History and Values

A Bit of History
Here at the start of Black History Month, I realized something a bit embarrassing. I have no idea about the history of the month itself. I asked at the San Marcos Library if they had a flyer about it. They don’t. They try to be paperless. The helpful reference librarian said she could look it up. I thanked her and said I could do that for myself.

The library has a large selection of books on display including some local history and I had hoped for a combination of information about the large and the local stories in a flyer. I was pleased to see the display, but while I appreciate their attempt to save paper, I still think it was a lost opportunity to create something that made it easy for people to learn something beyond the Wikipedia page. There are absolutely times when the answer to a question should be, “go look it up” “find it on your own”. I would have liked something a bit more than that today. For one thing, I didn’t have to come to the library to look it up. I could have done that from home.

At any rate, I did look it up and found a short helpful page from the Library of Congress. The beginnings stretch much further back than I knew. Here’s a paragraph about the very start:
“National Black History Month has its origins in 1915, when historian and author Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. This organization is now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History External (ASALH). Through this organization, Dr. Woodson initiated the first Negro History Week in February 1926. Dr. Woodson selected the week in February that included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two key figures in the history of Black Americans.”

The page goes on to say that Gerald Ford issued a “Message on the Observance of Black History Week” in 1975 “urging all Americans to ‘recognize the important contribution made to our nation’s life and culture by black citizens.'” The commemoration was expanded to a month in 1976.

“In 1986, Congress passed Public Law 99-244, which designated February 1986, as ‘National Black (Afro-American) History Month.’ This law noted that February 1, 1986 would ‘mark the beginning of the sixtieth annual public and private salute to Black History.’ The law further directed the president to issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe February 1986 as Black History Month with the appropriate ceremonies and activities. President Reagan issued Presidential Proclamation 5443 External, which proclaimed that ‘the foremost purpose of Black History Month is to make all Americans aware of this struggle for freedom and equal opportunity.’ This proclamation stated further that this month was a time ‘to celebrate the many achievements of African Americans in every field from science and the arts to politics and religion.’”

All quotations above are from the Library of Congress website: https://guides.loc.gov/black-history-month-legal-resources/history-and-overview

Living My Values
I spent Monday morning working in the San Marcos Library and I checked out two books from their display for Black History Month. This weekend as I was thinking about what to write this week, I started thinking about the idea of living one’s values. There’s much to be said about that simple phrase and big ideas to consider, but what struck me was the concept of living one’s values day to day and doing so in public. That doesn’t have to mean wearing a t-shirt with a slogan, though it can. It doesn’t have to mean carrying a sign or attending a protest, though that’s definitely worthwhile in certain contexts. I was thinking more about the things we say are important but don’t act as if they are.

I believe public libraries are critical in the life of a healthy community. Having access to a wide array of books, electronic resources, and community gathering spaces – for free – matters. But I have rarely been a user of the local library. I remember going to one near our home as a child. But mostly I used my school library. In my elementary school library, I found an array of age-appropriate biographies of women, Clara Barton, Mary McLeod Bethune, Juliet Lowe, and Amelia Earhart to name a few. I think it was in the high school library that I found my first Isaac Asimov book which started my love of science-fiction. But then I went to college where the library became a research and study haven not a source of books to simply read. Since I spent most of my career on a college campus, I had ready access to enormous libraries but rarely used them beyond class assignments. I still use my UT Austin retiree access to find answers in their immense array of data bases but not much else.

Monday, I decided to change that for two reasons. One, the more people who use the library, the harder it is for anyone to say the library isn’t worth keeping around or funding appropriately. Two, I wanted to find out if our library had a Black History display and to support it if they did. Additionally, I’m going to check out and read Black History books and books by Black authors all month long. (I’m already reading a book by Octavia Butler from my To Be Read pile.) There are other things to do, but today this is how I’m acting out my values.

I fully acknowledge in the scheme of things, it’s not all that much. But in the aggregate, if we all went to our local libraries this month and checked out some books in support of Black History Month, it would begin to matter. Maybe, together we can make Morgan Freeman’s quote below come into reality. Plus, there’s the bonus of actually learning something new as I did in writing this.

What will you do this week to act on your values?

Take care,

Gage