrowded that the occupants slept in turns. One of the first things they tell you when you arrive in the ghetto is to ‘get out’. For some, this meant kissing up to overseas relations in the hope that they would one day rescue you and for others natural skill and talent paved a way out. But for most of us without talent or relations abroad, education was the only way out. So as I grew older my inspiration came from those who had ‘escaped’ the ghetto through education. Local heroes like our neighbour Maxine, one of the first in our neighbourhood to get into university – her mother sang in the streets for days and I wanted my mum to sing like that. Rosie across the road who shocked everyone by going to college in her 40s to become a nurse, and inevitably, the (unofficial) local health visitor – I wanted to be the local authority on something. And of course my friend David, with the literacy skills of an infant well into adulthood, who went off to study a trade in his mid-20s and became an accomplished plumber – to this day his journey inspires me.
Even though none of my heroes physically left the ghetto, they all rose above it. Their lives changed, through learning, for the better. They all became the reference points for those who lacked direction, community learning champions to anyone who would listen, and mentors to me.
Each year NIACE focuses on a different aspect of the role of learning and education in black history and for 2012 we are exploring those people who are currently ‘making history’ across the sector. Our series for Black History Month – Making History: inspiring communities – will include a string of interviews with further education principals and Adult Learners’ Week award winners from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. We also want to hear from you – tell us about your unsung heroes and why they inspired you.
It was the mid 80’s and I was working for Hackney Adult Education Institute. We were acutely aware that the majority of the literacy learners in the AEI provision were African- Caribbean and the majority of our teaching staff were white. My colleague Cal Weatherald and I looked for guidance and we found Roxy Harris.
Roxy was the Head of the African-Caribbean Language and Literacy Unit at the Inner London Education Authority. He gave us a small grant to get a Black teacher training programme underway, but more importantly he inspired and supported us all the way.
Roxy encouraged us to get out there and do it. Not to navel gaze, worrying about whether we were the right people to run the course, but to get going, interview and recruit the trainees and deliver a ten week part time course. This, it turned out, was the first Black Literacy teacher training course in the country. We broke new ground because Roxy Harris gave us the funding, the confidence and the skills to do it. He inspired me.
Still I Rise
Definitely one of the best poems ever written and read aloud to me recently by my friend, Rose – with appropriate sassiness and aplomb!
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
Beautiful poem – on behalf of Black women all over the world thank you Maya.
Mandivamba Rukuni’s book, ‘Being Afrikan’ is about discovering the Zimbabwean traditional ways of life that embrace self-respect, love, integrity, honesty, ownership and hard work. The book is an invaluable tool for Afrikans in Diaspora, as well as those who wish to learn more about what being African truly entails.
‘… Afrikan society was crafted over centuries, so that it is fully self-contained and functional at a local level. This means that all issues important in life are dealt with at the family and community level. As a result, all the major ingredients of a rich society such as religion, education, politics and governance, peace and conflict resolution, are dealt with first and foremost within the family and then within the community.’
Mandivamba Rukuni
@Ama Dixon- A very inspiring and refreshing celebration of Black History! Alongside our story, highlighted by those who have become known in the fight for equality, we must celebrate and fully appreciate individual journeys of Black people. from Africa to the Caribbean, North America and UK, many have and continue to succeeded in overcoming opression. For me, the ‘sung’ heroes are but the highlights of a truly inspirational journey of a people.
One of my heros is Errol Walton Barrow. He was the first appointed Prime Minister of Barbados when it became independent from Great Britain in 1966. On introducing Barbados as a self governed nation, Errol Barrow assured that education at all levels become a free service to Barbadians provided by government. This was a key factor in progressing the Barbadian people after colonial reign. The law stands today, and is at the core of Barbadian culture.